Newbie writers make mistakes–that’s a given–especially self-published writers. It’ s not because they’re less skilled than published authors, it’s that pubbed writers don’t have to do everything themselves, like book trailers. One of the biggest mistakes rookies make is trying to do a book trailer themselves.

I know, certain online writer’s conferences say it’s okay to do the trailer yourself. They advise naïve novices to buy royalty-free images, as well as royalty-free horror themes, and to go on Windows Moviemaker and crank it out. The problem with this is that you’re going to look unprofessional with stock images. And the theme songs? Don’t be surprised if they end up in horror movies. (Self-pubbed authors buying cheaply-made book covers may have the same problem–not in movies, but on other book covers–but I won’t go too deep into this now.)

Take the book trailer for my first book, a short-story collection called Horrorbook.  I wasn’t very happy when the royalty-free horror theme I bought ended up in a horror film. And that picture I used for the wendigo? You can’t tell without squinting at it because the pic only shows the area around one eye, but let’s face it, that’s an elephant. Sorry world, but there were no royalty-free images of the Native-American monster.

In closing, do your research as far as who rocks the book trailer, and don’t make the same mistake I did.