Last year I noticed that one of my Facebook friends, Author Laurie Hanan, had put a book trailer up on Facebook for comments. My comment was it seemed really cool, and that it must have taken some time to make such a thing. It had a series of pictures to tell the story of the novel, along with a music sound track, and looked very complicated to me. Not so, said Laurie, and I decided then and there to give it a try. Since then I have made trailers for ten of my books, and also made changes to some as my covers have changed. And now I will try to give all interested the step by step instructions on how I have made my book trailers. A word of warning. My trailers are all at least two minutes long, and more often three or more, while the experts say it should be ninety seconds at most. But who am I to listen to the experts. And choosing the pictures and music is up to you. You know your book or other project better than anyone else, so tell the story.
Now the first thing you are going to need is a movie making program. My computer, like most, came with Windows Live Movie Maker, which is adequate to the task. There are others out there. I think Roxio will do the job, but a search of the internet will reveal many completely free programs. Now with program in hand the next requirement are the pictures to put in the trailer (unless you want to go to the trouble to have actual moving pictures, which is not really necessary). There are a lot of sites that offer royalty free photos and drawing, including many public domain sites where the pictures are absolutely free. They can be googled under Public Domain Pictures or Royalty Free Pictures. Don’t get pictures that charge you a royalty for each use, as this can add up. Most royalty free sites allow use of their pictures for a small one time fee, unless you start using it a couple of hundred thousand times (like on a book cover that sells that many copies), and I for one am willing to pay the extra fee if the book is doing that well. Don’t try to use pictures that may belong to someone and are copyrighted, without permission that is, because it can cost you big in the long run. I get most of my pictures from Shutterstock, which has a selection in the millions and charges $249 for 750 pictures. Canstock has a smaller, but still good selection, and you can buy pictures in smaller batches than Shutterstock. Both sources are good. So gather your pictures, as many as you think you need to tell our story. And now for music. You can do a trailer without music, but I don’t know why, since it will be really boring. That said, I have seen a trailer that had no pictures, only writing and music, and that was just as bad. I get all my music from a site called Incompetech, and the only stipulation to using the free music is to credit them somewhere on the trailer. I try to pick a piece that seems to fit the mood of the book, and the length of the trailer, so I actually wait until I have assembled the pictures and know my length before making the final selection for music.
Now with the elements in hand I go to Live Movie Maker and arrange my pictures. You can drag and drop them, rearrange them, whatever, until you have your pictures in the order you want. I suggest that the first and last pictures be your book cover, to let everyone know what this thing is about. You can also choose the length of each picture, so that some will stay on the screen longer for emphasis, or others will flash across it. Now you add your text to each picture, using whatever effects the movie maker has to make them move across the screen. And then the music. At the end you can save the trailer in several formats. I suggest the high resolution one for Youtube, and the more compact one for Amazon or devices.
Upload the thing to Youtube, which requires that you get a Youtube account. From Youtube you can embed the trailer in other websites, or point people to it with links. It’s also kind of a kick to realize you have put something of a movie onto this site. And there is is. Not really hard at all. My first trailer took a couple of hours. Now I can get one done in about forty-five minutes after I have assembled all my materials. I don’t know how much these things have helped my sales, if any, but they might help, and will probably never hurt. And here’s an example of a trailer I made, my first one for The Deep Dark Well.