WHAT IS A BOOK TRAILER?
MAKING AN EYE-CATCHING BOOK PROMOTIONAL VIDEO
Book trailers are great marketing tools to help you promote your book. You have most likely seen them on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. A lot of book trailers that you see are not professionally made and use photos from another site like Pinterest. While those DO work to keep readers engaged on your social media, they aren’t as effective at making book sales as a professionally made book trailer.
Keep reading to see
- What book trailers are used for
- Statistics
- How NOT to make a book trailer
- How to make a high-quality book trailer
- Recording with your phone
… and more!
What are Book Trailers Used For?
Book trailers are short videos that authors and publishers create to market soon-to-be-published, or already-published, books.
They are used to create hype for your book. Have you ever seen or created an Instagram reel or TikTok video to promote your book? If you said yes, then you have made a book trailer.
Now, there is a big difference between a reel or TikTok and a professionally edited book trailer. The options available on social media platforms are extremely limited. You have probably seen videos where the author got photos from Google or Pinterest and edited them together to the beat of a trending sound. Those types of videos are really easy to create, and can be visually appealing, but…
Well, they just aren’t professional and they are usually really bad quality. Every time you download, upload, or screenshot a picture from the internet, a little bit of quality is lost, so that by the time you post your video, many of the pictures look blurry, or “pixilated”.
Creating a book trailer with an Instagram Reel or TikTok is easy for all users, which means that you can create and post one every single day. Those types of videos are used so that your page stays active and the social media algorithms will boost your account.
Professionally filmed and edited book trailers are used for book launches (for the most part). Book launches can last anywhere from a week to two months, and the goal is to hype up the book as much as possible and even make some pre-sales. Professional book trailers shouldn’t just be a regular reel on your Instagram page. It should be blasted on ALL socials. You should also create an ad to reach a wider audience with the professional book trailer.
STATISTICS YOU CAN'T IGNORE
PROMOTIONAL VIDEOS INCREASE THE SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT FOR YOUR BOOK
Let’s face the fact, people are more likely to interact with you and your content if you have good videos. Why do you think TikTok influencers are so famous? They don’t make slideshows of pictures, they take the time to make HIGH-QUALITY videos. So why aren’t you doing the same thing?
WHAT DOES COMSCORE HAVE TO SAY?
- On average, visitors will spend an extra 2 full minutes searching through your author’s website if you have videos.
- Want to increase your book sales by 64%? You can do that with a book trailer!
STATS FROM UNBOUNCE:
- A book trailer on your website’s landing page can lead to an 80% conversion rate.
FORRESTER RESEARCH HAS THE FACTS:
- You are 53x more likely to get land at the top of Google search results when you have a video on your website
- Do you run an email campaign to promote your book? You can increase the open click rate from 19% to 300% with something as simple as a teaser trailer!
BRIGHTCOVE:
- See a 157% increase in organic traffic with a book promotional video!
HOW NOT TO MAKE A BOOK TRAILER
Let’s talk about the easy-to-make videos on Instagram and TikTok. The majority of authors will make their own trailer using a slideshow of images that they downloaded from Pinterest. That can be problematic for a few reasons:
1- Credit is not being given to the person who took or made the photo. If you are making a slideshow, then you most likely have 20+ photos. Are you taking the time to research WHO took each photo that you are using and mentioning all 20+ in your comment section? No, probably not.
2- You run the risk of using the SAME photos that a ton of other authors have used for their book trailers. Let’s say that your book is a paranormal mafia romance with vampires and werewolves at an elite boarding school. The images that you get from Pinterest will be the same images that many other books with similar genres and troupes use. There is no originality there.
3- And to make matters worse, you are probably syncing all of those overused photos to the same trending sound that hundreds of people have already used too.
4- The QUALITY of your video diminishes because you likely did not properly download the photos. Every time you download and upload a picture incorrectly, a little bit of the quality is lost, so a chunk of your video will look pixilated, which doesn’t look good.
MAKE YOUR OWN HIGH-QUALITY VIDEO
If you want to create your own high-quality book trailer, there are a few ways that you can do it. Some are easy and don’t require a ton of technical knowledge, and some are a little more difficult.
Let’s take a look at a few of the most popular ways to create your own book trailer, in order of easiest to hardest.
HOW TO MAKE A GOOD, HIGH-QUALITY BOOK TRAILER
Canva, Prezi, and Adobe Premiere are my three favorite platforms to create book promotional videos. But there are a ton of other apps that you can use. If you are making your own video, you should definitely try out a few different options to find what works best for you.
In the meantime, here are my top three choices:
CANVA
Canva is the easiest platform to use. It is very user-friendly and comes with plenty of step-by-step instructions as you learn how to use it. You can also have the app on your phone, so you can create your book trailer from anywhere in the world, even if you do not have a laptop.
You may want a graphic or two in your trailer. Canva is most known for graphic creations, so it is easy for you to make your image and then add it to a video. The Pro version even has mockups of books, so you can input your cover onto a picture of a book. It’s just so convenient!
Your book promotional video will need music, and Canva offers plenty of samples for you to choose from. One downside is that they are not the best songs… and because there are only a few really great ones, there is a high possibility that other authors use the same sound in their own book trailers.
Canva is easy to use and convenient, especially for beginners, but the features are limited and you might accidentally make a book trailer that has a lot of similarities to other videos.
PREZI
Prezi is a fun presentation platform. It’s intended to be a cooler alternative to PowerPoint but it can be a great and original book trailer maker. Like Canva, you are able to create your own graphics, but it is very limited. It is also easy to upload your own content and move pictures and videos around to fit your creative concept.
Prezi’s slideshow effects are significantly more diverse than Canva. You are able put your slides in any order and transition between them in a ton of interesting ways.
DOWNSIDES OF PREZI
One of the downsides to Prezi is how limited the graphic design options are. I highly recommend filming your own content or creating your own graphics in another app and uploading it to Prezi.
Although anyone can make a book trailer in Prezi, this type of video format would look a lot better for non-fiction books. For example, a biography, history, and How To Garden story would be ideal with Prezi. The presentation effects have a cleaner and more educational feel than the other, more complicated, platforms.
One great thing about Prezi is that it is very user-friendly. They have step-by-step guidance for beginners and you can easily duplicate projects to make many multiple book trailers that all look slightly different.
ADOBE PREMIERE PRO
Adobe Premiere Pro is an application in the Adobe Suite that allows you to edit videos. This is probably the BEST platform that you can use for all of your book-creating needs. With a subscription to the full Adobe Suite, you will have access to apps that let you format your book, create the cover photo, edit book trailers, make your own music… and so much more. Adobe is the #1 platform for video editors, graphic designers, and other digital creators. It is also the hardest to learn.
If you have the time to learn this software, then you can essentially create and publish your book from start to finish with the Adobe applications.
However, you should know now that Adobe Premiere Pro is not good for beginners. It takes a lot of hours of practice and watching YouTube videos to learn how to do even simple things. People literally go to college and take full courses to learn how to use it. So, if you have the time, go for it, otherwise, you should stick to one of the easier platforms or hire someone (like me) to make the trailer for you.
More about Adobe Premier Pro:
This is the best platform for video editing because of the sheer amount of options that are available. It is also why this is the hardest platform to use. There are so many buttons and settings that even experienced editors will get overwhelmed, so new users look at it and see a complex system with words that might as well be in another language. If you know how to use Adobe Premiere Pro, or at least understand all of the basics, then the hundreds of settings and options will be beneficial to your book trailer editing process.
With this application, you are able to import any type of media and create fun and dynamic transitions, play with sound levels, and even mix multiple soundtracks. You can do some simple color-correcting, or easily use one of the other Adobe applications to change the colors of pictures and videos. Adding text is actually pretty easy, and there are a wide variety of fonts, colors, textures, and effects that you can use. The possibilities are endless if you are creative and understand the system.
VIDEO Recording WITH YOUR PHONE
You are able to add your own video recordings to any of the editing options listed above. The best book trailers don’t have many pictures, rather, they rely more on video clips that are edited together. You can of course do a slideshow of photos, but it usually comes across as very amateur and simple. Having videos will make your book trailer more dynamic, interesting, and original.
You don’t even need a professional camera to get started. With a decent quality phone camera, you can record and color correct your videos on your phone, then upload them to whatever video editing application works best for you.
So, What is a Book Trailer?
A book trailer can be called many things – promotional video and teaser trailer are the most common. They typically run between 30 seconds to 1:30 (one minute and 30 seconds).
The shorter videos tend to be quick blurbs that highlight the main tropes, with a quote and image of the book cover. Those can easily be done on Canva, since they do not have a ton of information. Check out the YouTube video link below for examples of book trailers that I created for indie authors. They both give you a little teaser of what the book is about and contain pictures and videos to support that information. The final image is of the book and where you can buy it. The goal of a short promo video is to tease audience members enough that they become curious and look up more information on their own.
Longer videos are often more detailed and portray hired actors. Since the person creating your book trailer and the actors don’t normally read your book before filming, it is very important that you plan a strategy and create a shot list that will accurately encompass your story. These longer videos can have quotes from the book, short reviews telling viewers how great the book is, and maybe even a quick shot of you telling viewers where they can buy the book. Longer videos allow you more room for creativity, but if you are hiring someone to make it for you, it can get very expensive.
POSTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA
When you publish a book trailer on social media, make sure you add the book’s summary, or a blurb, as well as a link to where viewers can buy the book. It can be very frustrating for book lovers to see an amazing trailer and not have an easy way to find and buy the book.
Also, make sure you credit the person or company that created the trailer for you. They worked hard on it and tagging or mentioning them will help them get new clients.
WANT ME TO MAKE YOUR BOOK TRAILER FOR YOU?
I LOVE video editing, so when I began working with indie authors, I was excited to create book trailers for their newly published books. Depending on your needs, and budget, I will use any of the platforms that I listed above to make the right promotional video for you.
Before you start to think “I can’t afford this”, don’t worry, my services are VERY affordable. I do not charge an exorbitant amount because my goal is to help you sell more books and become a full-time author.
I offer three time frames for your video – 30 seconds, 45 seconds, and 60 seconds.
Send me an email if you need help with your book promo videos. I will give you all of the details and a FREE consultation to get you on the right path to selling more books!
BOOK TRAILER EXAMPLES
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