… The Mistress Diaries Has Hit the Big Screen!

Well, the small screen actually. And that would be YouTube.

If you haven’t watched the trailer for my new book, The Mistress Diaries, I hope you’ll check it out. It’s a live action, quirky romp with a hunky leading man and a gorgeous leading lady. You can get to it from my website at JulianneMacLean. (If you’re at work, however, you might want to keep an eye over your shoulder… it gets super steamy, and we wouldn’t your boss to think you walk too close to the hot edge of the wild side.)

The funny thing about my trailers is that they don’t really tell you anything about the books they’re promoting, and I have a hard time even calling them trailers. They’re simply “shorts films” that advertise my books. This particular one takes place in a stable. There isn’t even a single stable scene in The Mistress Diaries. The characters are not the characters from my book, and I don’t provide a synopsis about the story. My only goal is to entertain you, which is also what I hope to do with my novels. (As an aside, if you want to know about the book, there’s lots of info on my website.)

Why do I do this type of trailer, you ask? Well, if you want anything to be a success on YouTube and the internet in general, it has to have some entertainment value that will inspire people to pass the link on to a friend and say, “OMG, you have to see this…” That’s called “going viral,” which in terms of advertising, is a good thing.

It also doesn’t hurt to create some controversy that might get people talking. When my husband (the writer and producer; yes, I’m a lucky woman) proposed the idea to me, we were driving in the car in a rainstorm, and he was just kidding around. He never thought I’d seriously want do it, because let’s be honest… the subject matter is a bit edgy, to put it mildly. But I knew he and his film crew would have a ball filming it, and I do love humor, even when it’s shamelessly risqué and hand-covering-mouth shocking.

Does it work to sell my books? I wish I knew. I’ve been hearing recently that trailers in general don’t sell books. But if you make a little film that gets a million hits on YouTube, maybe you stand a chance of proving that theory wrong. I’d sure like to try, and hey – my hubby gets to be a film producer in the process, so why not have some fun?

So what do you think? Are trailers worth doing? Or is mine totally over the edge?

Whether you love or detest this one, it is bound to raise a few eyebrows. I don’t mind though, as I have learned to live by the eternal advertising mantra “the only thing worse than bad publicity is no publicity at all.”