Putting Together a Book Trailer

Promoting a published book can be as time-consuming and challenging as writing the book. It’s also a catch-22 situation since unknown authors could use the money from book sales to do promotion, but without promotion, sales suffer. Internet promotion is free when tweeting or blogging, but many other forms of promotion come with a cost. One form of promotion that is on the rise is book trailers. With videos constantly played on smartphones and tablets, a book trailer has the potential to reach the masses—especially if it’s done well.

If your book is a picture book, you already have material to put into your trailer—the illustrations. Otherwise, you’re starting from scratch. That’s how I started: no material and no clue. I read blogs about making book trailers and used that information to do my own research. My first trailer for Pirates Off the Deep End took longer to put together than my second, The Zombie Next Door. So don’t get discouraged, it does get easier, especially if you plan on shooting your own video, and you aren’t familiar with or have never used video editing software. Take a look at my trailers. If you like what you see, stop back at my blog, and I’ll tell you what I used to put them together. I also plan on making more trailers and will post steps of the process here.