Book trailers for better book sales...
Welcome to the Weekend Publisher's guide on creating a captivating book trailer. In today's digital age, a book trailer can be a powerful promotional tool to engage readers and generate interest in your work. This article will provide valuable insights, tips, and examples to help authors create their own book trailers and effectively showcase their stories.
What is a book trailer?
A book trailer is a short video advertisement that captures the essence of your book and entices potential readers. Similar to movie trailers, book trailers use visuals, music, and text to convey the mood, plot, and themes of your book. It serves as a visually compelling introduction that encourages viewers to explore your work further.
And just like movie trailers, book trailers can elicit powerful emotions that could generate vast amounts of interest in the potential reader. Alternatively, it could also destroy interest in your book. That is why we highly recommend that you read through all the content within this article before making your own book trailer.
Do I need a book trailer to promote my book?
The short answer is no. But every extra little bit of marketing helps, right?
While book trailers are not essential, they can play a significant role in promoting your book and capturing readers' attention. Here are a few reasons why you might consider creating a book trailer:
- Visual Appeal
In today's fast-paced digital world, visual content tends to grab attention more effectively than text alone. A book trailer allows you to showcase the visual elements of your story, such as the setting, characters, and key scenes, creating a visually appealing experience for potential readers.
As you may very well know, the same applies to the cover of your book. Imagine the cover and blurb of your book dancing together to appealing music when you want to create your trailer.
- Emotional Connection
A book trailer has the power to evoke emotions and create a connection with viewers. By incorporating compelling visuals, music, and snippets of your book's dialogue or narration, you can create an emotional impact that resonates with the audience and entices them to explore your book further.
- Broadening Your Reach
Book trailers offer an opportunity to reach a wider audience beyond traditional marketing methods. They can be easily shared on social media platforms, book review websites, and even displayed at book fairs or author events. The visual and interactive nature of book trailers makes them shareable, increasing the chances of your book reaching potential readers who may not have discovered it otherwise.
TikTok has become a very popular option for book trailers, but this does not apply to all genres. Young Adult and Romance books seem to do well, while others, like historical fiction, do not seem to do as well.
- Enhancing Discoverability
In the vast sea of books available, a book trailer can make your work stand out. It acts as a promotional tool that sparks curiosity and differentiates your book from others. When potential readers stumble upon your book trailer, they get a glimpse of the story, genre, and tone, helping them determine if it aligns with their interests.
- Building Author’s Brand
Book trailers can contribute to your overall author brand and online presence. By consistently creating visually appealing and engaging book trailers, you establish a recognizable style and aesthetic that becomes associated with your work. This bran Examples of Good Book Trailers
5 Suggestions to Create A Good Book Trailer
When creating a book trailer, it's essential to pay attention to certain key elements that can make a significant difference in its effectiveness. By following these suggestions, you can craft a book trailer that leaves a lasting impression and entices viewers to explore your book further.
- Keep it Concise
Aim for a trailer duration of 1-2 minutes to maintain viewer engagement. Focus on highlighting the most captivating and essential elements of your book without revealing too much.
- Focus on Emotion
Tap into the emotional core of your story. Craft visuals, music, and text that evoke the intended emotions—whether it's excitement, suspense, romance, or intrigue. The emotional connection can leave a lasting impact on viewers.
- Showcase Key Elements
Select snippets from your book that showcase intriguing characters, key plot twists, or significant moments. Highlight the unique aspects of your story that make it compelling and worth exploring.
- Use Compelling Visuals
Incorporate high-quality images, animations, or video clips that align with your book's genre and theme. Visuals should be captivating, eye-catching, and relevant to the story you're telling.
- Match the Music
Choose background music that complements the mood, tone, and pacing of your book. The music should enhance the visuals and create an immersive experience for viewers. Ensure the music's tempo and style align with the emotions and atmosphere you want to convey.
Also, try layering the audio. Inserting certain audio elements, like the sound of a pounding heart over the dramatic symphonic backtrack, will add additional suspense, for example.
By implementing these suggestions, you can create a book trailer that effectively captures the essence of your story, engages viewers, and entices them to explore your book further.
Examples of good book trailers
To illustrate the impact of effective book trailers, let's dive into a few examples:
THE SCATTERING by Kimberly McCreight
This is an excellent example of a low input/maximum output video. The making of this video took minimal time, but it elicits strong emotions from the viewer right from the start. Pay attention to the audio, especially.
Later in this article, we will explain where you can get videos and audio so that you can make a similar book trailer.
BETWEEN US by Mari Suggs
Again, super simple and short, but keeps the viewer watching until the end. Did you notice the difference in colors between the last two videos? The first one was dark and gritty, perfect for the suspense genre, while this one uses soft pastel colors. Also, pay attention again to the music and how uplifting it is.
The look and feel of the video must match your genre. If not, you will be creating false expectations, which will essentially lead to bad reviews.
THE CURSEBREAKER SERIES by Brigid Kemmerer
There isn’t a lot going on in the video, but again the music helped to elicit emotions. What we do need to focus on is the effective use of reviews they display. This not only elicits curiosity but testimonials like these also build credibility, which would help to persuade the viewer to buy the book.
By studying these examples and others that align with your genre and style, you can gain inspiration for creating a book trailer that effectively represents your own unique story that can help attract loyal readers and build anticipation for future releases.
How can I make a book trailer for free?
Creating a book trailer doesn't have to break the bank, and the Kimberly McCreight video serves as an excellent example to support this claim. Here are some tips to make a book trailer for free:
- Online Video Editing Platforms:
Platforms like Biteable, and iMovie offer free or low-cost video editing tools with pre-designed templates specifically tailored for creating book trailers. These user-friendly platforms allow you to drag and drop your visuals, add text, music, and customize transitions to create a professional-looking trailer.
You don’t need to be an expert video editor. Most of these online video makers are very intuitive and you’ll get the hang of it in no time.
- Royalty-Free Images and Videos
Websites like Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay provide access to a vast library of high-quality, royalty-free images and videos that you can incorporate into your book trailer. Choose visuals that align with your book's theme, characters, or settings to enhance the visual storytelling.
- Free Music Libraries
Background music can greatly enhance the mood and atmosphere of your book trailer. Explore free music libraries like Envato, or SoundCloud's royalty-free section to find suitable tracks that complement the tone of your book.
- DIY Voiceovers
If you're comfortable with recording your voice, you can create a personalized voiceover for your book trailer. Use a free audio recording software like Audacity or your smartphone's voice recording app to capture clear and engaging narration that captures the essence of your story.
- AI tools
The machines are rising, but at least for now, they are very helpful when it comes to creating creative content. AI tools such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Leonardo AI are all becoming very popular tools to use to generate original content for free. That means that you won’t need to purchase stock videos or images to create your content.
Unfortunately, we won’t elaborate on how to use these tools in this article, but a simple YouTube search on how to use them would instantly provide you with 1000s of tutorial videos.
Check out this AI-generated video trailer created by a fan for The Great Catsby…
Remember, while these methods allow you to create a book trailer for free, it's important to invest time and effort into crafting a compelling narrative and ensuring the audio-visual elements align with your book's themes and genre.
Where should I publish my book trailer?
Once you've created your book trailer, it's essential to choose the right platforms to maximize its visibility. Make sure that you choose the platform that is popular amongst your target audience. For instance, YA would be perfect for TikTok, while political fiction would probably do better on Facebook or LinkedIn, which has older audiences.
- YouTube
As the largest video-sharing platform, YouTube offers immense reach and discoverability. Create a dedicated channel for your book and upload your trailer, optimizing the video title, description, and tags with relevant keywords such as your book's title and genre. Promote your YouTube channel on your website, social media profiles, and author bio to drive traffic and engagement.
- Author's Website or Blog
Embedding the book trailer directly on your website or blog ensures that visitors have immediate access to it. Create a dedicated page for your book, including a synopsis, purchase links, and the embedded book trailer. This approach provides a seamless user experience and encourages visitors to engage further with your work.
- Social Media Platforms
Leverage the power of social media to reach potential readers. Share your book trailer on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, tailoring each post to the platform's specific format and audience. Utilize relevant hashtags, engage with your followers, and encourage them to share your book trailer to expand its reach organically.
Remember to keep your videos short. As you know, the general population’s attention span has been nosediving for many years now. Anything above 1 minute for a book trailer, and you risk the chance of people jumping ship before the video is over.
- Book Review Websites
Some book review websites allow authors to showcase their book trailers alongside reviews or featured book listings. Research popular book review websites within your genre and submit your book trailer for consideration. If accepted, it can serve as an additional promotional tool alongside book reviews or interviews.
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Conclusion
In conclusion, creating your own book trailer can be an exciting and rewarding endeavor. By following the suggestions outlined in this article and tapping into your creativity, you have the power to craft a compelling visual representation of your book. Don't be afraid to take on the challenge and dive into the world of book trailer creation.
REMEMBER: A book trailer is an add-on and should not be the focus of your book marketing strategy. To learn more about the core proven strategies you need to master to give your book the best chance of success, schedule a discovery call, and let’s talk about how you can become a best-selling author.
