15 ways to promote your book with a book trailer

By
Chris Robley
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By Chris Robley -

15 ways to promote your book trailerA book trailer is a short video teaser for your book. The video can consist of live action, animation, scrolling text on a black background, or pretty much anything else you think will capture the imagination of the viewer.

But are book trailers really necessary for promotion? I mean, you’re an author, not a filmmaker, and a book is a book — NOT a movie! Well, click HERE to read one writer’s opinion on the necessity of book trailers.

“Necessary” may be a strong word, but in our socially-connected, video-frenzied world, a professional book trailer can be a super helpful tool in your promotional bag of tricks. They’re short, sharable, exciting (when done well), and show that you’re serious about your writing, so readers will take you seriously too.

OK. Wanna create one? Check out our top 5 book trailer tips for authors.

Still stumped on what’d make a good trailer for your book? Get some inspiration from these fantastic book trailers.

Now, you’ve filmed and edited your book trailer and you’re ready to wow the world with it. What do you do? Where do you begin?

Here’s a list of ways to promote your book with your book trailer

1. Upload your book trailer to YouTube and Vimeo — An obvious first step. Be sure to use smart keywords and phrases in your video description so your trailer will come up in search results related to those terms. Also, link to your website or preferred book retailer in the description so interested viewers can actually purchase the book.

2. Post your book trailer on your author website — Another obvious step, but very important. Feature your book trailer on your website’s homepage (which is generally the most viewed page on any site), embed it or link to it on your press/EPK page, and also create a blog post that’s all about the trailer, how it was made, and how you hope your readers will share it with their friends.

3. Add your book trailer to your LinkedIn profile — You’re a serious author with a professional book trailer. Show it off to your professional network.

4. Share your book trailer on Facebook — Post your book trailer on your author page, on your personal profile, and in any relevant Facebook Groups you belong to. Hint: you can post your trailer more than once — just don’t get obnoxious about it.

5. Tweet your book trailer on Twitter — Just like on Facebook, YouTube videos play within folks’ Twitter feeds, so they don’t have to link anywhere else to view it. Tweet, tweet, tweet away! (With Twitter you don’t have to worry quite as much about sharing the same content multiple times.)

6. Enter your book trailer in trailer contests — They’re out there. For example, check out THIS book-related video contest. Then search on Google every so often to find trailer contests appropriate for your genre.

7. Host a book trailer premiere — It doesn’t have to be a big gala event. Maybe a local coffee shop would be happy to have you and a dozen friends hang out at their space, watch the trailer, and have a brief Q&A about the video and the book. If you host a premiere event, though, be sure to make it open to the public, create a Facebook event, blog about it, and let the local press know. Those will create additional opportunities to share your book trailer.

8. Play your trailer at book fairs and expos — Any time you have a presence at a publishing event, bring your computer or iPad in order to show people the trailer. If you have a booth, consider setting up a monitor that plays the book trailer on a loop (with the volume turned low, of course!)

9. Email your list — Subscribers to your email newsletter will be the MOST enthusiastic viewers of your book trailer. So let them know about it. Tell them interesting facts about the making of the trailer while it’s still a work in progress, then get them excited about the release date of the trailer, and finally, email then on the day the trailer goes live on YouTube (and link them to your blog where you wrote all the juiciest behind-the-scenes details).

10. Add your book trailer to your email signature — Seriously. Not everyone will click on it, but lots of folks probably will. And even if someone only clicks out of idle curiosity, you may just turn them into a reader!

11. Don’t forget the other social media sites — Authors tend to focus on Twitter and Facebook, but you should also see if there are good opportunities for you to share your book trailer on platforms like Reddit, Tumblr, Google+, and Pinterest.

12. Engage in relevant conversations on other blogs, videos, groups, forums, etc. — If there’s a legit opportunity within an online conversation to share a link to your book trailer, do so. But be sure it doesn’t seem spammy, or that you’re commenting only so you can then post a link.

13. Post your book trailer on your Amazon Author Page — I’m not sure much more needs to be said about that. Makes good sense, huh?

14. Promote your book trailer on Goodreads — A huuuuuuuuuge community of readers visits Goodreads every day to talk about books, get new recommendations, and comment on things they’ve just read. Oh, what’s that? Lemme just click this book trailer link and see… oh, cool. Yeah, I’ll check out that book.

15. Share your book trailer with I LOVE BOOK TRAILERS! — Because with a name like that, why wouldn’t you?  Or how about Book Trailers 4 Kids and YA?

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Hopefully these tips help you find new viewers for your book trailer, which hopefully lead to book sales! If you have any advice to add about promoting your book with a trailer, please let me know in the comments below.

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[Video image from Shutterstock.]

33 COMMENTS

  3. Thank you so much for the wonderful tips. I am planning to make a book trailer video for my debut novel. Is it necessary for an author to have YouTube channel to promote book trailer? Kindly suggest as I am new in this field. Thank you.

    • Hi Jamie, yes it’s very helpful to have a Youtube channel for your book trailers. A lot of authors get a book trailer made and then they make smaller versions of the same trailer so they’re not sharing the same video all the time. Character trailers are also popular, especially for Young Adult. You see character trailers for movies as well, they can be fun to watch. Here’s an example of what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7gLUmJC6Og

  10. There’s good information here and is all still relevant three years later.

    For all authors who are interested, there’s a new site we started that just went live where you can get a link to your trailer posted for free. We are just looking to make it “the spot” where readers can check out book trailers from a wide variety of authors.

    Come check us out. http://bookvids.net/

    • Well done. I must say your self-made trailer is better than most I’ve seen out there. It evoked an emotional response without cumbersome dialogue. Beautiful music. No mistaking the genre and the opulent world you’ve created. I hope your trailer’s a smashing success.

  13. Hello, I’m a children’s; book author in the midst of launching my new book, Pixie And The Green Book Mystery. It’s the first episode in a series of 5, with the 2nd to be released this fall. I just found you and much appreciate your words on book trailer marketing. I’m still learning the process and every piece of advice is very helpful.

    Thank you again.

    Coraline Grace

    Here’s is my trailer in case you wanna check it out.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jku8vMJnUCg&t=24s

  15. Great post, very helpful :) my question however is about the Cinematic book trailers, I followed your link, but I can not for the life of me see how one can post or even upload a video trailer to that site? Is there special backdoor to go through? or does one simple need an invitation?

  19. I have to go meditate because this was a hot mess! I did a Google search for where to share book trailers and was lead on a wild goose chase of dead links “404”!!!!!! and do you want to buy this domain type of crap!!! The links that did actually go to a website not one of them told you how to post your book trailer! Oh my goodness I now must do a good 30 minutes of meditation because I have not felt this frustrated in years.
    Oooooommmmmm

    Please if someone has information to where I can share my book trailers please let me know.
    Namaste
    Jacqueline Rainey
    @BlueHarmonie

  25. Hi Chris,
    I have been searching for a way to promote my book. What better way than a book trailer. So now I have the problem of promoting the book trailer too. I enlisted the services of Worlds Beyond Art to create both my book cover and book trailer and they have created two pieces of magic for me. So reading your post was great. I have taken your advice and shared my book trailer with I Love Book Trailers! If you would like to take a peek at the book trailer for Bound to Survive a fantasy novel here’s the link http://youtu.be/cpDzyhfvT6s
    I would love to hear what you think.
    Thank you Sharon

  26. Chris,

    I just wanted to say thanks so much for your excellent information and help. I recently produced a trailer for my book The Dreamer’s Lotus. I am a filmmaker and author by trade, but finding ways to promote the trailer online has been a challenge. Thanks to your article, this makes it much easier.

    Wishing you the best!
    Mike

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