Tips for Self Promotion, Sales, and Advertising discussion

Okay, so you have created a cool book trailer, or had a company do it for you. Aside from posting it on YouTube and putting it on your own website, what can you do with it?

Where else can you put them to gain some traction and interest in your books? Are the websites or blogs dedicated to book trailers?

Guido,

Don't know if you've heard of it. But there's a site where you can submit your book videos into a monthly contest. It does raise the visibility of your video. Now I'm not sure how great the long term benefits are. But during the month that I entered my video into the contest, my sales increased quite a bit. Here's the link for anyone who's interested.

http://yougottareadvideos.blogspot.com/

There is or used to be another contest called The New Covey Trailer Awards.

Book videos can be submitted for review to http://1stTurningPoint.com a website of advice for writers.

Good value book videos are created by goddessfish.com (as low as $20 if you host a book tour guest blogger).

The gold standard of book trailers are done by Sheila English's COS productions. Circle of Seven. They'll cost you $500 to $5,000 and are amazing. Sheila trademarked the term "book trailer". She's on GoodReads.

Look for Blazing Trailers. Sorry, I don't have the url. That's an amazing site. And free.

On YouTube, you can buy a reasonably priced advert using the adwords format, (do pay per click!) so thousands see your video.

I took a look at Blazing Trailers, and watched several of the vids. While trying to give a kind review for the site, I still have to say I found them to be amateurish, with some of the worst drawings, voice-overs and photos I have ever seen. Nothing grabbed at me, and we only have a few seconds to get the attention of the audience. From my perspective, this would be the last place I would go for a professional book trailer.

I might ask, how did she trademark 'book trailer?' It's is a common expression and it is my understanding that common expressions cannot be trademarked.

She trademarked it as a "Typed drawing." This means only the way it is being displayed - font,layout and potentially color - is protected but not the term itself.

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?...

I didn't think Blazing Trailers produced the trailers.

If you are talking about drawings... there is some cover art that is not terribly attractive. A video producer has to work with whatever cover art is available.

I heard that Sheila English of Circle Of Seven was able to trademark "book trailer" because it is a product, and she was the first to produce it.

It was not a common expression when COS productions (Circle Of Seven) started doing them. It became a common expression after COS productions had such success with them that everyone wanted to do them.

Other people call them book videos, book peeks etc

Guido: Ah, yes. That would make sense.
Rowena: I misunderstood the previous post to mean that this was also a site for the production of trailers. My mistake. I was also referring to the artwork in the videos, and not the covers.

In response to your original question, Guido, I am not sure where you would gain any marketing traction from sites such as Blazing Trailers, unless they are doing heavy marketing to drive traffic to their site. Unless there is a huge amount of traffic, at least a portion of which might want to read your book, it does not seem to be a viable means of producing book sales. Before posting any marketing tools on another site, I would first want to know their traffic data. Without this information, it's a total crapshoot.

Kevis: When you say your sales increased quite a bit, I am curious to learn what the increased number of book sales were, the percentage of your total sales this represented, and how you tracked these specific sales back to this venue.

K.J. wrote: "Kevis: When you say your sales increased quite a bit, I am curious to learn what the increased number of book sales were, the percentage of your total sales this represented, and how you tracked these specific sales back to this venue."

K.J.,

Let me put it this way. The nature of successfully promoting one's book relies more on cross-promotion than necessarily relying on one specific thing to get your book noticed. In the case of my book video, I have no doubt that posting my book in the book video contest helped to boost my sales. But I am convinced that the positive reviews, word of mouth, social networking, and other forms of promotion all contributed to boosting my sales numbers. It's all about using your book video as an introduction then having other promotion elements in place to capitalize on a potential reader's interest.

I would discourage any author from thinking that just because he or she has a book video that it will instantly translate into sales. To the contrary, it's only the repeated sales pitch that will achieve that goal. With that said, although it's tough to get people to watch my book video. I have noticed that almost every time my book video is watched, I get a sale.

Kevis,

That was never my thinking, but having a trailer I was just generally curious what else I could do with it other than what I'm doing already.

Guido wrote: "Kevis,

That was never my thinking, but having a trailer I was just generally curious what else I could do with it other than what I'm doing already."

I can honestly say that I don't have all the answers. I'm still testing the waters to figure out the best way to use my book videos to promote my books. I am sure that you are doing many of the things I'm doing, but I'll list a few of the things that work for me.

1) Post video on author website

2) Post book video on Facebook (post book video in appropriate Facebook Group, plug video when promoting book in discussion groups or posts)

3) Tweet about your video on Twitter

4) Use Respond feature to link your video to a similarly themed, but popular book video

5) Enter video in book video contests such as
www.yougottareadvideos.blogspot.com and thenewcoveytrailerawards.blogspot.com

6) Post video on Amazon Author Page

7) Promote video on Goodreads

8) Post video on indie books blog sites such as indiereaders.ning.com/

9) Post on Book Video blogs such as Ratemybookvideo.wordpress.com

Kevis: I understand the theory of marketing and promotions, having spent a substantial part of my career in marketing and advertising. My question was more about tracking your responses and sales to determine which methods/venues/approaches were working best for you. I guess what you are telling me is that from a best guess, you feel that you are getting an equal number of sales in relation to the number of views of your vid. Is this correct? And, how are you tracking this information, if your vid is on several web locations?

K.J.,

There's no way to calculate exactly how many book sales I get versus the number of times my book videos are viewed. However, most of the venues where I post my videos, including some I did not post in my list above, track the number of views my videos have received. I can make a relative assumption based on the number of times my video was viewed on a daily basis and the number of sales I accumulate in turn.

Ultimately, it is a bit of a guessing game. But I am convinced that my videos do help to sell my books, especially since I tend to sell more books on the days when the number of people who have watched my videos are at their highest. Since this is an ongoing experiment, it may be too early for me to really say how great of an impact my videos are having on my book sales.

I am embarrassed to ask for a favor, but I've just uploaded my newest video to my profile page, and I think it is going to need at least 6 "Like" votes and a few comments to bump it onto the front page.

http://www.goodreads.com/videos/show/...

May I please have some help? I will reciprocate. Conversely, if anyone with several videos can tell me how to select which one is displayed, I'd love that info, too.

Thank you for any help.

Kevis: Your information sounds promising. Do keep us posted on the activity, and if you see any dips in sales after time.

Done, Nanette.

I suppose you all know that you can also upload one video at a time to Amazon's Author Central? They will only permit one video per author at a time.

Also, there are two GoodReads "Communities" on Amazon but no discussions... what a waste of a forum. :-)

Rowena

http://www.goodreads.com/event/show/8...

The book video for my book, Haunted Richmond, Virginia: I forgot I had this on Goodreads. It's the book video for my book, Haunted Richmond, Virginia. A filmmaker friend of mine did it. Do check it out at http://www.goodreads.com/videos/show/...
If you liked it, vote for it. :)


Pamela K. Kinney

Besides posting it on Youtube, I miniaturized my book video and put in a sidebar of my blogs. You just have to change the numbers for width and height in the HTML code. If your code comes from youtube, as mine does, you need to change the numbers in two places in the code. If you miss one set of numbers it won't change size. I have three-column blogs, so I changed the numbers to height: 420 width: 380.

When my book cover is ready, I'll change my video to include it. I'll also shorten it a bit and do a little other editing in places. Then I might add it to a competition. People tell me it's compelling, even as it is. Here's a link to my website if you want to see it: http://janalynvoigt.com

Holy wow! This forum is so useful. I have book trailers on youtube, and am not sure what else to do with it. Thankyou for posting this.

http://www.freewebs.com/lelue/

That's funny because when I put my "infomercial" for Learn Me Good up on YouTube -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxPqhk... -- I saw an increase in sales of over 453% in under 2 minutes!

Actually I was at Bookhitch.com the other day, and when I submitted my ebooks, they also had a submit a book trailer option. I never seen it before. They must of just added in the passed couple of weeks. I don't have any book trailers to put up but maybe you can check it out.
The site is www.bookhitch.com

May I suggest using YouTube / Google / Facebook ads?

With some careful targeting and pricing, it can be cheap (0.02-0.10 US$ per click), and effective (take your time to choose your keywords).

My book trailers (I'm an Italian videomaker, a producer, and a writer, too) cost 800€ avg (1000 US$), and I use 1/10th of the budget to promote them. It seems to work well.

I hired a professional make a video of one of the stories in my book to pitch as a television series. It is posted on Youtube titled Georgetown Hill 2011
and is from my book Special Dream.

I would be pleased to post book trailers along with press releases on my website. Combining a good press release with a video trailer looks terrific on the site. I am seeing more traffic on the pages with videos imbedded.

Stop by my website and drop me a press release any time and I'll handle the rest.

http://NewBookJournal.com

Hey, I'm working on book trailers by myself and was curious about music. I don't want to mess up with copyright problems and the site someone gave me for music isn't up anymore. I was curious if anyone had any suggestions. I know my one friend suggested classical music because she thoguht that the copyright was okay to use them.

yes, I'd like to know the answer to that too Ottilie.

Haha let's cross our fingers and hope someone knows the answer!!

Hi Ottilie and Patti,
I searched the Internet for hours when I was compiling the photos and videos for my video. I didn't want to mess with copyright, either. So, I used some of my own photos and found a few free pics to download. I also found a site that had free music for commercial use. The tracks were great! They had a few different tracks available. You can hear the one I used here: http://youtu.be/OC8mV7dQ4lg
When I get hope from Mother's Day lunch, I'll find you the site!
~Gale

Gale your trailer is good and I thank you so much!!! Hope you have a good Mother's Day lunch!!

Ottilie wrote: "Hey, I'm working on book trailers by myself and was curious about music. I don't want to mess up with copyright problems and the site someone gave me for music isn't up anymore. I was curious if ..."

Hi Ottilie (and Patti) -- As a published author and published singer/songwriter, I can share my music biz knowledge/experience.

First, if you've found a song that you really want to use in your trailer, contact the the Harry Fox Agency at www.harryfox.com to pay for licensing the song. It's not that complicated or expensive.

Second, you still have to pay for the licensing of a classical music piece. Even though the composition is public domain, the performance is not, so you still need to pay the performer.

Third, the best way to go for music in your trailer is to find an independent (unsigned by a record label) who you like and whose music fits your trailer and is willing to let you use their music for exposure in lieu of pay. You would list a credit "music by..." in your trailer. This as a win-win situation for both the musician and the author. The musician could promote your book trailer on their websites as you would on yours, so you both get double exposure.

If you don't know of any musicians, my husband and I are offering our compositions for FREE use--we just ask that authors list the musician and our website. We have a lot of different instrumentals, since we have done a lot of indie film scoring. Please let me know if you are interested, and I will provide a link where you can hear all the compositions.

My husband Tim (who is a professional recording/mixing/mastering/producer) offered to recommend a piece of music to go with your trailer for FREE, again, just give him credit. He put my book trailer together (music and video):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGs6Yt...

Hope this all helps!

Blessings,
Angela Dolbear
author of THE GARDEN KEY
www.TheGardenKey.com

Hey Angela,
Thank you for the advice and offer.

Hi Ottilie and Patti,
I found one of the websites for free audio clips. The one directly below had tons of sounds you can splice together to create your own unique audio clip.
http://www.free-loops.com
I tried to find the site I used for my audio clip, but couldn't find the page to the free clips. Maybe the iPhone version has limited access. I will try again when I go online on the laptop!
I also used the following site to search for free images, but there are a lot of similar sites out there...just be sure to look for the free rights managed photos (not the right term, but you get the point...lol).
http://www.publicdomainpictures.net
I searched and listened to clips for hours, but when I finally found the one I wanted, it was so worth it!
~Gale

Gale,
Thank you so much!! Oh don't worry I have the time, my spring semester ended!

Thank you everyone for info. Very much appreciate. Do you have a book trailer Gale? If so would love to see it. And anyone else that has one for inspiration. Patti. Will forward mine when back on pc and not on mobile phone.

Hi Patti,
My book trailer is at http://youtu.be/OC8mV7dQ4lg
Thanks for asking! Can't wait to see your trailer, too!
~Gale

Nice trailer Gale. Here is mine. http://theangelsarehere.wordpress.com...

cheers Patti

Have added your book trailer Gale

http://paradox-theangelsarehere.blogs...

Patti

Thanks for posting the link to the trailer, Patti!

Your trailer is great! I 'liked' it and posted a 'love it' comment.

Now I need to be sure I already added it to my to-read list!

~Gale

Thanks Gale. Can i send you a complimentary one for a review? Patti

What do you all do for music on your trailers? I', concerned about copyright issues.

Thanks,

Will Granger

http://anabarauthor.blogspot.com/

there are sites online. read message 33 by Gale for some of them. cheers Patti

Thanks Patti!
Will, it is complicated trying to find free music, and I have spent hours searching the internet. Part of the problem is rights managed vs. royalty free. Royalty free is a little bit of a misnomer, though. There is often still a fee, lol!
Here is another link that might help...

http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/free-...

Good luck,
~Gale

Ottilie wrote: "Hey, I'm working on book trailers by myself and was curious about music. I don't want to mess up with copyright problems and the site someone gave me for music isn't up anymore. I was curious if ..."

In addition to writing book reviews and having my own book in progress, I'm a graphic artist, visual artist and professional musician. My thanks to Angela for a detailed walk-through of intellectual property rights. I have a few additional ideas:

I am not a lawyer, but it is my understanding that for music published before 1923, if you know a professional musician who will perform/record it for you for free, that could work. You could also find a professional musician who will do on-the-spot improvisation at no charge in exchange for being listed in the credits. If you pay a musician for an improvisation as a "work for hire," you could own the copyright to the music. you want to be sure the improvisation is not based on copyrighted music.

to be safe, it is probably important to have signed agreements that a lawyer looks at before any recording takes place. Intellectual property law is complicated, even moreso these days with the Internet and social media.

Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts is a valuable resource:

http://www.vlany.org/aboutus/index.php



hope this helps.

-priscilla

Gale wrote: "Thanks Patti!
Will, it is complicated trying to find free music, and I have spent hours searching the internet. Part of the problem is rights managed vs. royalty free. Royalty free is a little..."

Thanks Gale and Patti! I'll check those sites out!
Good luck with your books!

Will

RE; Thanks Gale and Patti! I'll check those sites out!
Good luck with your books!

Thanks Will :) you too. Patti

This site looks good for music - I've listened to quite a few and they sound really good. The site owner composes them himself and you can sort them by mood or genre. The guy asks for a $5 donation and for you to credit his name. That's all.

http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/

For those of you who create book trailers, if you're looking for a way to get additional exposure, author Toni Sweeney features guest trailers on her website each week. I'm not sure if they have to be for a romance book, but you can contact her and find out. My trailer is featured on her site right now.

http://www.tonivsweeney.com/Guest_Tra...

Thanks, Delaney! I just finished a book trailer; will contact Toni Sweeney and see what happens.

You're welcome, Priscilla.

here's the YouTube link for the trailer, by the way. Murder in the High Himalaya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5EBDZ...