Oscars for Indie Author Book Video Trailers

And the Oscar goes to… *nervously opens envelope*

In a previous blog post, indie authors of all genres sent examples of book trailer videos for us to enjoy and learn from collectively. Among the analysis, these questions were presented (some authors even had answers):

• How was it made?
• What did it cost?
• Has it sold books?
• What advice can you give for making one?

We saw wonderful videos and some dreadful ones too, which seems par for the course in the indie author crowd. At the bottom of this post are YouTube tips that could have helped them all do better with results (SEO, views, book purchases, etc), but the Oscars have been chosen purely for cinematic reasons. (Props to a great author, Charlotte Abel, for suggesting this.)

Due to Academy rules, my all-time favorite book trailer video is exempt from voting. Instead here are 6 excellent videos, each winning a specific category.

Best Romance – Wait For Me by Samantha Chase

Made by Animoto (Plus Plan, very affordable). Currently ranked #433 in paid Kindle store. Wow! The author says she’s “not sure it’s helping” but my feeling is the opposite–definitely worthwhile.

***

Most Views – Time-Lapse Photography by Ryan Chylinski

36,426 views and counting! Made entirely by the author. Selling books and worth it.

***

Best Thriller – The Cancer Code by Andrew Findlay

Made from low-cost stock footage, rights-free music and has helped the Vimeo version rank on Google page 2 for the title’s keywords (a search term that attracts 74,000 searches a month) in just a few weeks. It all works, this stuff! (Yes, it does, Andrew. Well done.)

***

Best 4-Legged Friends genre – Just One More Day by Geoff Bain

Pictures, text and music used in effective simplicity. Powerful result. Free to the author. Great promotional video.

***

Best Cinematography – The Publicist by Christina George

Received high marks for setting, live action, intrigue, music and overall effect.

***

Best Beyond Low Budget – Too Close by Elizabeth Krall

Extreme basics (only one image) accomplished in just 25 seconds! Made in less than two hours. Props for pushing boundaries on what we don’t like to think about but is entirely possible. Refreshingly disturbing, as one Amazon reviewer said.

***

Tips for how most of these videos could have been more effective on YouTube at converting viewers to book buyers:

• better SEO in YouTube title with words like Book Trailer, Book Video to help YouTube’s search engine (world’s 2nd largest) link searchers to what they’re looking for. Unfortunately most authors don’t practice smart and simple SEO.
• add hyperlinks in the description to the Amazon page or author’s website. This baffles me, but many authors do not include this even when those YouTube description hyperlinks become active.
• higher view counts can be had with more promotion. Just because it’s on YouTube doesn’t mean people will see it. Authors must make the effort to direct traffic.

These small tips are displayed in this example video on YouTube.

Thoughts or comments? Do share.

---

Home – Author Training Videos – How-To Guides – Novels – About

---

Subscribe to this blog for updates on indie authors and self-publishing.

add me to Google Plus circles