Book “Trailers” are all the rage
Hi Writers, As you probably know, online videos are extremely popular. Posting a video promo for you book on Youtube is a great way to generate some buzz about your…
Hi Writers,
As you probably know, online videos are extremely popular. Posting a video promo for you book on Youtube is a great way to generate some buzz about your book.
Many of the authors I work with are creating video "trailers" for their books and posting links to them on their websites and blogs, as well as forwarding them along with emails and news releases. With nothing but a little creativity and a home video camera you can create a fun and inexpensive marketing tool.
Check out this video by Ryan Mecum, author of Zombie Haiku, a fun horror-movie style book of poetry recently published by HOW Books.
Here's a trailer for a cool screen printing book called Print Liberation, and another one for a book of money saving ideas called The Cheap Book.
Each of these videos show a wide variety of approaches and personalities, but they are all great examples of how to use home video to create a great promo for your book. Not to mention that they look like they were fun to produce.

Jane Friedman is a full-time entrepreneur (since 2014) and has 20 years of experience in the publishing industry. She is the co-founder of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and is the former publisher of Writer’s Digest. In addition to being a columnist with Publishers Weekly and a professor with The Great Courses, Jane maintains an award-winning blog for writers at JaneFriedman.com. Jane’s newest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press, 2018).