Writing101: Book Trailers

Once upon a time, writers like Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austin sat hunched over wooden desks next to oil lamps, scribbling out fantastic prose in longhand with bottles of ink sitting just within reach. They sent voluminous manuscripts -- ink spots, and all -- off to publishers, who were happy to turn these gigantic collections of parchment into beautifully bound books. Those days are long over. Today's writer has to become an expert on using the Internet, a star in social media, an editor, a book formatter, a software guru, a forum nut -- and yes, even a graphic designer. Want to be a professional writer? You'll be lucky if you spend even half of your working hours actually writing. Among the many non-writing tasks you'll be asked to perform, you need to learn about book trailers. What they are. Who they're for. What to do with them. And, oh yeah -- how to create them from scratch. Put away your bottles of ink, and get out a keyboard.

What's a Book Trailer?

Commercials have existed for as long as television, and movie trailers have been made for flicks since the silent film era. Above all, movie trailers -- those minute-long clips you see in theaters for upcoming films -- are advertisements. And even if you aren't from Hollywood, you can make one for your book. And you should.

Your book is not the same as a film, I know. But people love looking at videos online -- go and ask YouTube if you don't believe me. Good luck getting through the piles of money that litter the path to the front door. An exciting book trailer, presented like a movie trailer, can create interest for a book the same way it can for a film. And here's the good part: you'll be advertising something they can immediately buy without even moving from the chair. You don't have to motivate your audience to wait three weeks, then get fixed up and go out to the theaters for a big night on the town. You just need them to click a link, and then another link. Think you can create a video that might make them want to do that? Sure you can!

Creating a Book Trailer

No one understands better than you what your book is about. Now condense all that into a minute-long series of text and images, and you've got a book trailer -- after a good four hours (or more) of pure tedium and stress. First, start thinking of the main points in your book. Is it about love? Murder? Grief? A coming-of-age tale of two sisters? Describe your book, to yourself, in a few words (no more than one sentence). Now you've got a starting place for your book trailer.


Think about all the trailers you've seen. First, the trailer introduces a character, a place or some concept. "The end of the world" may appear on the screen in bold lettering. In the background, a ruined cityscape will slowly come to life. Now I'm hooked. Why did the world end? If the world has ended, what's happening? Show me another image -- a heroic man with a gun standing in shadow. The text reads: "One man must save society." Who is he? I want to know him. Now I'm drawn in, I'm being carried along. And that's how you make a book trailer. Take me through different images, different catchy lines and at some point introduce me to the book. Remember to tell me where I can get it, the title of it, the author, maybe even throw the book cover in there at some point so I can be certain of what I'm buying when I go looking for it. End dramatically, and the trailer's over. Now I'm rushing through cyberspace to buy your book.

So...now you just need a bunch of images and software that helps you create a video from scratch. It's daunting, but it's actually easy if you know where to look. If you've got Windows 7, you've probably got movie making software already on your machine. Look for existing software first on your Mac or PC. If it's not there, you'll need to turn to free software online. No problem -- it's out there. Windows has a safe, very user-friendly free software package, and so does Mac. If that fails, try looking at CNet's list of software.

Once you've got your video program installed, open that bad boy up and start to play around. Throw some of your existing photos on there, music you've downloaded and play around with the tools. Once you're satisfied you know how it works, open up a new project and get to work. You're going to put this trailer live on the Internet, so the first order of business is don't break any laws. You have to have copyright-free, license-free, free free free images, video and music for your trailer. No logos, no footage taken from any movies you like, no songs you bought on iTunes. No. Even if you own it, you don't have the license to re-distribute it and YouTube will remove that trailer. If you took the video yourself of some trees blowing around (or whatever), that's fine. It's yours, use it. If you took the images and they don't have any logos or copyrighted material in them, use them. If you made the music, use it. Otherwise, make darn certain you're downloading something that you're allowed to use. You can find free music, free images and even free video footage that you're welcome to use. Take the time to do so, because you'll just have to fix it later if you don't. Arrange all your elements in your movie maker software, upload it to YouTube (accounts are free; you've already got one if you've got a Google account of any kind) and start promoting that book trailer.

Buying a Book Trailer

Okay, wow, that's a lot of work. It takes a ton of searching and no shortage of stressing to produce a book trailer that others will like. You can always make it easy on yourself by hiring someone. There are companies out there that specialize in creating book trailers, and still others that have found a niche in making indie book trailers in particular. Look for them on writers' forum groups. Find book trailers by other indies on YouTube, and if they were made by someone else you should see that person or company's logo at the end or beginning of the trailer. Contact them through social media, or their official website, and you're in business. Professional trailer makers will have a specific questionnaire for you to complete, or specific questions about what you want, and they'll take care of the rest. If you've got the money to spend, a professionally-made book trailer can make a big impact.

What Indies Should Pay For...And What They Shouldn't

Everyone's self-publishing these days, and the ebook market is booming. Lots of indies are cracking the bestseller lists and making a name for themselves. There's opportunity out there...and wherever there's opportunity, there are people who prey upon it. Self-publishing isn't free, no matter what anyone says. Some things, you've got to pay for. Some things, you shouldn't pay for. Learn how to tell the difference, and spend your money where it's going to matter most. 

What Indies Should Pay For

Some things cost money, even in self-publishing. When it comes to creating a book that you're trying to sell to the masses, there are some things you're going to have to buy...and some things that maybe you should buy. 

• Copyright. Where you're writing your book matters. Make sure to look up the copyright requirements for your current home country. In the United States, for example, you have to pay to register your copyright. Always do this before you publish a book!
• Editing. Lots of authors are bad at editing. I personally am atrocious at spelling. It takes a lot of work and time to edit your book, which you must do quite thoroughly before you publish. You may want to consider hiring a professional editor if you know you're terrible at it and you can't seem to find the time to do it. If your time is more profitably spent at other tasks, in other words if hiring an editor won't lose you too much money, consider using a paid service.
• Cover. Not artistic? It's okay, lots of writers aren't. If you can't seem to create a book cover, or don't know how, you might want to hire an artist or graphic designer. You can find ebook designers everywhere, but if you're looking for something specific it's always an option to place a free classified ad on Craigslist.

And What Indies Shouldn't Pay For...

Turning a manuscript into a full-fledged book is a tedious process that takes a ton of time and care. During the journey, you're going to see advertisements and maybe even make contacts who offer to make things a little easier for you. But some things, indie authors should be doing for themselves.

• eBook formatting. Learning ebook codes and formatting a manuscript so it becomes a readable ebook is a long and frustrating process. You need special software, you've got to convert files and once you start adding a Table of Contents and images into the mix you're just tormenting yourself. It's certainly a lot easier to pay someone to format your book for you, but it's a waste of money. It can save you only a few hours at most, and ebook formatting is something anyone can figure out for themselves (I know, because I can do it and I can never figure anything out).
• Book trailers. Plenty of indie authors have book trailers for their books, awesome 1- or 2-minute videos designed to pique the interest of potential readers. They look great and they carry a certain cachet...but that doesn't mean you should spend any money on them. To be frank, book trailers don't really sell a whole lot of books. They're cool, they're a fun extra and they help show that you're serious about what you do, but tons of sales probably aren't going to come flooding in because you posted something on YouTube. Professional book trailers are expensive, and you can create your own using free images, software and video clips. Maybe your trailers won't look pro, maybe they take a long time to make, but they'll do until you sell your first million copies.
• Reviews. Yes, you can pay for reviews. Kirkus is the most prestigious, but there are tons of other review sites and companies out there that want your money in exchange for their opinions. My advice is don't do it. It's an unnecessary expense. With hard work and time, you can scour the Internet and find tons of book review sites and lots of bloggers who are perfectly happy to review books for free. They get free books to read, indies get reviewed and everyone's happy. When money and favors start exchanging hands, the whole thing becomes a little tainted. One honest review from an enthusiastic reader is worth 20 reviews you paid to get. Save your money, and spend your time instead to get truly heartfelt reviews.

Spending Your Money

Self-publishing is a business, and in any business you're going to find lots of people who want to cash in. You'll be approached by blogs offering promotional services, tantalizing ads for big lists that you can't see unless you pay for them, tons of opportunities that could be reached if only you pay a little money. Sleep on it first. Find out exactly what they're offering for your money, and take the time to get online and see if you can achieve the same thing on your own. Chances are, you can. Indies exist because they learned how to do everything themselves, so don't be quick to pay for something that looks like a great opportunity. There are lots of ways you can create your own opportunities, and lots of reasons you should save your money for other stuff. 

Writing 101: The Power of Video

If you want to sell more books and get more visitors on your blog, don't underestimate the power of video. There are a lot of reasons why you should be using YouTube's powers to enhance your own reach. The biggest? Google gives YouTube a little extra search engine bump.

Video Killed the Book Star

It's because Google owns YouTube (and I believe they will one day own everything on the Internet). So naturally Google gives websites that have a lot of YouTube higher rankings, and you'll see links to YouTube videos all the time during normal web searches. So it behooves you to create your own YouTube channel, and add those links to your blog. 

If you're going to create content to promote yourself and your books, create good content. And if you're going to use that content to drive more traffic to your blog, create it regularly. There are lots of reasons why an indie author might make a YouTube video. Start with my ideas, and let me know if you come up with more of your own: 

• Book trailers: Naturally. Make a trailer for each and every one of your books. Add those videos to your blog, your Goodreads page, your Smashwords profile, your Twitter and anything else you can find. 
• Book reviews: Review books in your own genre to attract readers of that genre to your channel. Video book reviews are fun if you keep them short and sweet. Use the video as a supplement to your text-based reviews, and link the videos to those posts
• Book excerpts: Make videos of yourself reading excerpts from your own books. Be expressive, be interesting. Think about adding some effects or images to the video to enhance the story. Because once again, you want to create good content if you're going to create any sort of content at all.
• Mail call: Add a link to your blog so readers can ask you questions about anything and everything through email or a comments section. Answer the questions you want to answer through video mail call sessions, and upload them once a week. You can write a little blog post to go with it and add all sorts of content to the Internet in one fell swoop. 

Harness the power of video to gain more exposure, and gain more readers. It's a given that you're going to take advantage of text-based content on the Internet to spread your message. But as an indie author, every little bit helps -- so get on YouTube, too.

Writing 101: Presentation

For hundreds of years, clever salesmen made a great living by selling water in bottles and telling people to rub dirt on their wounds. Scoff if you will, but this is the absolute truth. You see, it usually isn't about what you're selling. It's about the presentation...and that goes for self-published books, too.

Snake Oil and Novels

We've all heard the jokes and seen the satires of the old-fashioned hawkers and hucksters who used to sell people magical potions and miracle medical remedies, when really the bottles are filled with things like cow dung and cat urine. You've probably heard of the expression "snake oil" and "snake oil salesman." Well, that used to be a real thing.

People will buy snake oil if the presentation is right, so they should certainly be willing to buy your books. It's all about how you present those books to the rest of the world. Once you get past the obvious factors, it comes down to salesmanship. How good is yours? 

• Cover.  A great cover is a given in self-publishing. You want to catch the eye and you want to stand out, but you also want a book that looks like a readable book. Remember to check the cover on several device sizes to make sure it's easy to read across platforms.
• Price. Set the right price, or all the salesmanship in the world won't help. You've got to price your books according to their competition, not necessarily according to their worth.
• Trailers. If you want to present your book in an exciting way, create a trailer. Visual imagery works better than text, and this medium allows you to combine them. Tell the story in the trailer, just enough to make people want more.
• Tweets. Tweet about your books every day, at least once. But don't tweet "go buy this book" because that won't work. Give readers a reason to click that link. Ask them a question, give them a compelling quote, write something shocking -- compel them to buy, and they will.
• Extras. Give your book even more depth by offering extras. Start giving out free samples, create images and maps to show off, write blog posts about it and present! 

The way you present is important, but remember it only matters if you're actually doing it. Promote, and keep promoting, and you'll get better and better at it.

Writing 101: Review Quotes

 Even the most celebrated and well-loved authors show off quotes from colleagues, reviewers and prestigious publications. For indie writers, review quotes are a valuable commodity. Many indies make it a habit to tweet review quotes to market their work, and some include them in their book blurbs and websites. I even put some of mine in one of my trailers. Movies, books, magazines, music -- lots of products are promoted with glowing, intriguing and enticing quotes from critics and supporters. But there is a certain finesse to choosing review quotes, and to displaying them, that some indies don't seem to possess. How do you use yours?

 On Review Quotes

I've been writing on the topic of reviews a lot lately, but only because they're an endless source of fascination. I also happened to see something a little strange recently, and can't help but to blog about it. Besides, it naturally follows that once you've learned how to get reviews, you're going to want to do something with them...so why not pull a few quotes out of there? 

Go ahead and try. It's easy enough for the likes of Stephen King, but indie authors face all sorts of problems. In reality, the traditionally-published authors probably have the same difficulties -- but let's face it, they usually have a wider pool of reviews from which to draw their quotes. Indies have to work with what they're given, but don't let a shallow well lead you down the primrose path of bad decisions. 

Acceptable Source Material

We all have the great honor of living in the Information Age, where just about everyone and everything is online. This means that indie writers have multiple sources from which they can pull their reviews. Or...do they? Don't be so anxious to grab marketable quotes that you cross the boundaries of common courtesy...or worse, copyright law. 

• Blogs/online articles

If a blogger or online writer creates a review of your book on their site, however brief, you are absolutely allowed to use it any piece of it as a review quote, but only if you cite both the writer and the site where the quote originally appeared. The one who created the quote owns the copyright to it, either officially or unofficially, and without proper citation you could be accused of infringement and/or plagiarism. 

• E-tailers 

 If someone reviews your work on Amazon, B&N, or any other site where your work is being sold, use the quotes! Again, cite the name of the reviewer (even if they are using some sort of alias) and on which site this quote appeared. 

• Social media

Has someone reviewed your book on Goodreads, made a comment about it on Facebook or Tweeted about it? You can most certainly re-publish that quote, so long as you cite the user name and the social media site in question. 

• Message boards

Now we're moving into the gray area. In most circumstances, you are probably safe using quotes about your book, or you as a writer, that have appeared on publish message boards. I emphasize public. However, even in this circumstance it's good form to directly ask the person who wrote the quote if you're at liberty to use it, unless they have previously stated that they are willing to have their words put on public display. You should absolutely ask the poster before you publish anything from a private message board, such as one that requires a username and password to view.

• Email

Now things are getting even trickier. Electronic mail is not guaranteed to any sort of privacy, and most people who use it know that it's always subject to being viewed by a third party (there are way too many media stories about email accounts being hacked). It's not technically a safe form of communication, however in all polite societies there does exist a covenant of trust between parties who are corresponding even via email. I am not a lawyer, but in doing a (very brief and not at all thorough) cursory check on the subject, emails probably are not protected by copyright law unless they specifically contain material that has been copyrighted. Everyday correspondence obviously would not meet this criteria.

However, that doesn't mean you should feel free to quote it in some sort of public forum. Some indie writers might be so hungry for useable quotes that anything and everything begins to look like fair game -- even emails from various literary agents and publishing houses. Lots of indies have previously submitted work to the more traditional book types, and some may have received encouraging and promising responses. Is it cool to use some of these responses as quotes for marketing purposes? 

That all depends. The short answer is...well, yes. Legally, it is probably okay to pull quotes from emails unless those mails are somehow protected by some sort of privacy agreement that's been implemented by the website itself. But the longer answer advises against it, unless certain conditions have first been met. If you get permission to use quotes from those emails from the person or persons who wrote them, then publish away. Hooray. 

If you haven't obtained that permission, then you probably shouldn't. Common decency and courtesy are really the only thing holding you back, but let that be enough. Email exchanges between two parties carry an implied privacy protection with them, and if you break that trust with a literary agent or email answerer at a publishing house you could be burning an important bridge. You could even make other agents and staffers shy away from corresponding or communicating with you in the future. If you want to use it, ask for permission. They might say no, but they might not. Remember to cite the source of your quote correctly if you do obtain permission to publish their words.

Acceptable Quotes

Once you're quite sure all of your sources for all of your quotes are on the level, you might still have trouble pulling something usable. The secret to great quotes is the ellipsis, otherwise known as ... . As some of my readers might know from a previous post, in non-fiction writing an ellipsis is used to show an omission of words. This means that you can eliminate poorly-spelled and weirdly-worded bits and pieces of reviews to get a quite salable quote, but you have to avoid overuse. Don't try to promote a quote that's completely butchered by your punctuation. If you can use one ellipsis, two at the outside, and create a great quote then go for it.

Don't forget that you can use brackets [for your quotes]. They're sort of a get-out-of-hell-free card when it comes to re-publishing a quote. Within the body of a quote, brackets are used to substitute words. Most often, they're used to replace proper nouns with pronouns, or vice versa, but other small changes may be made through them as well. They're a powerful tool, so again, don't over-use them. 

Don't re-publish profanity, unless you are specifically doing so on an age-controlled site with all the proper disclaimers and you are specifically targeting an older (and possibly not-so-conservative) group of readers. There are lots of format-friendly ways to delete an expletive to make a quote more family-friendly, but if you're going to let it fly then make sure you're only doing so in the proper venues. By the way, your Amazon page is not considered the proper venue for re-publishing a quote that contains profanity.

Quotes containing spoilers or too much summary information are to be avoided. Remember that you want to whet the palate, not shove a piece of chocolate cake down their throats. Your readers shouldn't even get a taste of your book from a review quote -- they should only get a deeply enticing whiff of its aroma.

Petals on the Wind: Looking Ahead

In case you haven't heard, it's Petals on the Wind weekend here at the blog. So instead of indie news, this week it's all about POTW news. What can you expect from the adaptation that airs tomorrow night? 

Sex scenes. 

At least, that's what the trailer indicates. Of course there's more than sex in the film. The trailers and stills are very limited, but to me it looks as though Corinne's role has been somewhat extended for the Lifetime movie. I could be wrong, of course, but since the entire book is told from Cathy's perspective the reader sees very little of Corinne throughout. Contrarywise, Heather Graham is peppered throughout the trailers.

Writing 101: Falling Out of Love with Writing

Before you self-publish, writing is a passion and a burning desire. Once you start self-publishing, it can start to become a chore. Falling out of love with writing is common to all authors, and it happens to everyone from time to time. There is definitely such a thing as getting too much of a good thing. 

Breakin' Up is Hard to Do 

Remember when writing was a hobby? Once you start self-publishing, it becomes part of your to-do list. Now, you've got books to promote. You've got links to Tweet. You've got sales figures to check and pages to edit and networking to do and forums to check...and oh yeah, you need to get some writing done in the middle of all of that. 

Self-published authors have a lot on their plate, and that makes it easy to fall out of love with writing. Many indie writers spend the least amount of time on the actual writing part. The research, the editing, the promotion -- this all takes up a huge amount of time. Creating book covers and trailers is also time-consuming. It's enough to drive anyone to the verge of a breakup. 

Think back to the first question again. You've got to remember when writing was your passion and your hobby, and come to terms with the fact that your role as a writer has now expanded. All the extra stuff is going to improve your skills and expose you to more readers. While you're doing all this remembering, don't forget about the time when no one read your work at all. You gain exposure as a self-published author, and that means you've got to put time in on a bunch of other tasks. 

Whenever you need to, schedule a little time to romance your writing again. Take time out from Tweeting or blogging or thinking about plots or whatever you're doing, and take a reading break. Go back to a book or short story you wrote a long time ago, something you haven't looked at it a while, and start reading. You'll see how you've improved since then, and you'll remember all those old feelings. Read long enough, and you may fall back in love with your first love (writing) all over again. If even that doesn't shake you out of your funk, give yourself a day off. Ignore social media, ignore the to-do list, ignore your email if you dare, and just take a break. Go do something else, get refreshed, and return to the page feeling a lot more loose and relaxed. You and your love of writing are bound to hit the occasional rough patch, but the two of you can always work it out.

Writing 101: Speed

After you publish a book, you've got to start immediately thinking about publishing your next book. You've got to keep publishing, even though you have to worry about promoting and editing and making trailers and maintaining you day job, too. When it comes to being an indie, how important is speed? 

How Fast Can You Publish?

Some of the most successful self-published authors don't just put books out there. They put a lot of books out there very quickly. They make money by constantly offering something new to their fan bases. They make money with speed. What if you can't keep up? 

Writing 101: The Secret Life of Social Media

Indie authors need social media to promote. You hear it all the time, but what you don't hear is that sometimes it's a waste of time. What you don't know about the secret life of social media could be hurting you. Or at least, it could be wasting all your best efforts.

Sunday Always Comes Too Late

When you tweet links, do you know which ones get clicked? Or do you just post and post, waiting for it to work? Do you write Facebook statuses, and can't figure out why they don't trend? And what about that YouTube channel that looks as desolate as a ghost town in a Western movie?

You aren't a bad marketer. You just don't know the secret of social media: it's different every day. Focus your efforts and tailor your links not to your audience and not to your genre. Let the day of the week determine how you're going to promote.

Because here's what you don't know: it already does.

Monday, Monday

Start out every work week strong, and start driving traffic to your YouTube page on Mondays. Why? This is YouTube's biggest day for traffic. If people are already going, get them to go check out your trailers. Debut new videos on Monday, because this is your best chance to get clicks.

Include links to your blog, your book pages and your Twitter in every video description. Otherwise, what's the point?

Terrible Tuesday

Spend a little more time on Facebook every Tuesday, because everyone else is. Tuesday is the most popular day for Facebook, so you should post status updates and drive your Twitter followers to your profile. Be more active on the site every Tuesday as well. Check out your feed and comment on the posts that others make. 

In the Home Stretch

Social media activity is normal on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so spread your efforts out however you like. But if you're going to tweet, do it between 3pm and 5pm. This is when Twitter is most active every day, so this is when you want to focus your marketing efforts. 

Friday, I'm in Love

And Friday? Well, if you're going to choose a day to take a break make it this one. Twitter gets the least amount of traffic on Friday, TV gets the lowest ratings, even the Internet is relatively quiet. Don't launch a new contest on this day, or post your best blog, or spend a bunch of time marketing on Twitter because it won't be at all successful as doing it on Monday instead. 

When you know what's really going on with social media, you'll know how to customize your marketing plan. It's a lot easier to sell your message when you know the secret life of social media.