Make your own book video "trailers" for free

[Linton]

I have an ebook manual for this that's very good. It shows you how to make them, where to get support, where and how to get free vid clips, artwork, sounds and music.

There's even a chapter on how to do a "quickie" video if you don't want to put in much time and only have a cover for artwork.

Also, how to use your video for promotion. Most people make them (or pay money for assembly line vids) and just plunk them on YouTube and walk away.

This is not rocket science. It's also fun to make videos for other purposes.

Everybody has videos these days and they are all starting to look the same (all those $90 specials from the same people accessing the same image banks). Your long suit is your talent and knowledge of your book...it's possible you can make a video that gets more attention than the "factory" ones.

If not, what the hell... you're only out six bucks.

http://adoroworks.mexipost.com/tutvid...

[E.J.]

Linton is right. It's very simple to make a "quickie" book video.

I used Windows Movie Maker, which is bundled free with Windows XP, and completed my first book trailer in one day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VdugB...

I'd be happy to answer any questions about how I made my book trailer.
-E.J.

[Linton]

Very nice, EJ. One thing I'd suggest is more use of pans and zooms to get away from the "slide show" look.
(Not necessarily for this video, but for other readers here, and in general.)

Really nice music.

One tip, the last title was rushed. The conversion to YouTube tends to chop off the end of a vid for some reason. I've learned to leave a couple of seconds of black card at the end, (past the end of the music) to avoid that.

[[deleted user]]

Hello Erica and Linton. I have to agree that creating simple book videos are rather simple and fun. Writers do need a business that will make professional, affordable and unique clips for us. Until then, I'll do my own.Yes, it's not great, buy it cost me a few bucks instead of a few hundred bucks or more to get the same thing.
Your elcome to have a peek at mine.
http://www.goodreads.com/videos/show/...
Hope the link works.
I'm willing to help anyone that wants/is creating one.
Best regards. Andy

[Linton]

Damn, Andy, that's a great job.

Very professional, as good as anything we're likely to see done by "video mills" for sure.

[[deleted user]]

Why, thank you young Sir. We does our best with what we've got, eh?
Erica, I watched your video and agree with Linton. Also, I realise that it's poetry, but the music didn't instill dark to me, more romantic. You could try something a bit more broody? Hope you're not offended by my remarks and I'd be glad to help anytime. If you want, I'll see if I can dig something I feel more suiting? You can always discard as it's just an opinion?

[[deleted user]]

Linton, I watched all your vids and liked IMAGINARY LINES the best. MEXICAN SLANG 101 vid was really enjoyable too (funny and apt for the book content described.)

[Stacy]

I used onetruemedia.com to create my book trailer for my mystery novel Twenty-Five Years Ago Today.

The site has a great selection of free music and effects. I bought some royalty-free photos at fotolia.com which cost me $12, and I paid $2.99 for a higher quality post to You Tube, so the whole project cost me $15 and I'm pleased with how it came out. The link is at http://bit.ly/d1q71I

Please stop by and rate it if you get a chance.

[[deleted user]]

Nicely done,Stacey. Music is apt for romance/crime, clear picture matter accentuate the genre. The slides don't seem to flow with the music, but that may be a restriction of software, and I think is one of the most common problems in a vast amount of book vids. I don't feel the timing is quite right in mine either, but close. Your vid is very good though and I'm going to sign up to take a closer look at what's on offer.
I find that even with MS Movie maker there are restricions, especially on the time between each frame. It's murder (pardon the pun) trying to get the timing right. That's why I'm trying different software, trying to find one that you can manually input the frame length (from 0 secs to undefined)

[Linton]

I haven't found that to be a problem with WMM. Or seen it with that many book vids, actually. Most of them just have one piece of background music, it seems.
The "analog" method of stretching "frames" to length on WMM has a lot of advantages.

[[deleted user]]

I found with WMM that to get amore precise (as you can) time frame, you need to max the zoom, but it's still restricting as it can be 0.05 secs out of time. Am I being picky or should I move to another tool da ya tink?

[Linton]

It's a knack, and yeah, you end up upping the zoom to get more precise, but how precise do you need? .05 seconds is going to make a big difference in a video?

[Stacy]

Thanks for checking out the video, Andy, and for the comments. Onetruemedia does let you control how many seconds you want to keep the picture or text up there - it's hard to get it to match exactly with the music though. I tried not to go much over a minute figuring attention span on the internet is short. They don't have a lot of selection for music, at least as far as the type of faster-paced upbeat songs that I prefer, so for the next video, I may try their premium program which is something like $39 and has more selections and effects. But the free version worked out well for this one.

[Linton]

Give WMM a try. Run up the zoom and you end up seeing a graph of the music and can spot the beat patterns, lulls and end of a passage or piece really easy, then just drag the picture or clip to the same place. I'm not sure why the digital approach would help this out much.

[[deleted user]]

I just find that the time jumps. I'm using the mouse to drag the length of frame time, is there another way that would help? It gets infuriating when the pic just misses the beat. Ok, I am being too picky. It is after all a basic package. The digital approach would mean that you could state the precise time that a frame stays on screen, rather than using drag with the mouse which, for me, tends to jump (even with zoom at max)
the one minute vid seems to be the general advise on the net. I have watched a Lot of book vids, and some are...terrible. One that broke the mould was an author who narrated, but I think he knew he had a natural voice talent. Others done the same, but five minutes of mumbling. Cringe. Snore.
Just thought of something, I think I'll try rumping up the screen res and see if that gives a better zoom. Can but try, eh?