Book Trailers

[Robinne Weiss]

I needed to do something fun today, after a full day of tearing my hair out yesterday (long boring story), so I made a book trailer for my newest release, Fatecarver. Had a blast doing it, though I wasn't overly happy with the video creation site I used (you can check out the results here). Granted, it was free, and you get what you pay for, of course. But controls were quite limited, compared with what I'm used to with iMovie (which I couldn't use because my version of it no longer works with my computer since it was upgraded by a F***ing technician without my consent).

Has anyone else made a book trailer? What software/service did you use? I'd love to see your trailers and hear what you thought of the software. I quite enjoyed making my trailer, and if nothing else it was a great way of procrastinating on writing the next book. LOL!

 

[RK Wallis]

Considering your restrictions, great job

 

[AgentPete]

Very mixed feelings about book trailers (but congrats on yours ). One of the best uses, I think, is to get readers to make their own for your book, i.e. to give them some tools, and see what they can do...

 

[MonoZero]

I needed to do something fun today, after a full day of tearing my hair out yesterday (long boring story), so I made a book trailer for my newest release, Fatecarver. Had a blast doing it, though I wasn't overly happy with the video creation site I used (you can check out the results here). Granted, it was free, and you get what you pay for, of course. But controls were quite limited, compared with what I'm used to with iMovie (which I couldn't use because my version of it no longer works with my computer since it was upgraded by a F***ing technician without my consent).

Has anyone else made a book trailer? What software/service did you use? I'd love to see your trailers and hear what you thought of the software. I quite enjoyed making my trailer, and if nothing else it was a great way of procrastinating on writing the next book. LOL!

Hello! First post here, so not sure what the etiquette is around sharing book trailers, but I use Photoshop, After Effects and Adobe Premiere. There's quite a learning curve to all of these, but the results can be up to animation standard, or something simple.

There are lots of templates on stock sites, too - so even if you're not that technically minded, you can still get professional results with minimal efforts. If you buy services on fiverr, 90% of the time they'll just be dropping images into a commercially available template!

 

[James Marinero]

Well done on you @Robinne Weiss . I've made a few for fun mainly, but I hope getting better book by book. I find it an immersive process.

Just working on another this week for Blockchain Exploit - out 15 Sept. Thanks to all for the title help BTW.

Now I've finally moved to Linux I've had to learn some new tools. If anyone is interested I'm using GIMP, Kedenlive, Audacity (all free), footage from pond5, free images from unsplash, pixabay, music from freemusicpublicdomain.com . It all helps keep my brain engaged, a change from writing.

@AgentPete I just see them as part of the marketing mix, but I recall that one of yours for Michelle Paver won an award?

You never know what will stick. So far mine are all teflon coated.

'50% of my marketing budget is wasted. The problem is I don't know which 50%'.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

As detailed elsewhere, I paid to have promotional videos for the first two stories in my Cornish Detective series. At £180 each, I was pleased with the results and am about to commission a trailer for the third book.

The thing is, just because a promo video exists doesn't mean to say that potential readers know about it. As with any aspect of self-promotion, it's essential to blow your own trumpet about it on whatever other social media profiles you have. This is repetitive and exhausting to do and one has no idea if anything you're doing is making a difference!