Book Trailers
Ten years ago I attended a writers conference featuring several seminars on publicizing your novel. One energetic speaker spoke of the use of book trailers to get your work the publicity needed to generate sales. The product she proposed was the equivalent of movie trailers that peeked the readers interest. She showed several examples of trailers currently playing on Youtube and other social media platforms. As a former video producer, I was not that impressed by her products and in my humble opinion could do better.
Making It On My Own
On my drive home I mulled the possibility of creating a trailer for my self-published book, Slogans: Our Children, Our Future. I decided on the POV of my main character looking back on the
traumatic events leading up to Slogans. The next day I went to my now seldom used studio, collected appropriate video and still photos relating to the period of novel, found dramatic music I had the rights to, recorded the narration and in a couple of hours cobbled together a two minute video trailer.
Slogans: Our Children, Our Future
Impressed by my effort, I rushed the final product out to Youtube and Facebook and waited for the Slogans orders to pour as a result of this gem:
The Results
After waiting a few anxious hours, I began logging on to my site every few hours and following the number of views of my trailer generated - not many, and my sales - none. The trailer was obviously not an immediate panacea.
So was it worth it? In my case, yes. It cost me nothing, was fun to create, gave me a new experience and, perhaps, even resulted in a sale or two over the next decade. Would I recommend using a trailer? Yes, with reservation. If you can make it yourself, go for it. Otherwise sign on to Fiverr.com and hire someone in Southeast Asia to create a boilerplate video for you at a respectable price. If someone calls and offers to make a Hollywood version of your novel for several hundred dollars, back off if you write for profit. Otherwise, hey, go for it.
