Book Marketing Tips: Simple Ways to Make Book Trailers to Market Your Book for Free

One of the biggest obstacles facing writers, and artists in general, is how to promote their creative works, but with book trailers some of those obstacles can now be overcome—easily and affordably.

Book trailers are essentially videos showcasing your new title or soon to be released title. They are ads for your book, in other words, and have the potential to attract new readers to your website and drive sales of your book.

It’s a crowded marketplace for writers and authors (did you know there are over 33 million titles on Amazon?), so anything you can do to make your book stand out from the crowd will work in your favour.

Book trailers are one way you can make your book stand out, and with a little bit of know-how (which I’m about to give you) and easy to get software, they’re not that difficult to create, just like this one below:

Book trailers are one way you can make your book stand out, and with a little bit of know-how (which I’m about to give you) and some easy to get software, they’re not that difficult to create.

Before your book trailers are created, there are a few things that will need to be taken into consideration to ensure you maximize the promotional possibilities it can offer. These include:

Title of your Book Trailers – this should be the title of your book + name of author (e.g. Samantha Honeycomb by Scott Zarcinas) to score a higher Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with Google.
YouTube Channel – if you haven’t already created a YouTube channel, then you will need to do this straight away. Your book trailer video will be uploaded to YouTube when you’ve finished, which will be easier to share and promote through your website and social media.
The Length of your Book Trailers – no more than 30 seconds! Yes, that’s it. Our attention span isn’t what it used to be and if you haven’t grabbed your viewer within 30 seconds then anything longer is just a waste of time for you and for them.
Media Content of your Book Trailers – you can get free audio content at Jukedeck.com (either custom made or other royalty-free music), and free images and video content at Pixabay.com.
The Script for your Book Trailers – your book trailers are not snippets taken straight out of your book. They are marketing material and should therefore be created with emotion and brevity in mind. Book trailers are 30-second elevator pitches in video format.
Software for your Book Trailers – the above book trailer for Through the Devil’s Eye by C.R. Cummings was created using PowerPoint (I recommend using PowerPoint 2010 and above).

Once you have those 6 things in place, you can then start creating book trailers to promote your new title.

For a 30-second book trailer, you should not need more than 4 slides in your PowerPoint:

Introduction (5-6 seconds) – this will include title, subtitle, author, publisher (audio/music optional).
Main Hook (5-6 seconds) – this will include the main problem facing the protagonist, high emotion, and only 1-2 sentences in length (video media content optional).
Secondary Hook (5-6 seconds) – this will include how the protagonist is going to solve the problem, be highly emotive, and only 1-2 sentences in length.
Call To Action (8-10 seconds) – this is where readers can see your book cover, where to buy the book, and which website they can visit.

After all the animations, media content and slide transitions have been inserted, the PowerPoint file can then be saved as a Windows Media Video file to upload into your YouTube channel and shared with your readers via your website and social media platform.

Promoting your book through book trailers is easier than you think!