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FREE BOOK TRAILERS
by Stephanie Suesan Smith
Congratulations, you sold your book. Now you have to publicize
it. Why not use a book trailer? While some book trailers cost
loads, a perfectly serviceable trailer can be made for free.
First, plot the trailer. Hit the highlights, introducing the
main characters and setting the scene. In fact, sidle right up
to the defining moment, then stop. A cliffhanger is followed
by a release date or how to purchase the book. The credits
contain your website, blog, and social media addresses.
Find or take pictures to illustrate the trailer. Places such as
istock.com and flickr have royalty free pictures. Make sure the
people in the pictures resemble the book characters. Readers
notice if the video has a woman with red hair and the book has a
woman with brown hair.
Decide on a program to use. Windows Live Movie Maker is on
Windows Vista and Windows 7. iMovies is the Mac equivalent.
Slideroll is on the web and can be used no matter what computer
you have.
I used Windows Live Movie Maker, so these directions are for
that program. First, arrange the photographs in order on the
story board. Second, add text either as captions or credits.
Captions can go anywhere in the frame of the picture. Credits
roll up from the bottom and disappear over the top, like the
end credits of a movie.
Make a text-ready slide. To avoid obscuring the pictures with
text, make a text-ready slide for the words and place it before
your picture. Any picture editing software will do that. Just
open a new page, select an 8X10 area, fill it with the color
of choice, and save it as a jpg file. Presto, a text -ready slide.
Music is essential. Find it by typing the phrase “royalty
free music” into your favorite search engine. Most songs are
about 3 minutes long. Pick one that goes with your story. There
will be an MP3 file you can download that contains the song in
a format your computer can understand.
Bring the trailer to life. Windows Live Movie Maker has a
button in the top menu that says “auto movie.” Click it,
add the music, and it will automate your movie, adding in
the transitions, some motion, and stretch the scenes to match
the music. If the credits roll by too fast, the slides change
before you can read the words, or something is way too slow,
you can control the individual slide’s speed.
Ask your critique group to critique the trailer by uploading
it to YouTube as a private file and inviting them to view it.
Movie Maker has a button you click to do that. The file will
be large and can take up to 30 minutes to upload, depending
on the speed of your connection and the size of the file.
You must first register and get a free YouTube account to do
this.
Distribution. Your friends will likely find some errors, or
places the film is too fast or slow, so be ready to fix those
issues. After everything is ready, head over to Tubemogul
and sign up for a free account as a content distributor.
There you can upload your trailer to around 15 or 20 different
places around the web where people go to view trailers.
Tubemogul does have premium services that cost money, but I
did not use them.
Does this work? Head over to YouTube and judge for yourself.
This video of mine got picked up by the Irish TV computer
channel. If I can do it, so can you.
Resources:
TUBE MOGUL - http://www.tubemogul.com/
YOU TUBE - OUT OF THE BLUE BOOK TRAILER -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL6YP4FaH3o
SLIDEROLL - http://www.slideroll.com/
ISTOCK - http://www.istock.com
Bio: Stephanie Suesan Smith is a freelance writer and
photographer who writes mainly on gardening, with occasional
articles on writing, photography, and dogs.
http://stephaniesuesansmith.com.
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A Carolina Slade Mystery
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