Creating a Book Trailer: Why Do It Yourself?
You been considering the virtues of a book trailer and you think you want to put one together yourself. That’s the path that I decided to take too. I didn’t come to that decision lightly. I spent plenty of time watching trailers and learning what other people had to say about the process of producing their own trailer before I committed to the effort. Take a look at my prior post for some of the initial steps I took before making my decision: Creating a Book Trailer: Getting Started.
Why Do It Yourself?
You’re in control (and writers tend to like that when it comes to their books). You get to devise the look and feel of the trailer – images, script, sound, length, and everything in between. It will cost you time and effort but it will save you money. It is my opinion that if you have a good eye for this sort of thing and do your homework ahead of time, then you can knock something out that will look professional and help you promote your book more effectively. I also found the process of putting my trailer together to be a lot of fun. It allowed me to be stretch my creative muscles and made me think about my book from a different perspective.
Why Let Someone Else Create Your Trailer?
You might want to hand the task over to a professional if you:
can’t dedicate the time and energy required to put a trailer together
don’t enjoy searching out and working with images/video
hate the idea of gearing up on applications you will need to create your trailer such as Photo Story 3 or Windows Live Movie Maker
get stressed just thinking about where and how to post your book trailer once it’s finished.
Negatives: This approach is going to cost you and you are going to lose some creative control.
My Take on the Bottom Line
Paying someone else to do your trailer can be very costly–the kind of costly that will make you think twice about doing a trailer at all even if you don't wind up gravitating towards the high end of the price scale. I would rather spend some money on having a professional knock out a killer cover for me than a book trailer. The cover is key. I know that covers sell books because they make a difference to me as a reader – they attract or repel me in a glance in the brick and mortar bookstore and when I am buying an ebook on the web. I have bought books based on a good cover. I feel confident that I am not alone in that. An eye-catching cover is a going to give you a great bang for your buck and having a professional create one with some real kick to it is going to be easier on the budget than springing for someone to do your trailer. I say put some money into your cover and do your trailer on your own.
I was able to find a graphic artist who put together a custom cover that makes my heart sing every time I look at it. He did the cover for a reasonable price and I had a lot of say about what I wanted that cover to be. He really respected my vision. The cover also does double duty because I used it in the book trailer. If you are creating your trailer before you have released your book, get your cover done in time to add to your trailer.
