The Author Takes a Star Turn.

AMONG the millions of videos on YouTube, somewhere amid the sneezing pandas, weepy Lindsay Lohan and smoking Indonesian toddler, are thousands of videos of authors talking -- often skittishly, often against a black backdrop, often to no discernible audience -- about their most recent work. For those who were movie stars, motivational speakers or mayors of small Alaskan towns before marshaling their ghostwritten tomes onto the best-seller list, appearing in the de rigueur trailer is just another gig. ''But people who spend their whole lives writing and people who are good on video turn out to be two very different sets of people,'' said the best-selling author Mary Karr, who last year starred in her first book video for her memoir ''Lit.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]