There are a lot of methods for authors to market their books. Thanks to the power of the Internet, you can include the creation of book trailers among those methods. But how effective are trailers when it comes to book sales and marketing?
If you target your audience correctly, trailers can help you generate a few extra sales. Of course, this also depends on everything from your niche to the video itself. There are a lot of cogs turning when it comes to the success of any marketing method.
Not everyone is going to have the same experience. A “good” book is subjective, and everyone differs when it comes to style and storytelling, let alone marketing their books.
In other words, what works for one person may not work for another. There are no absolutes when it comes to being an author.
Are Book Trailers Effective?
Did you know that people are 52% more likely to share video content than any other kind? It’s quite obvious nowadays to see how much more video content there is available as opposed to simple text. In fact, posts on social media often get far more attention if they include an image or a video.
Let’s take into consideration TikTok. In 2021, the BookTok hashtag contributed to about 20 million printed books. Although the BookTok community has plateaued somewhat since then, it still contributes to quite a few sales for many authors. And this doesn’t include the slew of eBook sales and downloads.
Also, consider how most social media platforms are pushing for video content. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and many others include more videos nowadays than ever before. That’s because video content works whether it’s purely entertainment or trying to sell a product.
According to one survey, 15.5% of people bought a book solely because of a trailer, while 45% said the trailer played some kind of influence. What this means is that 60.5% of viewers could buy your book from a trailer and a decently crafted landing page.
Keep in mind that your book’s description and blurb are going to have a major impact on those sales.
What Makes Book Trailers Effective?
Making a trailer doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll make a ton of sales. Like any other piece of content, it needs to resonate and engage the viewer.
In a lot of ways, making a video is a lot like writing a good blog post. Sometimes, it can take a great deal of planning to create something that people want to consume.
Not every video is going to be effective for your target audience. But with a bit of practice and tracking some data, you can start to put out book trailers that people love to watch, even if they don’t buy your book.
If you use a platform like YouTube, you could also generate income from those trailers through AdSense. But that takes at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time in a 12-month period.
Nonetheless, you can monetize the trailers in more ways than one.
Being Optimized for Mobile Devices
First, content of any kind needs to be optimized for mobile devices. As of September 2024, About 63.7% of users on the Internet are browsing from phones and tablets. If you have details that are too small, visitors might not even be aware of them.
In terms of video content, you’ll want to pay attention to visuals and sound as not every device is going to display them the same. The last thing you want is to accidentally blow out someone’s eardrums who may be listening through a headset.
Then, you’ll want to consider the dimensions of the videos. Most people will focus on the verticle screen sizes similar to that of TikTok or YouTube Shorts. However, a lot of people watch YouTube videos from their phones in the 16:9 ratio format.
The bottom line is that you want to make sure your book trailers are formatted for mobile devices. That way, they look good on anything from an 85″ television to a 5″ phone screen.
Hitting the Target Audience
Your target audience is where you’ll make the most book sales. The problem is that not every author knows where these people hang out online. Luckily, most marketing tools have functions to help you engage those specific readers.
For example, most pay-per-click campaign tools have entries for keywords to target on certain platforms. So, if you’re marketing a “dark western” book, the term “western book” could be something to help you find specific readers.
Finding your target audience is crucial for any type of content. This is especially true if you’re tying up a bunch of money in an advertising campaign. You don’t want that money to be wasted by showing ads to those who aren’t interested in your genre.
Hashtags, keywords, book sites, and more are all relevant to finding your readers. Depending on the book, it can take some trial and error to fine-tune the strategy. However, the time is usually well-spent as it can increase your sales exponentially.
Capturing Readers’ Attention
You have about 10 to 15 seconds to grab the attention of your viewer. This is where your “hook” comes into play. If you don’t want potential readers to simply swipe past the book trailer, you need to get them hooked almost immediately.
Action, impactful dialogue, humor, and stunning visuals can all contribute to a great hook. Essentially, you want the trailer for your book to quickly break down why people should read it.
Perhaps you have an extremely funny line of dialogue or a scene that resonates with the readers.
One of the best things you could do is to take a look at how movie and book trailers perform on sites like YouTube or TikTok. How do they open and how are they effective at keeping you watching the entire clip?
Capturing the Essence of the Book
The essence of your book is vital, especially when connecting with your target reader. This is all about the tone, pacing, and overall “feel” of how the story is delivered.
For example, you wouldn’t use cutesy and colorful cartoon graphics to promote a gothic horror novel. Well, that is unless you’re promoting a twisted version of Barbie from a gothic perspective (which could be quite fun).
A dark fantasy might use PG-horror imagery and slower musical scores while a kids-lit book might have more puppies and rainbows. It all really depends on the story you’re promoting. Just keep in mind that you still want trailers that adhere to the guidelines of certain platforms. Keep it family-friendly as much as possible.
The overall tempo of your book is what will engage your target audience. It goes along the lines of using the hook and capturing their attention. A good line of dialogue with fitting background music using a relevant backdrop for that particular scene could go a long way to get someone to buy your book.
Being Short and Sweet
You don’t want book trailers to be too long. You want them short and exciting. If you think about it, a book trailer is nothing more than an advertisement for a product. Most people are going to skip it unless you get them hooked right off the bat.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with using a platform like YouTube to upload longer trailers. Some of the best movie trailers are longer than three minutes. But for a book, you might have better luck if the video is shorter.
A good length for a trailer is between 30 and 90 seconds, depending on the book. However, you can always create varying lengths of those trailers and monitor which ones perform the best, short or long. By using a YouTube channel to monitor those views, this is relatively easy to determine.
I’m using YouTube as a base for showing book trailers simply because it’s incredibly easy to share those videos virtually anywhere while having the potential to monetize the channel. It’s a great platform to use as a base of operations when it comes to visual marketing strategies.
Using Relevant Imagery and Voicing
Elements that also work with your hook are the imagery and voicing. They need to be relevant to your book to have the greatest effect. In this case, it’s all about matching the vibe of the story.
Whether you’re using still images or animations, it’s vital that they fit well with your book. You’re setting the pace for what the viewer might expect. A book trailer for a dark horror tale that is full of sunshine and rainbows wouldn’t perform as well compared to one of shadows, dark recesses, and implied dread.
The idea is to create relevance between your book and the reader. Establish something that resonates and the trailer could perform exceptionally well for driving sales. And that begins by using imagery and voicing that sets the tone for the book.
Including Text
Although a trailer is often visually orientated, some will use text as a way to break up the visuals to give brief snippets of a story’s arc or its progression. You often see how this works in movie trailers or while watching certain YouTube videos.
The text itself is usually just a small blurb, perhaps three or four words long. It’s meant as a break between the sequence to both tell a story as well as disrupt the pacing of the video.
There is a reason why video creators don’t often record a single stretch of content. You’ll often see screenshots, video clips, adjustments in video camera angles, sounds, and other techniuqes during the recording. It gives the eyes and brain something else to engage during the message.
In this instance, a line of text can be exceptionally effective at relaying more of the story while not being intrusive to the video itself. Bear in mind, though, that you don’t want too much text as it could easily take away from the quality of the trailer.
Including the Call-to-Action
Lastly, the call-to-action, or CTA, is one of the most crucial parts of any trailer or video. It’s a call to the viewer to take a certain action relevant to the content. In the case of a book trailer, it’s clicking a link to the book’s landing page for the viewer to make a purchase.
The call-to-action can take on a variety of forms. You can use basic text such as “Buy Your Copy Today!” to something as simple as “Available on Amazon.” The point is to prompt the viewer to read or buy the book.
Although you can create book trailers without using CTAs, it’s unwise. Generally speaking, a single call-to-action has the potential to increase sales by more than 1600%! But keep in mind that this is more of a general statistic. You’ll have to try a few yourself and monitor the click-through rates to see how effective a CTA is for you.
Should You Make Book Trailers?
Creating a trailer for your book isn’t going to guarantee sales. To be honest, nothing can guarantee sales outside of buying it yourself. You can’t force someone to buy or read your book. All you can really do is try to convince them to give it a try.
With that being said, it’s hard to ignore just how effective and popular video content is online. It’s one of the reasons why TikTok is so popular and why YouTube is the second most visited website in the world second only to Google.
And even Google often shows videos on its search results pages.
Given how easy it is to make video content nowadays, it has opened the floodgates for anyone to become a creator. Some apps will even include artificial intelligence to help streamline the process for a cinematic look. Almost anyone can start putting together some amazing footage without having an iota of experience.
In the end, though, it all comes down to the author. Not everyone has the patience or money to learn and explore video-making apps. If you’re like me, it mostly comes down to not having the time to dump into learning something new.
Despite some apps being user-friendly with a drag-and-drop interface, it takes more than just flashy graphics to coax someone to buy a book.
There are some things you’d want to take into account before you start pumping out book trailers.
Considering the Software
The most important aspect of publishing book trailers is the software you choose to use. Not all apps are created equal, and some may either be too difficult to use, to expensive to purchase, or don’t have the right assets for your needs. It’s probably going to take a bit of trial and error to find the one that works best for your needs.
Luckily, the Internet is full of apps of all kinds, which makes the search easy. The problem is that diving into each app to find the best is going to tap a lot of your time. If you think you’re going to be able to slap a book trailer together in minutes, post it on TikTok, and reap a whirlwind of sales, you’re mistaken.
That’s because there is more to setting up a good trailer than just using a few stock images in your favorite movie-making app. Anyone can create a video, but you want to create a video that encourages someone to buy your book.
The best course of action is to try several book trailer apps, compare what they offer, and take into consideration the cost. The idea is to at least sell enough books from the trailer to pay for the software. Otherwise, it just becomes an expensive hobby.
Consider How Movie Trailers Work
The purpose of a movie trailer is to convince the audience they need to watch it. They often show exciting elements, comedic dialogue, action sequences, and other highlights that would inspire people to rush to the theater on release day.
Book trailers should have a lot of the same nuances.
For some authors, this isn’t necessarily a difficult process. A lot of authors, myself included, think very cinematically while we write. In essence, we already have the movie version of the book in our heads.
Regardless, taking a look at the sequences of great movie trailers can give you some ideas about how to proceed with your book trailer. A lot of the same principles apply.
Just remember that you don’t want to give too much of the plot away in a trailer. After all, the purpose is to get people to buy your book. You don’t want to spoil any of the vital elements of certain scenes or plots. However, you do want to give them a taste of what the story offers to pique their interest.
You want to strike a balance between being vague and too descriptive. Too far in either direction can ultimately detract from the purpose of the trailer.
Time Consuming, But Great Potential
Putting together an effective book trailer is going to take time. Sure, there are tools out there that will streamline the process. Some may even tout being able to help you make videos right now. But it doesn’t mean any of them will be good from the perspective of your target audience.
Even as a YouTuber, there are videos I upload that don’t perform nearly as well as others. So, get the thought of instant success and gratification out of your head.
Despite how long it takes to create a good video, the end results are usually worth the time. Considering how you want to use these videos to generate book sales, you want the highest quality you can muster.
As I pointed out earlier, though, video content is extremely popular today. In some cases, you can simply get on TikTok and crank out a few videos from your phone to generate book sales. It’s not overly complicated. In reality, I’ve seen many authors using the BookTok hashtag with nothing more than themselves holding the book up and talking about it a bit.
Those are somewhat different from a full-blown trailer, though. In this post, I’m mostly covering creating professional-looking videos for the explicit purpose of selling books. But starting with basic videos on social media is a great place to start.
Outsourcing Book Trailers
If you don’t have a lot of time on your hands, you can always outsource the book trailers. In fact, you can find several professionals on sites like Fiverr that can set them up without breaking the bank. Then again, there are a few who’ll wind up costing you a few bucks in the end.
The nice thing about outsourcing is that you can get decent book trailers no matter how busy you are with work and life. Instead of trying to secure time for yourself to make them, a skilled professional can help you out. The other side of that coin, though, is the cost.
Every professional is different, and some might charge you a fair amount depending on length and detail. Visual effects, voice acting, animations, and more can run up the bill for something flashy.
If you have the extra money and are short on time, outsourcing may be the way to go. But if you don’t have a lot of money and can spend a bit of time learning some software, it may be better to create your own book trailers. It really depends on your specific situation.
Tracking Book Sales
A lot of authors will build bookstores into their websites to generate sales. Doing so gives you the chance to track the data regarding where in which those sales originate. This means you can track what kind of advertisements for your books are working.
Unfortunately, Amazon and several other books sites don’t track this information for you. Instead, you need to pay attention to when your book trailers go live and when you generate sales. It’s a bit of a pain to keep up with at times, but the information may be quite valuable.
For example, your trailer may perform better in the mornings on Instagram and better at night on TikTok. Perhaps your trailer brings in a larger audience at 10:00 am on a Saturday from Facebook. It’s information like this that can help you build a great marketing strategy for your trailer.
My point is that tracking sales data and paying attention to what is working can ultimately help you make more money from book sales. I know some of you might think it’s tedious. But if it could lead to nearly doubling the sales of your book, wouldn’t it be worth the few minutes to check the data?
The best part is that some platforms make this data easily accessible. There might be a slight learning curve to understanding the numbers, but the end results could turn you into a best-selling author. And that’s not an exaggeration.
The Cost of Making Book Trailers
So, how much does it cost to create a good book trailer? That depends on a lot of factors, unfortunately. Some apps like Animaker have free versions that are limited but usable. Or, you could create a live-action trailer using friends and family, some costumes, your smartphone, and Adobe Premier.
Then, you could add in the costs of those costumes if you want to get fancy with your trailers. For the cover of my book, Kingmaker, I spent about $250 on the leather armor, sword, and skeleton. I could surely use all of that for the trailer of the book as well.
My point here is that the cost of making book trailers depends on how elaborate you want to go and what visuals you want to add. With the right software, you could make something stunning for less than $10 per month. Or, you could spend several hundred dollars to rival the quality of movie trailers.
I suggest starting small and testing the waters with free versions of apps. That way, you can potentially make a decent trailer while getting a feel for how that particular app works. Then, you can decide how you want to move on from there.
Are Book Trailers Right for You?
Not everyone feels they need to make book trailers, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Something as simple as talking about your book on TikTok can generate quite a few sales each month. Or, perhaps you feel more comfortable attending book fairs and author events.
It’s all part of the marketing element for publishing your book. If they don’t know it exists, no one will buy it.
However, you can’t deny how effective video marketing is nowadays. A quick, 30-second video can lead to enough sales to hit that best-selling mark for your genre on Amazon. Well, depending on how it’s used, anyway. Creating the video is only part of uploading book trailers. As I said earlier, you still have to find your target audience.
So, you need to do whatever you can to reach as many readers as possible. And since video content is more shared on social media than any other type of content, a lot of people can help you reach more just because they liked your trailer.
All it takes is one, good, viral video to deliver a grand following. Just remember that success is never a guarantee. It may take several book trailers to come across that one layout and flow that works best for your needs.
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