The Book Trailer: Useful tool or just a little bit of fun?

One week from today, SECRETS OF THE RIGHTEOUS: THE ARK CITY CONFIDENTIAL CHRONICLES, BOOK TWO will be released. It was exciting to see it up on the Amazon site for Kindle pre-orders. Any time you see your work available to the public it is a kind of validation.

In keeping with all my previous works (the self-published ones and the ones out of print with a prior publisher) I have put together my own book trailers. I do not use a professional company. They are not mini-movies with live actors in real settings. I am not equipped financial to do that. I use photos that I myself have taken. I manipulate them, when necessary, through CyberLink Photo Director. I use Windows Movie Maker to edit and create effects. And, I continue to use the royalty free music of the incomparable Kevin MacLeod from his website, Incompetech.

To be perfectly honest, I am not sure how much these book trailers add to sales. I upload them to YouTube as well as various pages on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. For a guy who went to film school in the early 80’s where everything was analog and took forever to achieve, these efforts are primarily for my own satisfaction. The fact that I CAN do it means more than what it is designed to do for me.

Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder if there are folks out there who, being uncertain of a new book, might just be persuaded to invest in it as long as the trailer sparks their interest. When it is released, I hope you will let me know what you think of the effort.