I haunt YouTube looking for book trailers, because I find them a fascinating, if often puzzling, art form.

It’s not hard to create and edit video, but so often trailers seem to miss the boat — and can sometimes make the book or its storyline seem more boring than they actually are.

There are so many things that can make a trailer work.

Clip art is usually not one of them, although there are some exceptions.

Here’s a Galleycat post pitting a book trailer for a book by Joey Goebel against one by undercover brother sci-fi author Tobias Buckell.

Which do you think is better?

Here’s Goebel’s:

And here’s Buckell’s:

I vote Buckell, and not just because of the awesome music. His clip art works, and there are none of those Godawful voices. This is a well-done trailer, and it doesn’t look like it was expensive to make or took much time.

I’m trying to put together a list of what makes a good book trailer.

What techniques work in trailers that could be applied more widely so that many of them wouldn’t be so cringeworthy?