The era of the book trailer: why Somesuch Editions are promoting novels like films

When you think of book advertising, what comes to mind? A colour-coded, shop-front takeover of your local Waterstones or Barnes & Noble? A static image of the cover emblazoned with the words ‘The Hottest New Debut’ subtly budging its way into your Instagram scroll? What about a stylishly filmed, and painstakingly produced minute-long trailer? The latter might not quite make sense on that list, but there’s one outfit that’s proving that trailers might just be the future of publishing promotion: the production company Somesuch, and its publishing wing, Somesuch Editions.

Stereotypes of the fast-paced, techy and flashy production industry are arguably the antithesis to preconceptions of the publishing industry: ‘slow’, analogue and much more bound by tradition, but for Somesuch its two branches have always worked in harmony and fed into one another. Founders Tim Nash and Sally Campbell are book-lovers as much as they are film-lovers – Somesuch loosely takes its name from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Quite simply, Tim summarises: “I still believe that most great projects, be they a film, music video, or commercial, start with a great piece of writing.”

While Somesuch Editions has a long history of publishing its magazines, zines and other printed matter, like photobooks, related to film work of its roster of talent, in 2025 it made its first venture into publishing fiction with Kimberly Campanello’s erotic and poetic romance, Use the Words You Have, closely followed in 2026 by Cenac Rollins’ debut Now Burns Blue, a tale of two ex-lovers during a sweltering London summer, as they reckon with the fallout from their shared past and try to redirect their lives in a complicated city that shines with promise. What made the two novels stand out, alongside their stunning, art-led covers (Use The Words You Have features a charged and sensual photograph from Nanténé Traoré and Now Burns Blue is adorned with a figurative painting from artist Georgia Semple) is the fact they both arrived with cinematic, film trailer-like vision into their imagined worlds.

For those who’ve grown up more digitally native and maybe aren’t as well acquainted with the world of modern literature, such formats pose the potential to attract new audiences: “It makes reading more accessible to those who wouldn’t traditionally find themselves in a bookshop, or to those who find the prospect of choosing a novel to read intimidating,” says Somesuch Editions creative director Phoebe Gardner. “You could see the video and photography elements as a visual blurb,” continues Phoebe. “In a world of information overload and decreasing attention spans, a visual element makes it easier in cutting through the noise.” It’s true, in a time when culture is so driven by what people can access on their screen, it’s savvy to make sure analogue media isn’t neglected by this framework. To make things better, Somesuch’s trailers are offering an artful antidote to the endless scroll.

The trailer for Now Burns Blue is directed by Frankie Spence, a director born and raised in Peckham who expertly brings the book’s south east London setting to life with a fragmented montage of images of place and people – the grain makes it feel as if it’s all is taking place at dusk, the moment day fades to evening and the night feels rich with possibility. The observational gaze of the camera takes us from bustling market stalls to hair salons to pavement games of Ludi, ending with a shot of two lovers on a bench: the central protagonists of the story. What Frankie captures is how such a personal story of two people is always in conversation with the communities and communal activities that surround them. This is something enhanced by the sound design – the sounds of the city and its people lie beneath spoken lines taken from the novel.

There’s likely some purists who could see a book cover trailer as tainting the sanctity of the written word, but Phoebe makes a good, simple point – the importance of being amenable to the times we live in. “Another important way of thinking is to be open-minded; anything is possible in writing, and the same can be said about visual culture.” It makes sense for such a solidly multi-hyphenate studio to be joining its two strands together, and it’s especially impressive to see such determined cross-pollination when the output is as stunning as Somesuch’s innovative book trailers.