Free book trailers

[Karen Dionne]

If you're in the market for a quick and dirty book trailer, here's a website that let's you create 30-second videos for free. Here's mine.

http://animoto.com/play/bZWk1D1K9ELIpgiB0k0zdQ

The best part is, this only took about 10 minutes to make. You just choose a template and music, plug in your text and images, and the website adds all the fancy special effects. Have fun!

Karen

[I. J. Parker]

Interesting.  Thanks for sharing.  Just what do you do with a trailer once you have it?

[Karen Dionne]

I'm not a big fan of book trailers as promo, which is why I think this free site is cool - zero investment for (possibly) zero return.

That said, a book trailer does offer the author one more reason to talk up their book on Twitter and Facebook and other social media. ("Hey, guys! Check out my new trailer!") And making it was fun. ;)

[I. J. Parker]

Yes.  I see that.  I just checked it out.  You need to gather your own images (or take pictures) and find the music.  It's what I did for my web site.  Still, in my case the images and the music took a very long time to gather.  But the system sounds great.

[Karen Dionne]

Yeah, I already had the pictures from my research trip to the volcano. The music, however, is supplied by the website - they've got dozens and dozens of clips grouped by category - classical, country, rock. You can preview them as you're building the video until you find something you like, and of course then you don't have to worry about copyright issues. (Something authors need to be VERY careful about regarding pictures - I got called on that for unknowingly using a Getty image on a previous iteration of my website, and it cost me hundreds of dollars. NOT fun.)

[I. J. Parker]

Ouch!  Most of my images have been out of copyright.  But I just used an image that was unidentified and I couldn't find a source for it. I think it came from an old Japanese film.  Crossing fingers it's ok.

[Benjamin Sobieck]

Who knows. A really cool one that goes viral can be helpful. But most just sit there.

[Stacy]

A lot of trailers don't go viral or catch on because people don't promote them. They just make them and stick them on Youtube and expect that to do something.

 You gotta promote them and put as much time into it as the book. You post your trailer on as many sites as you can which includes video sites and book sites. You post it to your Goodreads sites, Facebook fan page website and blog. There are a lot of sites where you can post them.

And of course you post and share (periodically) with your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.

You want as many people to see it which means you put it in as many places as possible. Also be creative with promoting it. Put the trailer in your signature if you can and don't forget to put it on your Amazon Author Page.

Wherever you've left a footprint on the net or wherever you have a profile, that's where your trailer should be. Treat it like you would the cover of your book. We put those everywhere don't we? LOL!

Also have a decent trailer. It might not be brilliant but some trailers are horrible! Some people don't know how to convey the point of their books properly and a lot of trailers look cheap and  deter you from wanting to read the book instead of encouraging you.

Does this mean it will guarantee book sales? Of course not. But what do we do as authors that's ever a guarantee of sales? So to me it's just as effective as reviews or guest posts. Nothing is guaranteed to work but book trailers are fun to make.

[Grant McKenzie]

Very nice, Karen - thanks :) Love your trailer, too, by the way - cool, or should that be Hot ;)

[Karen Dionne]

Thanks, Grant! "Hot" works for me!  (Good thing I didn't write a book called, "Lukewarm Point"!)

[Karen Dionne]

Here's the cold one - not as cool/hot as Boiling Point's because it doesn't have as many pictures, but it's still fun!

http://animoto.com/play/54LGBKhVaLEPyfsW71ffOg

[Stacy]

I just do book trailers because to me they're fun. I don't think there is any one thing you do that sells books but I just like creating book trailers. I figure anything for your book couldn't hurt right? Even if it doesn't bring in sales, a trailer does bring in exposure because there are many sites that you can post the trailer on.

Some people go all out and have people acting out scenes of their books, etc. I wouldn't do all that. I just make a nice trailer in Windows Movie Maker. I don't spend money to do it but they still look nice.

One lady's trailer was pretty popular. She'd self-published a book and got thousands of views on her trailer. Of course it takes hard work to get that many views but who knows if it will catch on?

Like I said, couldn't hurt if you find it fun.

[William Manchee]

Thanks for the info. That's a great resource.