I know there are all kinds of debate about whether making author book trailers are worth the cost, whether they are worth the time and whether they increase book sales. I’m here to tell you that yes, they are worth it! They’re also great for your social media pages and book marketing. And the truth is, you can create a pretty sharp looking book trailer for free. And chances are the software you need already lives on your computer. So let’s get started on creating your free book trailer! And yes, you won’t need a movie maker to do it!
In this post not only am I going to show you how to create author book trailers, but I am also going to give you 3 awesome book trailer templates that you can download and edit for free. I think you will find them self-explanatory, but I want to go through some instructions and tips just so you won’t get stuck. If you are a master at PowerPoint and know how to save a PowerPoint presentation as a video, feel free to jump down to the trailers and download them.
3 Free Book Trailers for Authors
The 3 styles of trailers below represent a romance book, action book, and children’s book. And they were all created in PowerPoint to ensure that authors like yourself would be able to easily edit them.
Free Book Trailer #1: Romance Genre
Give a little clue about the romance that’s brewing in your book. Sometimes, readers would love to understand and see just a bit of what they’re buying for.
Free Book Trailer #2: Children’s Book Genre
Having a trailer for a Children’s book will be very helpful for parents since they would know whether the book’s story is something they’d want for their kids. Not everyone has the time to read through a summary or a chance to pick up your book, so a trailer video will answer those predicaments.
Free Book Trailer #3: Action/Adventure Genre
Well, your action book will surely become more saleable if there’s a moving ‘act’ or short film to entice readers. Be creative and let your audience experience the fun they’ll have just by showing a simple clip – with a piece of lively background music, of course.
Tips to Guide You When Making Your Book Trailers
1. Your Script
Most author book trailers are too long for my taste; I find myself losing focus, and even the ones that work hard for cinematic effect often come across as boring and has no great music. You’ll notice that the three samples we created were short and to the point! Below are a few tips to creating a great script:
Keep it short: You want to keep your trailer from going too long and losing your audience.
Hit the highlights: Just being short isn’t enough, it needs to be short and on point. Consider condensing your plot down to 3 or 4 short lines of text to be within the reader’s attention span.
Pique attention: Grab your readers’ attention by ending your trailer with a question or shocking statement that will leave them thinking about your book long after the trailer is over.
2. The Software
These trailers were created with PowerPoint 2016 but we have tested them on versions as old as 2007. For older versions of PowerPoint, there are some effects that you won’t be able to use. Our book trailers are easy to create and requires no video editing software.
Editing: All the editing is done in PowerPoint, and you can easily swap out our audio music, photos and video clips for your own. You can duplicate scenes and modify them if you would like your trailer to be longer. If you are unfamiliar with PowerPoint, you can easily find some tutorials online that show you specific effects.
Check out this sweet book traler. https://t.co/bfeNTdX0sw
— Rachel Mehl (@rachelamehl) February 24, 2017
Saving a video file: Saving your awesome PowerPoint presentation as a video is not quite as easy as you would expect it to be. Some versions of PowerPoint will allow you to save as video but many will not… check and see if your version allows this capability. If your version does not allow you to save as a video file or your video does not save with audio, then you will need to use a PowerPoint to video converter like iSpring River.
3. Finding the Perfect Assets
When it comes to creating graphics and other resources for your author book trailer, you can spend as little or as much as you would like to. For the sake of looking out for your budget, we focus on taking the most cost-effective route for your trailer.
Audio: Our templates come with audio files, but if you are looking for other high-quality royalty free audio for your sound effects then you can search audiojungle.com for clips for as little as $15.
Voice-Over: Not all author book trailers need a voice-over, but if it makes sense to have one then a voice-over will add appeal and professionalism to your trailer. You can record voice-overs yourself or spend $5 on fiverr.com to get a professional to do it for you.
Images: Relevant imagery or video is crucial to a successful author book trailer, but luckily free photos are easy to come by. You can find high-quality free images at pixabay.com. They’re also good for your marketing online if you have one in place.
Video: Purchasing video clips can be the most expensive media item that you run into when creating author book trailers. You can scout out free video clip sites to see what is out there. You can use Pixabay to get free video clips as well. Free high-quality video clips are hard to find no matter where you look. If you can’t find any that work, then consider trying to make your trailer work without video clips.
How to Make a Book Trailer (The Easy Way)
Mandi Lynn‘s video on how to make a book trailer as it helps create a ton of hype for the novels and also tells people where to go to buy the book. Watch for more.
Conclusion
Making a book trailer with our free templates will surely help you when you promote your book. Author bookmarks, pens, and other giveaways are great during book marketing but having a book trailer is quite extra. It will totally attract your audience without you blowing horns all the time. Just like the movies, it would be great to give readers a bit of a teaser for them to see what your story is all about!
For more other free stuff from us here in Adazing, feel free to check our EFFECTIVE BOOK PROMOTION. And in case you need a little help with your editing, give us a shout out in the comments below and we’ll try to help.
Download the Free Author Book Trailer Source Files
Here are the full source files to our three PowerPoint editable trailers: