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How to Make Your Book Trailer Stand Out From the Rest

By Kavitha

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Book trailers are a relatively new phenomenon in book advertising, but they have taken off with a vengeance. Every author feels the need to make a book trailer now. But it tends to get lost among the thousands of others out there without something to prep it up. Here are a few tips to make sure your trailers don’t just reach your audience, but induce them to look up your book and read it.

Be informative

Your book trailer must have a structured outline showing how the story proceeds. It must make the viewer want to read the book to find out more. You can tell a short story, which ends with an interesting question that would compel the viewer to read the book to discover the answer. The information must include not just what the story is about but also give out particulars about the release date, where the book can be obtained, and other details. Make sure to keep the length of the video short. An ideal trailer should play for around thirty to ninety seconds.

Target your audience

Different books are targeted at different people. Design the video keeping this target demography in mind. Use short dialogues and images to get your point across. For example, if you want to advertise a book for children, try to show things that would appeal to them. If your book is a romance, showing a fight sequence might be counter-productive. With non-fiction genres like cookbooks, history and business, you have the choice of putting out snippets of information. Make the trailer about the book and the genre. But above all, make it about the potential reader.

Avoid blocks of text

Avoid like the plague! Nobody wants to read great chunks of text in a video. If your video contains nothing but text, no one is going to be interested. Instead, make an animation, include some dialogues, and add some music. Do anything but walls of text. If you must have a narration, include a narrator. The nuances in the tone of the narrator will help a lot in making the same text more appealing.

Create the right atmosphere

Create a relevant and wonderful atmosphere in your trailer that neatly showcases the content of the book. This is especially true for fiction where people really want to experience the world that the author has created. There are many different ways you can use creativity to give atmosphere to your trailer. You can use some special effects for this purpose. Music is another great way to create the right atmosphere. You could also use the voice over to depict the feel of the book.

First 10 seconds rule

When you see movies, you’ll realize that there are many ways to tell a story. Sometimes, there is a prologue to show the background before starting the actual story. In other movies, the plot takes time to build up and then gains pace. These are great ways to tell a story when you have 90 minutes at your disposal. When you have 90 seconds, especially when your sales depend on them, you can’t afford your audience to get bored at the beginning. Ensure that the viewers are hooked within the first few seconds of the trailer. Make an impact in the first ten seconds; you can get to the details later. End the video before the viewer loses interest.

Image credit: Andrew Perry on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/IMG_20141217_101736441.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Kavitha is a freelance content writer and French translator, and has been working in this field since 2008. She has degrees in computer applications and international business and has a background in business and international trade. She enjoys learning languages and is currently learning Japanese. Her interests vary from books and writing to travelling and history.[/author_info] [/author]

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