Book Trailers - It's All Marketing

Part 3 of The Craic project: Book Trailers.

The part where Maureen becomes a movie producer....

Book trailers are the visual commercial for your book.

They have their detractors...why bother to film a commercial for the book, people will just want the movie.

They can cost mega mega dollars... if you want a good one you have to hire a proper movie producer and actors etc etc.

They have to be art forms eg Maggie Stiefvaters book trailers (all created by Maggie) and how many of us can do that?

In my talks with school librarians they tell me that if a book has a book trailer it instantly makes it marketable to kids. Librarians use the book trailer on the library website... and kids being visual beings...well you know the rest.

Start by having a look at other book trailers to see what others have done and to get some ideas. Some book trailers are all static images, some have short snippets of video...some are animated...Some are the pictures from the book itself with audio sound bites.

A book trailer does not and should not condense the whole book to 2 minutes of visuals. 

It does not need to be acted out...or filmed in a big budget way.

Entice people... Entice...Think of how you get an editor interested in your project.

Look at your back cover blurb and loglines...this is a handy start to storyboarding your book trailer. Define the images you need to convey the message you want, atmosphere, main characters, compelling plot point. But don’t tell the whole story you want to entice the reader....Repeat after me... entice... entice.

For my storyboard, I turned three pages on their side drew up a grid pattern and worked through the images and the text I wanted. I started with a little bit about character motivation...and the opening conflict point...then I added images which represented different factors...the rock stars... the security and I finished on an image that was a running gag through the story. So hopefully the book trailer would still be relevant after the reader had finished the story.

Then I imagined the finished project as if I had lots of money and I was in a darkened theatre.

I realised that I liked the image of words appearing on a screen as that fit with the whole fake online identity of one of my characters. My teen then pointed out that our computer could record text as it is written in power point. So all I had to do was type reasonably fast with no mistakes. (yeah right!)

Now you have your list of must haves and your story board sheets, it’s time to check out photo stock libraries.

This is where it costs. Can you find a cheaper image that conveys the same message? Is it a must have image?

After you have selected your images. Download them to your movie making software and play around to get the whole thing looking just right. Check the length of time you want each frame to stay on screen and how you transition from frame to frame. My movie making software took my text recordings as short videos. Don’t forget to have images of your book in the trailer, as well as where you can find out how to buy it. After all that’s why you are doing this...

Music is an important part of the book trailer. It conveys atmosphere and tension and brings a whole professional edge to the project. Finding the right music is important.

Warning! Listening to royalty free music sites is a tremendous time suck! (but oh so enjoyable... I thought about writing books to soundtracks...dubfunkreggaesoul book anyone?)

I was looking for some hard driving rock (because of the rock band motif...) but with a soft beginning...

I checked out the wonderful Kevin MacLeods Incompetech site but found the music that fit the project the best at 300 Monks. They aren’t a donation site but $27 for the perfect track isn’t too much to pay I thought.

I arranged the images and text videos and dropped the music track on to it. Then I checked the highpoints in the music track were matching the right images. (This is fairly easy to do with Apple iMovie, however I had a teen sitting next to me fixing up any mistakes I made. Tip: Have a handy teen around if you aren't familiar with the software.) 

I sorted out a credits end shot, tweaked a little, uploaded it on to YouTube and voila! It was done.

If you click on the Craic book site at the top of the sidebar you can go straight to the Craic website and view the trailer ... or skip on down to the bottom of the link roundup and have a look there...

Ah the Link Round Up...the reason I spend so much time on social media...hehehe.

This week has been the jump on Franzen week for making us all feel bad about having an ebook. Monkeysee puts the gripes into perspective.

Compelling Characters...Do you have one? Or are you kidding yourself? Check out this post from the writepractice to see if you need to up the ante. 

And what kind of hero are they? There are three to choose from now.

Character names...how do you choose the right one. Here is a great post on naming characters or yourself if you need to.

Now that you have the name and the character arc... Are you falling into a stereotype? Fantasyfiction has a great article on Alpha’s, Beta’s and Losers and wonders if the upsurge in Beta’s is because of the upsurge in woman editors...(Do women want Alpha males anymore?)

Last week I gave you a link to Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s Sell Sheet. Brian has part two up. What to do with one after you have made it...This is good solid information. (Thanks Brian)

Kristen talks about R.E.S.P.E.C.T. and the word Free as part of your marketing bag of tricks.

The writerlens has 5 ways to market indie books. 

This is expanded on in a huge way by Author Media with 89 ways to market your book.

Yup it’s all about the marketing!

So check out this book trailer for this great book! You can even go to the website and read the first chapter...(2.99 on Amazon and Smashwords.)

Covering The Book

The Craic Project -Episode Two

A book is judged by its cover.

Book covers - The most important starting point for a reader, getting their attention! I set about reading up on them. What does a Book Cover need?

1. A strong choice of colours to have the book stand out.

2. An arresting image.

3. A clear font choice.

4. The ability to retain all these elements when reduced to thumbnail size. 

This is important because all the marketing of the book is on screen and book covers are reduced to thumbnail size...Check out Amazon and scroll through the average list of books in your genre. Focus on the books that grab your eye.

What colour palettes are being used in your genre? 

Opinion is divided on midgrade covers, from bubblegum cartoon to photo realism. I took myself to the book shops and stood back in front of the midgrade section to see what stood out. Very little. This is because the mid grade book cover is being influenced by the Young Adult cover. The Young Adult book cover is leaning towards paranormal and steampunk colour palettes...that’s browns, blacks and sepias and contrast white. This is what is being published now...bear in mind that books accepted now will take one -two years to come out so styles will change. I checked out what others were saying. Bookseller opinions were that they were over the muted colour tones.

After I finished rereading Craic for the umpteenth time I had several strong images and colours in my mind that represented the main themes of the book.

You know how it is when you have a vague idea of what you want but not a specific. I decided to look at a stock photo site just doodling around to see what was there.

Stock photo sites are a serious time suck...so many cool images. Along with the photos, many artists have uploaded designs as well.

I found two images that represented almost exactly what was in my head and more importantly the colours were strong. The purple image I thought may have been designed just for Craic (I fell in love. If you have read Craic you will know what I mean...If not, what are you waiting for...heheheh. )

Were they too strong? Go to target audience...What do they think...which one...or combination of them... Combination won out.

The cost of the image depends on how popular the image is, the size that you want and the type of license you need. You want a large image for clarity, especially if you are going to be using that image in a variety of media, print, screen, video...(altho not always, see below on book covers) 

So I quickly had to work out a budget. (I had a limited budget however the Book Cover is hugely important so invest money here.)

I had to figure out what licenses I needed and how to buy them.  I made one mistake, getting a more extensive license for the purple image, which means I can print it on teeshirts and sell it if I want...you never know I may just want to do that...hehehe.

Once I selected the images, bought and downloaded them then I had to figure out a way of combining them and find a title font.

Fonts...a serious timesuck, so many wonderful fonts.... I went with a Celtic theme because Craic is an Irish Gaelic word...and just happened to find a font called Dumbldor. How could I resist?

For the price of a couple of dinners, a friend played around in Photoshop and combined the images for me. Then back to the target audience for reaction and tweaking.

While I was checking out images... I was checking out books from the library on making YouTube videos. They all agreed that a good YouTube video was storyboarded and had a matching musical soundtrack...More research required.

Next week... What I learned about Book Trailers.

For those of you who have skipped down to the Main Event...The Link roundup.

What has been talked about in the blogosphere this week?

Apple’s announcement of iBooks and iAuthor iPad App software and the way they have used the EULA (End User Licence Agreement) After you have downloaded the free software then you find out that Apple will take a 30% cut of your work if you sell it. And you can only sell it on iTunes. There are lots of fors and againsts about this move. Check out Writer Beware and read the comments to get a good handle on this one. (my 2c is they don’t own your content and you are free to take that content and drop it into any other software to make an Enhanced Book App with. Latest numbers out... last year 32 million iPads sold.)

The Book designer has a great article on Book Covers (timely, I thought. heheh)

Joe Konrath has an interesting blog post on indie authors being wooed by print publishers after they hit some big numbers on their own.

Staying with this theme The Digital Book World Conference is on at the moment.

Bob Mayer recaps his thoughts on what’s been talked about so far and his participation on the self publishers panel...Yes even Mr Mayer can be outclassed!

Angela Ackerman AKA The BookshelfMuse has written a timely post about pulling back on social media. This resonated with a large amount of people who commented with links and advice to help focus on the task at hand.

Jeff Vandermeer has a blog post on Literary Estates and what it means for an anthologist to try to deal with them. TIP Even if you have only one piece published, have a literary executor...Jeff tells you why!

The great Jane Friedman has a must read article on Permissions...How much is fair use etc etc...and Kristen Lamb mixes it up with an article on the cost of FREE.

Brian Schmidt breaks down a Book Sell sheet, why you need it and tells you How To Make One...Check it out!

Jody Hedlund looks at making those book scenes play out like movies...

Finally the wonderful Shelli Johannes has compiled the list of things you must be aware and/or master if you want to go the self published route.

School starts next week and I’m about to start the mammoth job of covering books!

maureen

Craic (8-12 yrs) is available on Kindle and Smashwords (2.99US)

Check out www.craicthebook.com for more information.