Make a Book Trailer

That Helps You Sell More Books

From

BookMarketingTools.com

This is a guest post from Rocco Rivetti of Red 14 Films.

He explores the current landscape of book trailers and

how many authors think that by paying a few dollars

to have one made, it will somehow help you sell more

books. A book trailer, even an amazing cinematic book

trailer like Rocco discusses below, isn’t going to

magically help you sell more books. A book trailer can

help you to reach potential readers in another outlet,

in a way that is appealing to viewers making them

want to buy more, and that is what will help you to sell more books.

Book Trailers

So you’ve been hearing the term book trailer a lot

lately, but you’re not quite sure why. Checking out the

average book trailer on Youtube doesn’t help much as

most book trailers tend to look like something a fifth

grader threw together as a part of their book report.

(No offense to fifth graders). How are these things supposed to help you sell more books again?

Video has long been proclaimed the king of the web,

drawing in and holding the attention of more unique

viewers than any other media format. Book trailers

emerged in tandem with the rise in accessibility of web

video sites like Youtube and Vimeo. The huge success

of music videos for the music industry, both on MTV

and then online, demonstrated that video could

become a powerful tool in unexpected industries. As

the publishing industry started to make the transition

to the web, authors and publishers started to embrace

short video as a part of their digital book marketing arsenal.

Initially, book trailers were made not by filmmakers as

you’d expect, but by someone the author knew who

was handy with computers, and they were constricted

by the quality standards of the time. These restrictions

in quality prompted a reliance on static stock images,

canned music, and factory setting text/editing effects

that regrettably became the standard for the form.

Instead of following the music video model and

entertaining viewers with well produced content in the

style of a short film, initial book trailers did the

absolute minimum possible to still fall under the definition of video.

These types of trailers are still made today for

anywhere between $10 to $2,000 with little noticeable

difference in the final product. So if you’re dead set on

one of these book trailers, make sure to shop around, but be warned that they don’t work.

Why don’t they work? Because it’s painfully obvious to

potential readers that very little time was put into the

making of this type of trailer. Why would a complete

stranger on the internet spend their time watching

something that even the author didn’t think merited

the time to make right? As technology has advanced

in the past few years, the capability for streaming high

quality videos online has risen, and the cost of

producing cinematic quality content has decreased

dramatically. It’s now possible to create better looking

web videos on an Indie budget, and because of this

Internet users have come to expect a certain level of production value when watching a video.

Cinematic Book Trailers

A few years ago, a new form of book trailer emerged,

known as the cinematic book trailer. Created as a

direct response to the ineffective slideshow book

trailers, cinematic book trailers are web videos made

for books using original, cinematic quality footage shot

exclusively for the book. Nowadays, almost every book

trailer that gets any sort of press coverage, becomes

a viral video, or both, is what we would call a cinematic

book trailer. There are more cinematic book trailers

being produced monthly now than ever before, and

they’re very quickly outperforming their predecessors,

that are still roaming in rarely frequented pockets of

the web like technological dinosaurs.

Cinematic book trailers operate under the rule of

successful new media marketing. Unlike earlier book

trailers, they are not direct ads. People have gotten

really good at closing out of popup windows and

ignoring anything that even remotely hints at the kind

of spammy advertising you see on TV and in print. Why

should a potential reader give a book they’ve never

heard about a precious ninety seconds of their day?

How often do you see people on your own social media

feed sharing videos with no actual video content?

Cinematic book trailers are designed to entertain first,

and create awareness about the book second. It may

seem simple, but you’d be surprised how much more of a positive result these kinds of book trailers create.

Every single day people release countless amounts of

good quality, advertisement free content online, with

every video clamoring for attention. Viewers aren’t

going to stick around for more than ten seconds if it

seems like they’re going to have to sit through a pitch

for a book they’ve never heard of, they’d much prefer

to watch the video of a cat playing Jenga as they scroll

down their social media feed. Your book might be the

best thing since sliced bread, but that’s not going to translate through sliding still images.

Do cinematic book trailers work?

Cinematic book trailers work so well because they

capture the tone of the book they’re trying to convey,

allowing potential readers to quickly and effectively

grasp the feel of the novel while barely giving away

any of the plot. Cinematic book trailers take what’s

already working so well in the book, and put it onto a

computer screen in an incredibly accessible web

medium. Lately, publishing giants

like Penguin and HarperCollins have made dramatic

increases in both the amounts of cinematic book

trailers they produce, and the budget of each

individual trailer. High quality book trailers are being

implemented everywhere, with particular success in

the YA genre, where the vast majority of readers don’t remember a time before Youtube.

Another great thing about video is that it can really

broaden your outreach. A good cinematic book trailer

is the type of thing that potential readers will want to

share with their friends, literary websites will want to

write articles on, and brands the author as a

professional with a multimedia digital marketing

campaign, a force to be reckoned with. An

appropriately tagged cinematic book trailer uploaded

to a site like Youtube or Vimeo will show up on every

major search engine when readers search for the

book’s title. That’s an additional badge of legitimacy

that will assure a reader still doing their research

because they’re on the fence about purchasing your

book. Unlike paying for an online service like Google

Ads, cinematic book trailers have a lifespan as long as

a the book is being talked about, searched for, or

remembered, and you don’t have to pay per click.

Even in their humble origins, book trailers were seen

as an effective and vital part of a digital marketing

package for any book. It’s only now that, due to an

increase in quality and effort, book trailers are actually

getting through to potential readers, and authors are

starting to reap the rewards. If a potential reader is

entertained enough to watch a full ninety second

cinematic book trailer (always remember that on the

web, shorter is better), that’s a full ninety seconds that

they’ve lingered on your title, and the next time they

hear about your book, you can be sure that they’ll remember the your name.

Wrap Up

When implemented correctly, along with a complete

marketing campaign, cinematic book trailers can be a

slam dunk, causing complete strangers to seriously

consider your book. Just make sure to incorporate the

trailer into all facets of the campaign. Put the book

trailer up on the novel’s homepage, request that the

trailer be included in any author interviews or articles

written about the book, hold a viewing party, tweet

regularly, the possibilities for getting the thing seen

are endless. A cinematic book trailer is a powerful tool,

it can spark curiosity out of thin air, and in a minute

and a half turn a complete stranger into a potential

customer. Once authors see it happen, they tend to want one for themselves.

Rocco Rivetti is an Associate Producer at Red 14 Films,

a cinematic book trailer production company founded

in Los Angeles, California in the year 2011. He has

produced cinematic book trailers for all kinds of clients,

from large publishing houses like Penguin to self

publishers. R14 cinematic book trailers have appeared

on websites such as Entertainment Weekly, USA

Today, The Rumpus, Hypable, The Millions, Huffington Post, and BookRiot.