Nightfall County
A trailer that felt like the first ten pages.
3.9×
Pre-order lift
Delivered March 2025
The author
Daniel Wexler
Daniel Wexler writes rural noir from a farmhouse in northern Vermont. Nightfall County is his third novel and his first with Redwood Press.
The book
- Title
- Nightfall County
- Genre
- Literary thriller
- Publisher
- Redwood Press
- Extent
- 384 pages
- Campaign
- Book Trailers
The challenge
A literary thriller with extraordinary reviews and no visual language. The publisher's marketing assets were a cover image and a quote card. Nothing about the campaign communicated the atmosphere that made early readers finish the book in one sitting.
The strategy
How we approached it.
01
Read first, storyboard second
Two editors read the full manuscript and pulled the four images the book returns to — the moon over the ridge, the church, the ledger, the empty road. Those became the trailer's spine.
02
Shoot for atmosphere, not plot
We resisted a synopsis trailer. No voiceover explaining who did what. Ninety seconds of place and weather, scored for dread, ending on the title in gold.
03
Place it where thriller readers live
A staged rollout across BookTok, thriller newsletters and the author's own list, timed to the four weeks before publication.
The film
The finished trailer.
Nightfall County · Official trailer
Before and after
What actually changed.
Measured against the ninety days before the campaign began.
Pre-orders
1,240
4,830
3.9×
Trailer views
—
1.4M
organic
Amazon rank
#18,400
#212
launch week
In the author's words
“I have seen a hundred book trailers and hated most of them. This one felt like the book. My editor cried. My agent sent it to four other clients.”
Daniel Wexler
Author, Nightfall County
Gallery
From the campaign.
Next project
The Salt Archive
Lucas Hawthorne · Goodreads Promotions
Taking four titles for the next quarter
Let the right readers
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