Do Book Trailers Sell Books? Post your book trailer here!

[Pearson Oldmitz]

My friend, author Stephen Poleskie, recently had a book trailer made for his book VIGILIA'S TEMPEST. While it had over 700 hits on YouTube in the first months it was up, and has now passed 4300 hits, he is not quite sure how many sales this actually accounted for. Here is the link to his book trailer if you would like to check it out: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY5eCVRnDw0

Let me know what your opinion is of the effectiveness of book trailers, positive or negative. Please feel free to post your book trailer here if you have one, or someone elses if you wish to comment on it.

Best wishes,

Pearson Oldmitz

[Pearson Oldmitz]

Hi Andrew,

The advance that the writer I was referring to in my previous post received $10,000, which is about normal for mid-list authors. I know for a fact that a lot of these "six-figure advances" are pure hype to sell the book to the public. And ten thousand dollars does not buy you much advertising these days. Unfortunately, if your book does not earn the advance back you are out the door, and don't expect your agent to go to bat for you, or to find you another publisher. This is why so many writers are following the lead of the recording industry and publishing their own titles.

Best wishes,

Pearson

[Dominique Petersen]

Hi all,

I have Book Trailers for 2 of my books. This one I did myself:

http://youtu.be/APchrIx2A9I

This one was professionally done:

http://youtu.be/U0pFCqDcV2o

[Pearson Oldmitz]

Hi Dominique,

Thank you for your posting. I will definately check out your books. I did watch your two trailers several times, and found them both to be very well done. For me, however, I did find the one that you made yourself to be more effective than the second one. My reason was that while they both conveyed just about the same amount of information, the professional one took twice as long to view.

I am sure that the readers, and myself, would be interested to learn which computer program you used to make your own trailer, and perhaps how much prior experience you had working with media. I have talked to a number of writers who would like to have a trailer for their book, and just don't have the bucks to have one made, but do have the time to tinker.

Good luck with your books. I hope to hear from you again.

Best wishes,

Pearson

 

[Joseph Valentinetti]

Nice trailers. The one you did yourself was as good as the other one.

[Douglas Brown]

The cover artist for my first book composed the art and music while I created the story of the trailer. I don't know that trailers actually help sales of books (especially if the trailer is done poorly) but if the trailer is average or above, it is one more way to expose your work to people. This trailer, for instance, has been viewed on Youtube 471 times. Did anyone run out and buy my book after viewing this? I doubt it, but it was another avenue for getting my work in front of people who may never see it otherwise. Here it is. 

[Pearson Oldmitz]

Hi Douglas,

Thank you for posting. I checked your trailer out full size on YouTube and found it very effective. I especially liked your choice of typeface. Good luck with the book; I'll give it a look.

Best wishes,

Pearson

[Chris Paton]

Hi Pearson and all, this is an interesting thread.

 

I had never heard or even thought about book trailers before I fell over one on Amazon. As many books are available for pre-order way before they have been finished (or so it appears) I can get hungry for information about the book. A book trailer works, for me, in the same way as a movie trailer, it adds to the anticipation. I enjoy book trailers with the author telling a little about the book and I believe it helps sell the book. It is perhaps inevitable that book trailers have become more popular as multimedia - not least blogs - encourage diverse means to represent information. Book trailers prove that books are not static and out of date, instead a good trailer will open the door to the world or story waiting to be discovered within the book.

Where indie authors are concerned, poor book trailers like poor covers are unlikely to increase sales, not from me anyway. LOL But a well-produced trailer, not necessarily professionally produced, combined with a strong cover, extract and description might make all the difference. It might even begin to increase the price indie authors dare to charge for their work.

[Joseph Valentinetti]

I make book trailers. A video on how-to make your own book trailer will be available on the first. And, of course, if you're too busy writing to be bothered I can help. Here's some examples. Good luck and, Have A Happy...

I Appreciate Your Courtesy

Joseph

[Joseph Valentinetti]

[Joseph Valentinetti]

[Joseph Valentinetti]

[Joseph Valentinetti]