Tim Ferriss is many things–including a writer, a tango dancer, and a kickboxer–but he’s certainly not a conventional scribe. Ferriss, the author of two New York Times best sellers (The 4-Hour Workweek and The 4-Hour Body) is releasing his third book, The 4-Hour Chef, and he’s using the Internet (and YouTube in particular) as one of his most important resources.

Ferriss, who previously used a video trailer to promote The 4-Hour Body, has redoubled his efforts for his new book, releasing two engaging trailers to his 4-Hour Chef YouTube channel, becoming one of the first authors to utilize YouTube as a video marketing tool. “I really do enjoy being first to try things,” said Ferriss, “even if I end up taking a couple hours in the back as the guy on the front lines.”

Ferriss created his YouTube material with the help of the Mekanism agency. One trailer features a hi-fi series of jumpy images, all brought together through a series of quick match cuts. The second takes an interview with fellow author Todd Henry and places it in front of a cleverly composed series of hand-drawn images.

In both cases, Ferriss made sure that his videos featured a production quality not present in the book trailers released by other authors. “The [previous] book trailers were all fairly dry and they were relatively low budget; maybe there was some sort of Animoto type text being used.” said Ferriss, “I wanted to make a book trailer that from a cinematic standpoint looked just like a movie trailer.” Sure enough, the more cinematic of the two trailers could easily belong to a fast paced Hollywood thriller.