book trailers – Patricia J. Parsons

Five Tips for Better Book Trailers

Posted on 17 Mar 2021 by Patricia J. Parsons

I don’t know about you, but I love a good book trailer. And by “good,” I don’t mean expensive. By “good,” I mean a book trailer that concisely captures my imagination for fiction or beckons me to learn more when it comes to nonfiction. In both cases, it has to be tight and visually stimulating.

Over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that book trailers can accomplish a few things, despite the lack of hard evidence that they increase book sales in any significant way. But a great book trailer can be your book’s calling card to book bloggers, reviewers, agents and yes, even to some readers. But it has to be good.

Here are my five tips for better book trailers:

Make sure you set out a specific goal for your book trailer. Trailers without purpose are not focused. Your goal should say what you want to realistically accomplish with these marketing tools and precisely who you want to reach. What and who are essential drivers for what you will put in that book trailer. See tip #2.
Write a script. I cannot tell you how soul-sucking it is to see a book trailer that is clearly unscripted. These pieces of crap are meandering commercials that appear to have been crafted by children. (Scratch that: children these days can generally do better with an iPhone and iMovie.)
Plan the visuals. You know what a script like this ought to look like, don’t you? Your script should resemble a documentary script more closely than a script for a movie. This kind of script layout means that you have two columns: the voice-over (if you’re using one―which I recommend) on one side and a column for visuals opposite it. The visuals should be carefully connected to the voice-over or on-screen titles or the script’s visual direction.
Avoid anything campy or kitschy unless that’s what your book is. Too many writers (and their book trailer makers) seem to think that the more gimmicks they put in, the better. Not so. It can be very off-putting to viewers or even misleading if that approach doesn’t represent the book’s genre, story, voice and message.
Keep it the right length. So, how long should a book trailer be? There are no hard and fast rules about this, but in my experience, I’ve found a kind of sweet spot. A 20-second trailer isn’t a trailer―it’s a teaser. A 4-minute trailer is bordering on a movie.

I suppose the cardinal rule for book trailers is the same as the cardinal rule for writing: never bore your readers (or, in this case, your viewers).

If you’re no expert in video production and editing, find someone who is. The final edit is what we’ll see and what we’ll use to judge your book― and you. Make a good first impression!

For some samples…

Book marketing, Book trailers, Fortune

Book Trailers: For fun or profit?

Posted on 14 Mar 201614 Mar 2016 by Patricia J. Parsons

Clapper Board It happens every time I finish a book-length project. I begin to think about marketing the book to readers who might like/love/need/enjoy it. Of course if it’s a non-fiction book, I’ve given it a lot of thought up front because publishers these days want a fairly well-fleshed-out marketing plan from an author as part of the book proposal long before the book is even completed. If it’s a piece of fiction, I write what I write then think about marketing it after it’s published. I can’t help it; I’m a writer not a content creator! But, what about that marketing?

Well, it’s like this. There are lots of places these days that will purport to be the best places to get your book in front of readers; however, on closer inspection, the members are usually other wannabe writers trying to get their books in front of readers. It’s a bit of a vicious circle. But, if you have a book that takes off, good for you. The elements of a well-constructed book marketing plan may or may not be part of it. But, what precisely is included in that plan?

One of the elements often touted these days is the inclusion of a book trailer. What is a book trailer, you say? Glad you asked, because I love developing them – whether or not they are really useful marketing tools (more about that as we proceed).

I’ve written about book trailers before – almost every time I have a new one I can hardly wait to write about them – not because they are so wonderful, but because I think they are fun. Yes, that’s it – I think they’re fun.

As I defined them in a long-ago blog post, “…a book trailer is a short video clip that presents a small sample of a book in a similar format to that of a movie.” When I wrote that original post (Book trailers Part 1) and its follow-up (Book Trailers: What’s the Point?) way back in 2011, book trailers were very new. There was very little information on the impact they may or may not have on books sales, but what I did perceive at the time was this: quite apart from the unknown of whether or not someone would actually be inclined to buy a book based on seeing a trailer, how that trailer made its way onto someone’s computer screen would be paramount in finding out if it could be be an effective sales tool.

Fast-forward five years, and here we are still discussing the same issue. Again, I’ve been searching for data on the impact of book trailers.

There is little doubt that in the past five years online video in general has seen an incredible upsurge. That by itself, however, doesn’t bolster any data supporting the usefulness of the book trailer. According to one video trailer producer, “Readers are 64% more likely to purchase your book if they see a book trailer that effectively promotes your book. (Source: ComScore)” and “Visitors to your author website stay an average of 2 minutes longer than on author sites that do not use video. (Source: ComScore)”.[1] FYI: according to their web site ComScore is “a leading cross-platform measurement company that precisely measure audiences, brands and consumer behavior…”[2] Of course, MacLain reiterates the notion that distribution is key. You can have the most fantastic, well-planned and well-executed video but if no one knows it exists, its going to be for your eyes only.

Of course there are reasons you might want to skip the book trailer production all together. Marisol Dahl, writing on The Write Life Blog suggests that a bad book trailer is worse than no trailer at all, and further reiterates that it can be difficult to determine return on investment (and the investment can be massive).[3]

The truth is that most of those touting the value of book trailers are usually individuals and companies who actually produce trailers. Unless they have hard data, their promotion of book trailers as a sales tool is pretty self-serving. Book trailers certainly should be useful marketing tools if we just had a way to track their success after wide distribution.

I personally love planning and writing scripts for book trailers then giving that script to my trusty video developer (my husband) and letting him loose on the material. I keep them brief (certainly under two minutes, generally under a minute-and-a-half), and share them as widely as I can. So, if you’ve considered a book trailer I can give you several caveats as a writer for their production.

You probably want a book trailers if:

You think it’s fun to have one;
You can write a brief, tight script;
You can give the potential reader a glimpse of the material without giving it all away;
You can afford to produce one;
You have somewhere to post it; and
You have no illusions about how many sales it might garner.

If you can’t fulfil all of these, you might want to step away.

Anyway, I think they’re fun. If you a minute, here’s my latest trailer for my new medical thriller The Body Traders.

[1] Jerome MacLain as quoted in “Book Trailers And Using Video For Book Marketing” by Joanna Penn (March 2, 2015). http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2015/03/02/book-trailers/

[2] https://www.comscore.com/About-comScore

[3] Marison Dahl November 5, 2015. “Are Book Trailers a Marketing Must-Have?” http://thewritelife.com/are-book-trailers-a-marketing-must-have/

Book launches, Books

So, who will really read your book?

Posted on 5 May 20155 May 2015 by Patricia J. Parsons

In 1848 a writer named B.H. Smart produced a book quite improbably titled: Manual of rhetoric: with exercises for the improvement of style or diction, subjects for narratives, familiar letters, school orations, &c.: being one of two sequels to “Grammar on its true basis”. It was published in London by Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans and is reputed to be the oldest publication that could be reasonably described as a writing manual. Since then, manual after manual has been produced with the objective of improving writing everywhere.

Today, all you need to do is plug the search term “writing manuals” into Amazon’s search function and you’ll be greeted with almost 12,000 hits; if you plug in “writers’ guides” you’ll be rewarded with almost 19,000. Within these search results there are the direct successors of Smart’s manual such as the Chicago Manual of Style (originally published in 1906) which, along with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, is one of the go-to, required writing manuals for academic and scholarly writers throughout the English-speaking world. In addition to these specific style guides there are books for poets, science and technical writers, novelists, memoirists, romance writers, creators of creative non-fiction and every other conceivable type of writer one could imagine. From the style guides and how-to manuals for specific genres the writers’ guides begin to become more esoteric with books like Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing & Life, and Natalie Goldberg’s iconic Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, to the more recent offering from Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft where writers weave their personal stories around writing advice to inspire would-be writers. If you’re a writer or aspiring writer yourself, you probably own a few of these – or at least in my view, you should! All of this seems to be in spite of American journalist and writing guru William Zinsser’s pointed comment in his own best-selling writing guide On Writing Well, that most people have no idea how poorly they write.

Poor writing or not, the rush to publish in the 21st century is more like a torrent where the flood-gates, in the form of agents and editors, are no longer needed to stop the outpouring of book-length publications, for better or for worse. Writers are flocking to self-publishing with a vengeance. A quick troll through the social media communities, groups and networks of “writers” suggests that the era of co-dependency is upon us in a way never before imagined as writers look to one another for guidance and moral support in their publishing endeavors. Rather than being connected to publishers, mentors or readers, they are connected to other writers – all as unknown as they are.

What’s truly puzzling, though, is how no one seems to notice their members who are spelling, grammar and stylistically-challenged, not to mention devoid of talent. At least they’re not admitting it with their continual five-star reviews of every piece of drivel produced by their peers. Yet, within all of this publishing-related noise, there are truly unique and important voices that need to find a way out of the slush. What they all need is a reality check. I’d like to help to provide that. And help those unique and important voices find their way out of the noise. So, I’ve written yet another manual – well it’s sort-of a manual.

The purpose of my new book is to provide a tough-love reality check on the vagaries of the new publishing models for aspiring writers while at the same time providing you with a kind of road map based on my experience as a writer, writing teacher, traditionally-published author and indie author.

For my blog readers who have been here a while, you might recognize some of the foundational material in the book – it did evolve from this blog (there’s a whole other story, isn’t it? Turning blogs into books. I could tell you…). There is a whole lot more, though, and I’ve tried to tell readers my own story of making it onto the traditional publishing merry-go-round, and then dabbling in self-publishing. Along the way, I learned a lot and this experience, coupled with my research over the years as as a university prof, has resulted in this book.

Here’s the book trailer. Let me know what you think.