How to Create a Cinematic Book Trailer: A Step-by-Step Guide

The market for just about any product is highly visual, which is why video is among the most effective marketing tools. And most people who love books also love movies. They are likely to enjoy movie trailers and decide which movies to watch first based on their trailers. That may also be the case when it comes to books, especially books by first-time and self-published authors.

The Role of Book Trailers in Book Marketing

Video is king, and given the close relationship between books and films, it’s no big surprise that authors and their marketing teams (or authors doubling as their one-person marketing team) are using book trailers to promote books. It’s a move that helps authors catch the attention of an audience that is constantly exposed to video. Or perhaps some people who like to read are caught up at the moment in watching videos and films, so finding a book trailer in their social media feeds or email may just be the right prompt to turn their attention back to reading — starting with your book, why not. Essentially, between your book trailer and your back cover blurb, you should be able to generate healthy numbers: sales and readers. (Some people do buy books but then find they’re not that interested in reading them, so you’ll want to sustain the interest of those who buy your book and get them from purchase to the last page to becoming a fan.)

So, are you ready to explore what goes into creating book trailers?

What Is a Book Trailer?

The word trailer doesn’t necessarily make a book trailer the exact equivalent of a movie trailer. A book trailer is designed to persuade people to read a book whose blurb might not readily grab them or they would otherwise not be aware of. It is a teaser, suggesting the premise of a book, posing tantalizing questions, and/or offering a glimpse of the world that awaits the reader — without giving away the book’s story and, perhaps more importantly, the ending.

You can choose from these four easy options for your book trailer:

A basic slideshow of images

This is the simplest option as far as what materials are involved, but it can be as rich and complex — and therefore compelling — when it comes to your the choice of images and the order in which they appear in the slideshow.

A slideshow with footage and music

For this option, determine what kind of footage would best serve your trailer and where to source it. Then there’s the very important task of finding the right music that will make the footage and the overall trailer compelling. You will also need to ensure that the footage and music in your trailer are consistent with your book in terms of tone and atmosphere.

An animation slideshow with music

This involves music playing over static illustrations animated by moving arts such, as text flying in to, zooming in/out of, or being typed onto the illustrations. As with footage, the style of the illustrations (including colors used, or whether they’re in black and white) should fit the book.

A live action video

Ideally, this should be handled by professionals, so find the right team to work with. Establish clear communication at all times and make sure they have a clear idea of what you need for your trailer. Provide feedback on any partial footage and communicate any additional specific instructions and preferences. Otherwise, and let the pros do their job.

Lastly, regardless of which option you choose, be sure to choose font style and font colors that evoke the world, events, themes, and characters in your story.

5 Important Factors in Creating a Book Trailer

First things first: Let’s take a look at five things that are crucial in creating a book trailer. Knowing these factors allows you to make a smart decision when it comes to what kind of trailer you want and who should create it — is it something you’re able to do or whether you should leave it to the pros.

1. Your target audience

Having a target audience clarifies things and helps ensure the process of creating your book trailer goes as smoothly as possible. In the same way that you need to know who you are writing your book for, you should also know who needs to see your book trailer.

2. Your budget

Determine what you can afford and work within your budget. The quality of your book trailer will be determined more by creativity, marketing savvy, having a realistic budget, and effective planning and time management. If you’re creating your book trailer yourself and you’re enlisting friends or family members to work on certain aspects of the project (e.g., graphics, video shoot, or illustration), be sure to pay them, regardless of whether it’s their day job or just a hobby that they excel at.

3. Your time frame

Even if you opt for the DIY approach, you still need to determine whether you have the time to do the job yourself. Note that you will be busy with other relevant tasks and events in connection with your book’s publication, launch, and ongoing marketing.

4. Length of the trailer

People have a short attention span, so keep your book trailer down to between thirty to ninety seconds. Alternatively, create a longer trailer for your website. People who will view your book trailer on your website will be more likely to watch the longer version, given that they chose to visit your website and therefore want to learn as much as they can about you and your book. Otherwise, post the short version on your social media channels to engage potential viewers/readers who are just scrolling and browsing.

5. Pertinent research

Watch the book trailers for successful books, especially those that went on to become bestsellers or have won awards. Take note of what works and brainstorm based on those. You may also want to make a list of things to avoid, just to be sure.

Creating a Book Trailer

Being knowledgeable about the process of creating a book trailer allows you to engage in productive collaboration with your production team. Knowing the process is particularly crucial if you’re going the DIY route.

The basic elements

These are the basic elements of a book trailer:

• the hook

• script and storyboard

• sourced pics

• picture for the book cover

• video footage

• music and sound effects

• text

• call to action

• distribution strategy

These elements should be consistent with your genre (and subgenre, if any), as well as with your book’s setting and premise.

The process

1. Identify your target audience.

Once you know who will watch your book trailer and read your book, you can then write an engaging, resonant message. To achieve that, you’ll want to focus on such key factors:

• Things that inspire and motivate them

• Topics they are interested in

• Books they’re recommending on their social media

• Source of information on books (i.e., book reviews, social media, by browsing at online/brick-and-mortar bookstores)

Craft a meaningful, persuasive message to your audience to facilitate conversion — that is, turn them into readers/fans.

2. Set the hook.

The hook is what’s unique about your book compared to the other titles in your genre (and subgenre, as the case may be)? Your hook needs to be front and center in your book trailer. Once you have established your hook, you can write, edit, publish, and market your book with a coherent approach.

In your book trailer, you’ll want to set your hook in a brief headline or sentence. Make sure the rest of your book trailer supports your hook.

Here are a few great ideas to get you started:

• Ask the question that underpins the whole book: For example, What if your biggest fear is the only thing that can save your life?

• Pick a memorable passage or line from the book. (For example, if your book has a controversial premise, why not have your voice-over talent read the passage that encapsulates that contentiousness, or use that for the text that accompanies your footage.)

• Include an important but non-spoiler scene from the book.

• Show the book cover. (An evocative cover art can be just as effective as a voice-over or captions.)

Also, take note that some things are best left out of your book trailer, such as the following:

• Summary of your entire novel

• Outline of lessons/takeaways from each chapter of your nonfiction book

• Details other than the hook and the supporting elements

3. Prepare the trailer script and storyboard.

Preparation is crucial to the quality of the book trailer. If you’re wondering whether a storyboard is necessary if the book trailer is supposed to be short, it is. Storyboarding is pretty much the equivalent to creating an outline for your book. It helps you stay organized and better able to integrate or discard any new ideas. With a storyboard, you’ll be able to see where each element should go and how it fits other elements.

Ideally, a book trailer should be no more than two minutes. You don’t need an illustrator’s technical skills — in fact, you can work with stick figures. Just be sure to keep your script and storyboard simple and concise.

If you’re not confident about how to start, use your book’s blurb: Time yourself as you read the words slowly. If you shoot past the 20-to-30-second mark, it means you should rewrite/shorten the script.

Leave gaps for images or action. Remember that a storyboard is designed to remind you of the elements you need to create your book trailer — whether it’s a footage or an action sequence — so you can work effectively.

4. Choose your software.

If you are creating your own book trailer, be sure you’re using the right software. This is crucial to the flow of the rest of the process. You will use software for video editing and splicing together the entire trailer. When choosing a software, consider the time it may take you to familiarize yourself with how the software works. You’ll want to create a quality book trailer that will attract as many readers as possible. The easiest software to start with is Canva.

These options are also worth your consideration:

• FlexClip (AI-powered book trailer maker with free templates)

• Simplified (AI-powered book trailer maker)

• VEED (book trailer maker with ready-made templates)

• Animaker (ideal for animated book trailer

For mobile, you can start with these three:

• CapCut (for TikTok)

• PicPlayPost (for Android and iOS)

• iMovie (for iOS Only)

5. Prepare your visual elements.

Your graphics must be consistent with your book and appeal to your target audience. Also, even if you’re DIY-ing your book trailer production it can’t hurt to get feedback from a pro and a few pointers on the best way to put all the visual and audio elements together. Making a great first impression with your trailer gives your prospective readers even more incentive to buy your book.

Images and video footage

If you’re working on a limited budget, you can always get images and video clips for free online. If you want/need to appear in your book trailer, consider how you appear on camera — in particular, what you wear, how you speak, and how you carry yourself. Consider as well such details as the location, the quality of light, and how these elements relate to your book.

If you need to depict the characters from your novel, hire professional actors who will get the job done right and fairly quickly (which means you save you time and, possibly, money). However, keep in mind that most fiction readers prefer to create their own images of characters and hold on to those images, so avoid showing definitive images; instead, allow your readers to fill in the blanks.

Budget wise, you can keep the cost down by hiring only the absolutely necessary actors. Remember, you’re not shooting a movie, so embrace simplicity and limitations. For action, stick to uncomplicated moves like pouring a glass of water, walking, tapping away at a laptop, flipping the pages of an ancient book, running, peeling a fruit, and the like.

Text

Book trailers need text on screen, specifically: the book logo, the logline (brief summary of your book, often just a single sentence), and when and where your book is available. You should also include two or three slides’ worth of your book’s blurb.

For information about your book’s availability, use phrases like Available Now, Available Soon, and Available on Pre-Order Now.

For your logline, use a logo with a text graphic against a transparent background that can be placed anywhere. Have two versions, generally in black and in white, or any other pair of colors (e.g., red and white) that’s appropriate for your book’s graphics.

Establish visual coherence by using the same font style and colors on your book cover. (Your font styles should all be appropriate for your genre.)

Finally, your last slide should contain the following information: your author website URL, your book’s website URL (if it has its own website), and all pertinent hashtags, your book’s title and your name being the most important (e.g., #ItsAllAboutToEnd #LilaParker).

Notes on style conventions

Hyphenation and the use of apostrophe for possessive forms or to form the plural of letters, numbers, and other nonstandard terms are not observed in hashtags.

The first letter in each word in your hashtags should be in uppercase (that includes articles and the words to and as) to avoid any unfortunate misreading.

Additional tips

- If appropriate for your genre, add some artistic flourishes to either your picture or text slides, or both — as long as the additional graphics don’t clash with your book’s era and genre. (Your decorative graphics should echo your book cover graphics.)

- If creating your book trailer involves a film shoot with a cast and crew, organize food/catering that’s suitable for the time frame of the shoot. You can serve coffee/juices and pastries for a shoot that can wrap up by lunchtime.

6. Prepare your audio elements.

Video needs audio — or at least it’s better with audio. The combination impacts the viewer on multiple levels — intellectual, emotional, physical, etc. Music and sound effects will pull all your visual elements together and help set a certain mood and tone.

You can also use voice-over in addition to music and/or sound effects. For this, hire a professional whose voice is right for your book. For example, get someone with a light, uplifting voice if your book is about the joys of minimal living. Voice-overs are great when you get these two things right: what is said and how it’s said.

7. Add your call to action (CTA).

Just like other online marketing campaigns and collaterals, your book trailer should include a call to action. Place the CTA at the end of your trailer to direct the viewer to the next step. Generally, you’ll want your viewers to buy your book, so you can place two or three CTAs that will take them to, say, Amazon, Kindle, or your website bookstore. Keep your CTAs short:

• Buy on Amazon.com

• Buy from [your website URL]

• Download on Kindle

8. Choose your distribution channels.

Your book trailer should improve your visibility to your audience. However, you need to ensure that happens by finding the best channels to show your book trailer. The most popular online video websites like YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, and Twitch would are great places to upload your book trailer. You can also boost your trailer’s visibility through your platform: Feature your book trailer on your website home page and share it on your social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc.). Also share a link to your trailer in your email to your mailing list contacts.

You can also share your book trailer with other writers, bloggers/vloggers, industry experts, bookstores, and reading clubs that you have interacted with. They will be part of your network, and they will help spread the word about your book by sharing your trailer in their own websites and social media platforms.

The Takeaway

Done right, a book trailer can be a game-changing part of your book promotion campaign. It can help drive engagement and generate interest in your book. That means a higher number of prospective readers and, ultimately, a boost in your book sales. Make smart choices, starting with hiring a quality team to create your book trailer if it needs to be more technical.

If a DIY approach makes sense, then be sure to your research and tick all the boxes in this article, before adding the appropriate creative touch or two.

To maximize visibility for your book trailer, upload them on the major video websites and share them on your website, mailing list, and socials. Your target audience should be able to find you in more than one or two places.

If you’re looking for a self-publishing company to work with, give us a visit at Milton & Hugo, see if we’re a great fit.