Book Trailer, 101

Book trailers are fast becoming the next hot commodity for emarketing books. Like movie trailers, they provide prospective readers a glimpse of your book and even offer wonderful and free venues to air them. Namely, YouTube(www.youtube.com) and Preview The Book(www.previewthebook.com) as well as placing them on your blogs and websites.

But, I don't know the first thing about creating a book trailer, you admit rather dejectedly.

I didn't know anything either about the process, but I've found ways around my lack of computer saavy. Here's how I created my book trailer which you can view below on the 'Introduction' post of this blog.

I had absolutely no experience on the subject until about a year ago when I wanted to revive a crime suspense novel I'd released, December, 2006 under another pen name, that had not gotten much PR. One, it was my first published novel, and two, I was greener than Spring grass:)

I fell upon a peer author who created and produced trailers and was gracious enough to work with me on mine for a nominal--and I must add--a reasonable fee. She tutored me on the ins and outs and worked me through the below steps. All of which helped me when it came to my current release, Curse of the Marhime.

1. Consider carefully the theme and mood of your book.

2. Go to stock photo sites and peruse photos that would work to describe your story and even represent your characters. The stock photos sites I use are http://www1.istockphoto.com and http://dreamstime.com/. These sites do charge as little as $1 per photo but are royalty free. Membership is free and it's easy to register. There are free stock photo sites out there, but I prefer the knowledge that I have definite rights to the photos.

3. Go to stock music sites and choose music you feel would work with the mood and theme as well. This is more grueling than searching pictures but well worth the work it entails to pull the perfect music for you trailer. I use www.sounddogs.com. Again there are free music downloading sites but I choose to be sure of my rights.

4. Now you've selected photos and music, you'll need to write a script. Curse of the Marhime runs two minutes so my script had to reflect this. You can begin with a one minute trailer, as well. A word of advise, I would not go over the two minute mark because they tend to become boring and readers may lose interest. I actually wrote more than necessary but my producer(Allie Boniface) took the script tags that worked best with the photos. I created my script and pictures around the events as they unfold within the book, so it was easy to write. Sort of like outlining the story.

5. Production. This step is lost to me so I turned it all over to my producer. She put the trailer together and then sent me a preview. Curse of the Marhime trailer was perfect on the first viewing and needed no revision process!

I am thrilled with its outcome and am confident that it will entice readers to rush out and purchase my book.

6. Get that trailer out there! Prior to having your release date, you can load the trailer on YouTube and, of course, your own blog/website to get exposure. Once your have a release date, you will want to load it on Preview the Book a very popular site for readers to check out upcoming book releases. And all are free! What could be better? Your publisher will probably have a venue of exposure for you trailer as well, so don't forget to ask.

I hope this information is helpful and I would like to take a moment to direct you to a very talented woman and author, Allie Boniface, if you would like help creating your book trailer. She will work with you or do it all. Fees depend on the level of work and research she does on each project. Please see contact information below:

http://www.allieboniface.com

To sample Allie's work, please visit her YouTube page:

http://youtube.com/user/AllieB1970

Thanks, as always, for dropping by.

Next discussion: The importance of copyrighting your work. Hints and information on how and why you should do it.