Last week, the Cloud Atlas trailer was released and it has reportedly driven up sales of the book on Amazon.

It’s an interesting effect, given that books have begun to have trailers produced by their publishing houses.

Neil Stephenson’s 2009 Anathem had a trailer…

…as did my latest favorite book (of which I’ve been writing about lately), Alastair Reynolds’ Blue Remembered Earth:

While B.R.E.’s‘ helped me understand what the book entailed, I was convinced by the Amazon Kindle’s sample chapter.

(For that matter, I bought Cloud Atlas at the end of December when I saw the concept art on io9.com, and got hooked by the sample chapter as well).

I have no information with regard to the trailers produced by the publishing houses having any impact. However, if they wanted to produce 6 minute masterpieces like the Cloud Atlas trailer (a distillation of imagery from a reported near 3-hour movie) then the form would come into its own.

This unintended effect generated by the Cloud Atlas trailer may convince them to do just that.

I love the idea of the mini-film being constructed out of choice scenes, of the quality that suggests an excerpt from a larger cinematic work.

Kind of like Franceso Vezzoli’s 2005 art-video, Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal’s Caligula

(Gotta love the Gladiator soundtrack. Also, how has this been on YouTube for two years?)