Now showing at a screen near you: commercials for books, which have been in existence since at least 2006. Unfortunately, the ratio of shoddy-house videos to micro-movies with polished production values remains high. Serious fiction is particularly vulnerable to association with substandard trailers. Yet trailers are increasingly being used by authors known and soon-to-be-known to promote their latest books.

Take T. C. Boyle’s 13th novel, When the Killing’s Done. Published in February 2011, this eco-drama explores the conflict between two families, and between humans and the natural world. Its 2-minute trailer was directed for Bloomsbury by Jamieson Fry, who has worked on visual effects for big-budget movies, including iRobot, The Day After Tomorrow, and Star Trek: Nemesis. In his video, activist Dave LaJoy (played by Ben Messmer) disrupts a speech being given by biologist Alma Boyd Takesue (Mirai Booth-Ong). Unfolding with the scene is a montage of the novel’s breathtaking island setting and a few of its dramatic incidents. The score by Matt Abeysekera heightens the tension.

Effective? The jury is still out. Reading has always demanded more of an investment than watching a movie, even if you only borrow the book and avoid shelling out for it. Still, watching the latest book releases on Amazon, YouTube, or the websites of authors or publishers does evoke a cinematic thrill.

It’s a thrill for some authors, too – like Ransom Riggs, a vintage-film buff who writes and directs his own videos. The trailer of his recent book for teens, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, dramatizes the novel’s prologue. The music-box score by Michael Picton is eerie enough, but Riggs and co-cinematographer Charles Haine also intercut the scene with shots of otherworldly photos from the author’s collection. It’s a smart evocation of the novel’s atmosphere. Another set of vintage photos is the subject of Riggs’s less-spooky blog compilation, Talking Pictures, due out in 2012. Its trailer alternates the sepia-tinted snapshots with their touching captions, scribbled in still-legible handwriting: “No $ for food,” “I’m nobody’s baby,” “I love you always, Darling.” The author’s pensive voiceover and Geechie Wiley’s 1930 recording of “Last Kind Word Blues” emphasize the poignancy of these long-gone ordinary lives.

Ephemera also tells the story in Caroline Preston’s fourth work, The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, subtitled A Novel of Pictures. The collage-filled look of the novel is reminiscent of Nick Bantock’s Griffin & Sabine series. The trailer, produced and directed by Luke Tilghman of Charlottesville, features local theater actress Addie Horan in the title role, dressed in a vintage cream-lace dress. Horan recently earned rave reviews for her one-woman show, Cry of the Mountain, at the Edinburgh Fringe and other summer festivals. As Frankie, she glues postcards and other memorabilia into her scrapbook while summarizing her adventures before and after enrolling in Vassar in the 1920s. Josephine Baker croons softly in the background over James P. Johnson’s languid jazz piano.

Penguin, Bloomsbury, and other big names in publishing don’t use the term “book trailer” because it’s a trademark of industry leader Circle of Seven (COS) Productions. For Tony D’Souza’s Mule: A Novel of Moving Weight, COS created a 45-second “cover story” video. This “book teaser” (another trademark) consists of simple ingredients: book cover, animated text, stock music. The Mule video starts with a drawing of a creased map and a sentence that builds up slowly: “James and Kate have it made … until the economic downturn … and an unexpected pregnancy change everything.” It goes on with economical use of the book’s cover picture: James looking into the rear-view mirror, gripping his steering wheel. It’s enough to convey the desperate move at the heart of the promising story: James’s “drive from California to Florida … carrying a little weight.”

A book published by different companies in different countries might have more than one trailer – like Alma Katsu’s gothic debut, The Taker. The Random House UK version shows an uncredited actress as Lanny, the main character, gazing gloomily into a mirror, a glass of dark wine in her hand. It ends with a banner proclaiming the novel “An Immortal Love Story.” In contrast, the U.S. Simon and Schuster teaser shows copperplate text flying through a greenish space of splotches and curlicues, urging us in the end to “Get Taken” as the insistent violin score crescendoes to a flourish. Both trailers promise readers a dramatic story of thwarted love, wretched decisions and rueful consequences, set in 19th-century New England.

Most professional trailers are geared toward children and teens, who may generally be more persuaded by the language of movies than by book reviews. Judging from these glossy trailers, though, book commercials will soon be ready for more sophisticated viewers, such as readers of literary fiction.