Aug 10
26
What Makes a Good Book Trailer? Pt. 1 of 5
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Book trailers are fast becoming all the buzz in the book marketing world. And if you want your own book trailer to go viral and find fans, you better know what makes a good book trailer.
But before we start with the main course, let’s begin with an appetizer:
“Does a book trailer truly sell books?”
Yes.
But that isn’t the real question, is it? Neither is, “Do slurpees make good anniversary gifts?”
The real question is, “Are book trailers worth investing the time and money to make one? After all, couldn’t I make more sales if I do an audition for American Idol, sing a crappy song and shout, ‘Buy my book!’?”
The answer to the second part of that question is unimportant (it’s “No”).
However, knowing whether or not book trailers are worth doing at all is vital for your pocket book. They can cost up to thousands of dollars to make!
What if your book trailer only sold ten books? That would be fine if each book cost $100,000.00. And imagine all the slurpees you could buy!
Now say you make your own book trailer to cut expenses. Doing so means spending a lot of time learning how to write the text/script, learning how to get footage or film, how to find the right music, and learning how to use editing software to put it all together.
Once that’s all done, you still need to post it on the internet. What’s the best way to do that?!
Learning everything will take hours upon hours, and actually creating the darn thing can take longer!
Whew! Suddenly writing a book sounds so much easier.
But if the book trailer goes viral, pulls in thousands of new fans, and helps generate a river of sales – thousands of dollars – then all that work would be worth it, wouldn’t it?
So what’s the answer?
Are book trailers worth making?
Rather than answer that question, I will demonstrate the answer to that question.
Below is a link to an effective video. Watch it and return to my blog to answer a few questions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVNTdWbVBgc
Wonderful, isn’t it? It’s got to be one of my favorites!
Now, answer the questions in the comments box below:
1. After you watched it, what did you want to do (returning to my blog to answer these questions doesn’t count)?
2. Agents and publishers would take your book on in an instant if you had 30,000 people interested in buying your book. How many views did the video get? (The number is located under the video on the right.)
3. Do you think changing the call-to-action from “send [this video] to someone you love” to “read the full story of Christian the Lion” would be an effective way to get readers to purchase the book? (Turns out there really is a book, but you wouldn’t know it by the video.)
Thanks for your answers! You deserve a slurpee!
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