Saturday, January 23, 2016

Making a Book Trailer

I am blogging this for my own needs but others might find it useful as well. To quote:
Before you start to make your book trailer, here are some points to help guide you:

1. Prepare an outline of what you want to tell the viewer in the video. This could even be a detailed storyboard depicting the "action" frame by frame, or you can make your video on the fly.

2. Don't tell the entire story of your book in the video.

3. End with a sense of mystery, with the viewer asking, "What will happen next?" This is true for any genre of book, not only mysteries and suspense stories.

4. Prepare your pictures in advance, so that you're ready to upload them when creating the video. My advice is to only use pictures for which you have full legal rights, either your own photos, or those you have purchased through stock photo agencies. Stay legal!

5. Don't transition too quickly between images/texts. The video should flow at a pace that is easy to view.

6. Don't use too many texts. After all, this is a video, not a book.

7. Use voiceovers if you want, but have them ready when you start making the video.

8. Keep it short! No one wants to watch a five-minute book trailer. (I suggest no more than 2 minutes).

9. Don't forget to clearly list the name of the book, the name of the author, and where it can be purchased.

10. Include an image of the book cover. Oops! I forgot to do this. If I had to redo the trailer, I would have ended with the cover. (Read more.)
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