Stephen Prothero details the day when his editor told him: you’re making a book trailer, get a haircut and get over here:

The next morning I called my editor. I had spent a few years writing a book that made me proud. Now I was supposed to spend a few days producing two videos? He said he had no interest in producing second-rate content to accompany a first-rate book, and added that my publisher, HarperOne, had recently hired someone from MTV to oversee video production.

After some talk of using HarperCollins’s new book trailer studio in Manhattan, we decided to film at Boston University, where I work, with a local firm called Shave Media. After some back and forth on concepts for the videos, all I had to do was get my hair cut, put on a decent outfit, and show up.

Am I the only one nostalgic for the days when this money would have been spent on an ad in the Times Book Review?

And now for the book trailer itself: