book trailers

The Ultimate Guide to Book Trailers: How To Produce a Killer Book Promo Video

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Book trailers are a great way to get future readers interested in your story, especially if you do it the right way. With the algorithm changes on Facebook, you actually will get more results if you can use video to reach people.

The Ultimate Guide to Book Trailers: How To Produce a Killer Book Promo Video

By Julia Drake

Consider these stats: Video racks up over 22 billion daily views. It increases the organic reach of social media content by over 100%, compared to photos or text. It ranks toward the top of the first page in Google searches, is popular across demographics, and builds an instant emotional connection with your audience.

No wonder publishers and authors are increasingly leveraging video to tap into an exploding audience. But as much as a good book promo video makes that lasting first impression, a bad video is like a bad book cover—it cannot be unseen and can ruin a reader’s expectation of a book before they’ve even had a chance to crack into that first page. To help you avoid this pitfall, here are some key considerations and steps to successfully produce and distribute a book trailer that sells your work:

What’s the big deal with video?

Read the full post at Writer’s Digest

Throwback Thursday! Book Trailers: 11 steps to make your own

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Throwback Thursday – sharing some of our great older posts that still are important today!

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Book trailers are videos posted online and distributed via video networking sites like YouTube. These can be big budget blockbuster movie clips, or budget MovieMaker slides to music. You can make it an advert or a social media fun clip that people want to watch. It can be a human interest story made more like a documentary. It can be a cartoon. Essentially, it is anything you want it to be. Anything that catches people’s attention.

You can get a professional to make you one or you can make your own for little or no money. I made this one with Windows Movie Maker (which is on on most PCs). It took me several hours but was essentially free, and you don’t have to be too techy to make one too. Here are the steps you need.

1. Research other book trailers that are similar to what you would like to do. Just search for book trailers on YouTube. decide what you like and don’t like (and what is within your capacity and budget)

2. Write a brief script for the trailer so you can get it straight in your head and understand what images and text you will need ( I just did this on Microsoft Word)

3. Find and download images to match your words. You can use your own or get free ones online by googling “royalty free photo”. I use iStockPhoto which I find easy to use with a variety of pictures and I did pay a small amount for some photos. You can also use movie clips (which I am still learning about!)

4. Import the pictures into Windows MovieMaker (File -> Import Media)

5. Order the pictures.Drag them into the movie bar at the bottom of the screen in the order you want. Right click and Cut to remove again. Basic drag and drop functionality. Remember to save regularly!

6. Add script by clicking on the picture in the movie bar and then clicking Edit -> Titles and Credits. You can add text in various styles, colours and transition effects here. You can add text before, on top of or after your picures.

7. Edit.Once you have got the basic pictures and text setup, see how long your movie is. Most book trailers are no longer than 1 minute 30 seconds. Edit as necessary by clicking and dragging the size of the boxes to shorten the time frame they show on the screen.

8. Find music to match the length of your movie (or cut to fit). I used SoundSnap.com but you can google “royalty free music” to find other sites. I searched on audio length within classical music and listened to a few before choosing.

9. Check you are happy with everything and then Publish your movie to your computer.

10. Find tags.Now you have a file you can publish it to the internet movie sites to get some viewers. You need to know what tags you want to add to your video when you upload it, so I suggest you also research what people are searching on in your genre. I use Google Keyword Search which has a number of tools and recommended related words.

11. Upload your video to appropriate sites.

I have loaded mine to YouTube and Google Video so far. It takes some time per site, unless you use a video submission site like TrafficGeyser which is expensive and really only for companies with lots of video. You can submit manually to sites like Revver, MySpaceTV, Metacafe, Yahoo Video, Book Trailers, AuthorsDen. No doubt there are many more! Remember to also use the embed links to post to your own website, blog and social networking sites.

It’s easier than you think to get a video book trailer on YouTube! Let us know how it goes!

Reposted from http://www.TheCreativePenn.com : Writing, self-publishing, print-on-demand, internet sales and promotion…for your book.

How to Promote a Book with Video

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This post by Dana Lynn Smith originally appeared on her The Savvy Book Marketer on 5/15/13.

Videos are hugely popular online, from grumpy cats and music videos, to breaking news and movie trailers. In fact, YouTube (owned by Google) has become the second most popular website worldwide.

Today I want to share with you practical, actionable information on how to create and use video to promote your book and yourself. First, here are a few of the ways that authors can use video:

• For nonfiction authors, content-based videos (where you discuss the book’s topic) can be very effective. You can even do a series of videos dealing with different aspects of your topic. Options include “talking head” video where you are filmed speaking about the topic, demonstrations of how to do something, a slideshow with voiceover, or a combination of these. Be sure to promote the book at the end of the content-based video and include your website link. You can also work in mentions of the book earlier in the video (“Here are some of the top tips for _____ from my new book ______.”) but be sure to provide useful content rather than just promotion.

• Video trailers (short commercial-style videos, similar to movie trailers) work best for novels, narrative nonfiction, and children’s books. Usually these include a series of images and text with music or voiceover in the background, with a promotion to buy the book at the end. Don’t forget the link to your website or a short link to your Amazon page.

• Children’s book authors can post videos of book readings or related activities for kids.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Savvy Book Marketer.