Are book trailers a silly waste of time for those who want to promote books? Laura Miller, writing for Salon, says they are and cites examples of badly-produced (and ill-conceived) book trailers that detract from, rather than enhance, book promotion efforts.

But concluding that all book trailers are a silly approach to book promotion doesn’t make any more sense than deciding that blogging for book publicity is a bad idea after you’ve seen a badly-written book blog, or reasoning that media releases don’t work after you’ve seen an incompetently-handled press release (most likely, one that reads as if it were an ad for a book, which won’t accomplish anything, rather than an actual news release, which most likely will help you achieve your book promotion goals).