How to Make a Book Trailer?

How to Make a Book Trailer?

Before you even start thinking about making a trailer, you need to decide or perhaps rather know what kind of audience you are aiming your trailer at. You will make one trailer for kids and a different trailer for spy novels or another one again for a vampire story for teens.

Of course, it’s easier to create a trailer for an illustrated book than for a book without any drawings. However, there are still a few rules which you need to follow or preferably take into consideration when making your trailer. 

a.  The trailer should not be longer than 90 sec. something between 30-90 sec. Is the best length.

b.  Use a font that is easily readable. I know that fancy fonts look cool and it’s tempting to use them but if people have a hard time reading your trailer, you’ve wasted your time.

c.  Add the link to your site at the left bottom of the frame. So your audience will know where to find your books on the web.

d.  Leave enough time at the end of the video for your audience to get acquaintance with your book cover. Remember that people are usually highly visual and seeing the cover of your book for enough time will leave them with a lasting memory. Leave your audience with the book cover for at least 10 sec.

e.  Make your trailer interesting visually. Use simple transitions or fancy filters on your still images.

f.  You don’t have to do the MTV cutting between the takes/images but don’t prolong one image for too long.

g.  Use suitable music for your trailer. You can’t use scary music for the kid’s book. It will confuse your audience and won’t attract the right audience.

h.  When you buy the images/photographs for your trailer, try to choose ones that are visually attractive and will hook your audience right away. Sometimes it is worth spending more money on the images. Your trailer is going to be the face of your book.

i.  Try to make your trailer in some unique way, different from other trailers you have seen. This way people will start talking about it and possibly send links to your trailer to one another, and that’s what all of this is about, isn’t it? Sometimes it is enough to have just the one image, some excellent music expressing the mood of the book, even the title of the book. It really can be as simple as that.

j.  Since we are writers, I would suggest writing a short script for your video. It will help you clear your thoughts and often come up with great ideas.

To get all the best ideas it’s good to watch not only book trailers but also movie trailers so you can learn all the tricks, for instance: how music co-exists with the image and how music expresses the mood of the trailer/movie, etc. After all, they spend on those trailers huge bucks.