We’ve all heard of audiobooks, but videobooks?

HarperCollins is trying to pitch short films of authors summarizing their books (until recently known as an online promotional trailer) as a new format “ even going so far as to sell the resulting 23 minutes on Amazon for slightly less than the cost of a new paperback.

Even if watching Jeff Jarvis talk about his book, What Would Google Do?, turned out to be as informative as reading the book would be, how do you consult it for reference? Sure it saves on printing costs, but so do e-books and audiobooks “ without sacrificing valuable content.

If HarperCollins wants to move into the self-help video market, they should just say so.