Create a Free Book Trailer

A book trailer is a short promotional video to help you showcase your book and reach an audience wider than your target audience. Since most people prefer to watch videos over reading text,  creating a video book trailer is one of the easiest ways to introduce your book to the world. But how can you create a free trailer or not spend too much? First, a little background.

Your Goal

A well-done book trailer should introduce readers to your book in a way that creates an emotional response. Similar to a movie or television trailer, you want to share just enough to entice viewers without giving away too much. Then, you want to leave them wanting more. Finally, you want to let them know where they can preorder or purchase your book. If you do this well, readers will want to buy the book immediately.

Look and Feel

Like most projects, proper planning will help save time and yield a better outcome. The video trailer should have a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning, just like your synopsis, should immediately capture the viewers’ attention. The middle should connect with the viewer and share key points or messages from the book, and the end should rope them in. The tone of your trailer should reflect the tone of your book. An effective book trailer should be between 60 to 90 seconds in length.

At the end of the book trailer, you should have a call to action directing viewers to purchase your book from the resellers you choose. You should direct viewers to purchase the book from a few resellers and use the icons for Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and a couple of others to include Indie Bookstores either through IndieBound.org or Bookstop.org. (Affiliate link)

Style Your Trailer

Whether you have a professional trailer made for you or do it yourself, there needs to be a focus on quality. There are book trailer companies that offer different packages ranging from $350.00 on up. But, with advancements in software and services most tech-savvy authors can create their own book trailer.

Here are 2 ways to Create a Free Book Trailer

• You can use your smartphone or camera to flip through pages from your book or assemble photos of the pages or illustrations. When you create a book trailer using mostly text and images, music is what pulls it all together and helps create the proper mood for your video. You can edit the video using your smartphone or video app that comes with your computer and add royalty-free music to create the mood.
• A casual, but heart-felt video explaining why you wrote the book will connect you with your readers. If you go this route, be aware of how you appear on camera, what you wear, how you speak, and the location that you are filming in. If you are adding music, match the music with the tone of the video. 

3rd-Party Options

There are video production tools that offer templates for creating a trailer. Some require a little more technical knowledge than others, but if you do some research, you will find something that fits your abilities. Self-service companies like Animoto and Bitable offer templates and instructions on best practices while other companies like Upwork will allow you to find and hire someone to make the trailer for you. Decide what is best for your needs, abilities, and wallet. Sometimes less is more!

Promoting your book trailer

Now that you are done with the creative side of this project promoting your book trailer comes next. You should immediately upload the video to your branded YouTube or Vimeo channel and from there embed it on your Author Website. Then you should upload it to your profile on your Amazon Author Central and Goodreads author accounts.

You should promote it on your blog and share your video through social media accounts both as an uploaded video and as a text post with the URL. You can also network with your Book Launch Team and other bloggers and experts to share your video and post it on their platforms. You can feature the trailer in your newsletter or share it in an email to your list of contacts. The more places you share your video, the more readers will learn about your book.

Note: This video can be followed up with several read-a-long videos to create more promotable content. This strategy gives readers a peek into your mind and will allow them to connect with you on a deeper level.

Something to Think About

Creating a book trailer adds another tool to your promotional tool belt. It feeds into the idea that most viewers prefer to watch a video summary for a book than read about it. It gives you another opportunity to reach out to your followers. It allows you to create a presence on YouTube where your content is searchable by title, description, and keywords along with the video itself. It allows you to showcase your creativity and make an impression with readers and possibly give a producer the idea that your book can make the jump to a movie or series.

Rick Lite of Stress Free Book Marketing, stands at the forefront of the ever-changing book industry. He is a seasoned book marketing professional with over 18 years of experience in the industry. Rick’s expertise comes from tirelessly working on new and innovative ways to market his own books and CDs with his company and parent company, Stress Free Kids. Embracing the core values of integrity, innovation, and growth, Rick works closely with authors to create custom, robust book marketing programs. His easy-going manner provides “stress-free” support and comfort to authors going through the book marketing process for the first time. Rick is quick to share his knowledge and “insider tips” for a successful marketing campaign that will lead to increased exposure, awareness, and most importantly, sales.