With the advent of the processes and the people in place that would make up the integral publishing structure of Oho Ake Books Limited, the creative direction began to formulate in my mind. With this assimilation, information began to make itself known to me clearly and precisely. Whether you could call it clairaudience or claircognizance is up for debate, but I understood that all the books had to be digital or ebooks (even though my love of actual tangible paper books is unshakable, I listened and acted accordingly) and that I was to make book trailers for each of the book releases.
Keep in mind, this was 2008. At this time the digital book phenomena were in their infancy, there was no global market like there is today. There were a handful of platforms in the USA in Europe that sold digital books, but nothing like today. It was a HUGE step for me to even consider, I felt like a pioneer going out on a limb by exercising this, the branch was more like a twig in 2008, and most people I related my desire to thought I was bonkers.
The same goes for book trailers. No publishing companies, self-published authors in 2008 were making book trailers for their publications online. The marketing machine for big publishing companies pimped their authors and their books in less inventive and less far-reaching ways, blogging was still learning to stand in the early 2000s. These instructions I was receiving were from a distant future! So it seemed! I felt like I was talking to my successful future self who was instructing me on how to get to where he was, in whatever year he was dictating to me from!
So obligingly I asked my friend and creative genius Preston McNeil from then Mofresh, now Executive Beige to work with me in creating an animated trailer for my first novel (not Sanctum) written at this time, Entwined. We nutted out the concepts, me with creative direction and he with the logistics, animation, and production. Together we created something wonderful that blew the digital marketing people I employed to help me market the books in 2008 away. It was the perfect way to address the essence of the story of Entwined. It was a showreel, a short film within a novel synopsis that enticed those interested to delve deeper into the story presenting itself. In the book trailer for the next book in the series with Entwined, United, Preston would take a larger role, producing with me, directing with me, and hiring a larger team to animate the trailer into another showreel that is the pinnacle visual piece of my companies creative direction to date. Man, I’m blessed to work with such amazing people.
