Book Trailers as Video Taglines: Book Trailers 101

Posted on 1:00 pm in Video | 0 comments

Why should you make a book trailer?

Some people think it’s a marketing resource that’s becoming more valuable daily. Others will tell you it’s a waste of money and doesn’t pay for itself. Does posting a book trailer lead to more sales? No one knows. No one’s shared their tracking code results or done a scientific poll to find out. Here’s what we do know:

1. Publishers and agents spend thousands of dollars making book trailers.
2. Video advertisement in general is booming on the web.
3. A book’s cover art — visual marketing like video — can often be the largest influence on a purchase.

So maybe there’s something to it.

If you’ve written a mainstream novel, you have a lot of competition for publishers, not to mention readers. A book trailer can be a way to set yourself apart from the herd, even without the production values $10K can buy.

If you’re more of a niche writer, a video may get the attention of readers who would not normally visit your corner of the publishing world.

So why should you NOT make a book trailer?

I’ll tell you why.

If you make a boring or unprofessional video, a reader will assume your book is just as boring or unprofessional. Think about the importance of a book’s cover art. Like it or not, we’re a culture of the image as much as the word.

Of course, you can pay someone else to do it. Sometimes the money’s worth it (from hundreds to thousands of dollars) to get a little more marketing out there. On the other hand, sometimes the money you pay for those production values doesn’t translate into a good video message, or it leaves you just running with the herd — with considerably less cash in your pocket.

A book trailer isn’t just about your book.

A trailer is about the author as much as the story.

One of my favorite trailors has the author talking about his book; he’s funny and I like him, so I got his book expecting the same and was not disappointed (click to see Seth Greenland’s Shining City). Other trailers are creative and convince me the author’s story is likely to be just as creative (view Kathe Koja’s Under the Poppy video below).

1. Sell yourself. Read or talk about your book on camera. The post-modern reader wants to know you. Faceless authors are a thing of the past.
2. Sell your vision. Give your world and characters a little more life than what black text can do.
3. Sell your talent. We don’t read on the web. We scan. Think of a book trailer as a video tagline. It’s a story about a story. Show your funny side if the book is humor or your knowledge if the book is history or your imagination if the book is fantasy.

Here’s how to do it

In the next few posts, I’m going to show you some steps to getting a book trailer done on your own.

This series aims at those of you who already know something about editing images in a program like Adobe Photoshop (or even Windows Paint). You don’t have to know anything about Adobe Premiere or Windows Movie Maker, but you’ll have to get access to a video editing program like one of these.

Movie Maker is free with Windows. Premiere is a product that’ll cost you from $300-$700 (last I looked) but provides some rich features that I’ll point out.

Besides having a computer and software, you’ll have to spend a little money on images.  I’ll share some of my favorite places to get them and how to make them your own.

Who am I?

For fifteen years I’ve worked in web and retail marketing as a graphic designer, web developer, and video editor. I’ve also been publishing fiction for that long, both online and in print. In this series, I’ll share my knowledge of design, software programs, resource acquisition, and online references.

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More reading:

Why Make a Book Trailer? Do They Work? (Arielle Ford at Huffington Post)
You Can Tell A Book By Its Cover (Helen Rumbalow at Times)