Book trailers can be another way to generate interest and get sales for your book. The problem is, most book trailers suck and will have the opposite effect... Learn how to create an effective book trailer so that you can sell more books.

1. Make a Book Trailer
That Helps You Sell
More Books
From
BookMarketingTools.com

2. This is a guest post from Rocco Rivetti of Red 14 Films.
He explores the current landscape of book trailers and
how many authors think that by paying a few dollars
to have one made, it will somehow help you sell more
books. A book trailer, even an amazing cinematic book
trailer like Rocco discusses below, isn’t going to
magically help you sell more books. A book trailer can
help you to reach potential readers in another outlet,
in a way that is appealing to viewers making them
want to buy more, and that is what will help you to sell
more books.
Book Trailers
So you’ve been hearing the term book trailer a lot
lately, but you’re not quite sure why. Checking out the
average book trailer on Youtube doesn’t help much as
most book trailers tend to look like something a fifth
grader threw together as a part of their book report.
(No offense to fifth graders). How are these things
supposed to help you sell more books again?
Video has long been proclaimed the king of the web,
drawing in and holding the attention of more unique
viewers than any other media format. Book trailers
emerged in tandem with the rise in accessibility of web
video sites like Youtube and Vimeo. The huge success
of music videos for the music industry, both on MTV
and then online, demonstrated that video could
become a powerful tool in unexpected industries. As
the publishing industry started to make the transition
to the web, authors and publishers started to embrace

3. short video as a part of their digital book marketing
arsenal.
Initially, book trailers were made not by filmmakers as
you’d expect, but by someone the author knew who
was handy with computers, and they were constricted
by the quality standards of the time. These restrictions
in quality prompted a reliance on static stock images,
canned music, and factory setting text/editing effects
that regrettably became the standard for the form.
Instead of following the music video model and
entertaining viewers with well produced content in the
style of a short film, initial book trailers did the
absolute minimum possible to still fall under the
definition of video.
These types of trailers are still made today for
anywhere between $10 to $2,000 with little noticeable
difference in the final product. So if you’re dead set on
one of these book trailers, make sure to shop around,
but be warned that they don’t work.
Why don’t they work? Because it’s painfully obvious to
potential readers that very little time was put into the
making of this type of trailer. Why would a complete
stranger on the internet spend their time watching
something that even the author didn’t think merited
the time to make right? As technology has advanced
in the past few years, the capability for streaming high
quality videos online has risen, and the cost of
producing cinematic quality content has decreased
dramatically. It’s now possible to create better looking
web videos on an Indie budget, and because of this

4. Internet users have come to expect a certain level of
production value when watching a video.
Cinematic Book Trailers
A few years ago, a new form of book trailer emerged,
known as the cinematic book trailer. Created as a
direct response to the ineffective slideshow book
trailers, cinematic book trailers are web videos made
for books using original, cinematic quality footage shot
exclusively for the book. Nowadays, almost every book
trailer that gets any sort of press coverage, becomes
a viral video, or both, is what we would call a cinematic
book trailer. There are more cinematic book trailers
being produced monthly now than ever before, and
they’re very quickly outperforming their predecessors,
that are still roaming in rarely frequented pockets of
the web like technological dinosaurs.
Cinematic book trailers operate under the rule of
successful new media marketing. Unlike earlier book
trailers, they are not direct ads. People have gotten
really good at closing out of popup windows and
ignoring anything that even remotely hints at the kind
of spammy advertising you see on TV and in print. Why
should a potential reader give a book they’ve never
heard about a precious ninety seconds of their day?
How often do you see people on your own social media
feed sharing videos with no actual video content?
Cinematic book trailers are designed to entertain first,
and create awareness about the book second. It may
seem simple, but you’d be surprised how much more
of a positive result these kinds of book trailers create.

5. Every single day people release countless amounts of
good quality, advertisement free content online, with
every video clamoring for attention. Viewers aren’t
going to stick around for more than ten seconds if it
seems like they’re going to have to sit through a pitch
for a book they’ve never heard of, they’d much prefer
to watch the video of a cat playing Jenga as they scroll
down their social media feed. Your book might be the
best thing since sliced bread, but that’s not going to
translate through sliding still images.
Do cinematic book trailers work?
Cinematic book trailers work so well because they
capture the tone of the book they’re trying to convey,
allowing potential readers to quickly and effectively
grasp the feel of the novel while barely giving away
any of the plot. Cinematic book trailers take what’s
already working so well in the book, and put it onto a
computer screen in an incredibly accessible web
medium. Lately, publishing giants
like Penguin and HarperCollins have made dramatic
increases in both the amounts of cinematic book
trailers they produce, and the budget of each
individual trailer. High quality book trailers are being
implemented everywhere, with particular success in
the YA genre, where the vast majority of readers don’t
remember a time before Youtube.
Another great thing about video is that it can really
broaden your outreach. A good cinematic book trailer
is the type of thing that potential readers will want to
share with their friends, literary websites will want to

6. write articles on, and brands the author as a
professional with a multimedia digital marketing
campaign, a force to be reckoned with. An
appropriately tagged cinematic book trailer uploaded
to a site like Youtube or Vimeo will show up on every
major search engine when readers search for the
book’s title. That’s an additional badge of legitimacy
that will assure a reader still doing their research
because they’re on the fence about purchasing your
book. Unlike paying for an online service like Google
Ads, cinematic book trailers have a lifespan as long as
a the book is being talked about, searched for, or
remembered, and you don’t have to pay per click.
Even in their humble origins, book trailers were seen
as an effective and vital part of a digital marketing
package for any book. It’s only now that, due to an
increase in quality and effort, book trailers are actually
getting through to potential readers, and authors are
starting to reap the rewards. If a potential reader is
entertained enough to watch a full ninety second
cinematic book trailer (always remember that on the
web, shorter is better), that’s a full ninety seconds that
they’ve lingered on your title, and the next time they
hear about your book, you can be sure that they’ll
remember the your name.
Wrap Up
When implemented correctly, along with a complete
marketing campaign, cinematic book trailers can be a
slam dunk, causing complete strangers to seriously
consider your book. Just make sure to incorporate the

7. trailer into all facets of the campaign. Put the book
trailer up on the novel’s homepage, request that the
trailer be included in any author interviews or articles
written about the book, hold a viewing party, tweet
regularly, the possibilities for getting the thing seen
are endless. A cinematic book trailer is a powerful tool,
it can spark curiosity out of thin air, and in a minute
and a half turn a complete stranger into a potential
customer. Once authors see it happen, they tend to
want one for themselves.
Rocco Rivetti is an Associate Producer at Red 14 Films,
a cinematic book trailer production company founded
in Los Angeles, California in the year 2011. He has
produced cinematic book trailers for all kinds of clients,
from large publishing houses like Penguin to self
publishers. R14 cinematic book trailers have appeared
on websites such as Entertainment Weekly, USA
Today, The Rumpus, Hypable, The Millions, Huffington
Post, and BookRiot.