No doubt about it, book trailers can be effective, engaging ways to attract new readers.

Sadly, though, most languish without more than 100 viewings.

Think about the youtube videos you enjoy. Someone TOLD you about the video, sent you a link and you watched it. If you liked it, you sent it along to more people in your email circle. This is viral (it spreads like a virus).

Several of us laughed when we watched the video of the office workers destroying their computers set to the music of Daniel Powter in Bad Day. (3.7 million hits)

Daniel Powter’s real video, Bad Day, is really good too (1.2 million hits).

Why?

It garnered our attention with ACTION and however brief, told a story.

Does your book trailer tell a story? Any story? Or is it just a gathering of pictures, blurbs, and music? Has your video been uploaded to YouTube? How many views has it had?

If it hasn’t had many, I suggest rethinking the video trailer. It should be similar to a trailer you’d see to engage the viewers interest for a movie like The Dark Knight, or Ironman, or another popular movie. Think ACTION. They don’t flash a lot of words up on the screen.

Take a look at this video done for the character of Felix Gomez, a contemporary vampire who lives in Denver. Felix is first introduced to readers in Mario Acevedo’s novel, The Nymphos of Rocky Flats. For those of you familiar with Denver, Rocky Flats was an area of town known for playing with some not very nice, highly reactive elements like plutonium. This video was done with Lego people and you’ll notice there isn’t a whole lot of printed verbiage until the very end when you find out about Mario’s three books. At this time, this particular video has had more than 2300 hits. While that isn’t high compared to some, Mario’s trailer has done extremely well among book trailers.

The best trailers are not a bunch of stills and covers put together but rather mini-films.

It is possible to take a still photograph and make it feel like it is in action. Remember Captain Kangaroo? Remember the stories that were read on the program? The camera would zoom in on an area of the picture book and pan to different parts of the picture to show movement. This is done on a current children’s book trailer called “How to Save Your Tail“. Even this very simple video has had more than 1,000 hits.

Note how the different parts of the cover are used to convey movement and unity. When the art changes to the black and white drawings, there is a continuity. There is also unity with the voice overs, something a lot of book trailers are missing.

Book trailers shouldn’t be much over 3 minutes. Most people don’t have a lot of patience for watching much longer. Commercial length is good (30-45 seconds) unless you can really create a fun and compelling video. I’ve watch the lego squad several times because it’s humorous and entertaining. Many people will watch a music video over and again for the same reason…the video engages them along with the music.

Given how ebooks writers are better tied in to the internet community at large, think of the viral spread you can get telling about a fun video via the loops, blogs, and your web site.

Always, always, always, include links. These can be embedded so that a person can just click on a phrase and be taken to the book or the trailer you want them to see.

There are authors here, far more experienced than I, at using the various computer programs that allow for making movies on your computer. Consider that many cell phones have a video recording device installed. You may find the right spot to “film” a few potential scenes of your story. A lot of people are hams and would have fun reenacting certain parts of your stories. Maybe you could have a filming day.

Don’t know any hams? Try the local community college. The have a visual arts department where wanna-be-filmakers are itching to practice. Many communities actually have schools that teach filmography. See if one of the students there would be interested in “practicing” using your story. They might use it as a class project and you get a book trailer out of the deal.

Most of all, be creative in how you approach your trailer, how you think about accomplishing the trailer, how you get the word out. Maybe you’ll end up having a video as popular as the opera singer on Britain Has Talent. Paul Potts has had his video viewed over 27 million times!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 3:34 am and is filed under Tips and Tricks, Marketing and Publicity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.