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As you might imagine, we got a wide range of answers. See what observations these young scientists made!

If you can’t see the embedded video, view it here.

More Than One Book Trailer?

Excerpt from The Book Trailer Manual by Darcy Pattison
Most authors make a book trailer and stop. This is my third book trailer for PRAIRIE STORMS, and I plan more. This chapter explains why multiple videos are a great idea.

More than one book trailer? Does this question surprise you? You’re unsure about doing one video, much less a couple. Should you really think about more than one book trailer for your book? Yes. Here’s why.

Networking: Like every other social media, it’s your network that counts. And networks grow when you post regular content to keep them coming back. You may want a series of trailers spread out over several months, so viewers – and readers – have reasons to come back often.

Short Life of a Video: In May 2010, Jay Yarow and Kamelia Angelova reported that the shelf life of a video is very short. Half the viewers of a YouTube.com video come in the first six days. 75% of the viewers are within the first 20 days. Of course, there’s going to be a long tail, in which your video gets a few hits/day for a long time. But if you want a high level of sustained interest, you might want to consider a series of videos, distributed 1-3 weeks apart.

There is precedence in the online world for multiple marketing messages. Often marketers use an auto-responder to set up a series of messages which are automatically sent to an email list at specified intervals. For example, you might sign up for an camera site’s newsletter because they promise to send a series of three tutorials on taking portraits with a digital camera. You sign up and get your first issue of the newsletter right away, along with a second email that contains the first tutorial. The second and third tutorials turn up at one week intervals. These automated deliveries are via an auto-responder.

The idea behind auto-responder messages is to build your audience’s trust in your ability to offer something valuable on a long term basis.

How can you adapt this idea to a series of videos? Here’s an example of how you might plan a series of eight book trailers; while I’m suggesting a wide variety of options, you should decide on a specific goal for each video. Change it or adapt these as needed for your situation. Also, I’d suggest that you create about half of these before the book is released; be flexible about the others and create and distribute them as needed to publicize awards, give updated information, display fan’s reactions, etc.

• Video 1. The overall story is explained in the first book trailer. This would be the traditional book trailer that gives a plot and character teaser. The Wayfinder Video
• Video 2. The second trailer, however, is targeted to specific audiences and why they might relate to the book. If it’s a story about an athlete competing in track and field events, you may want to tape at a track and appeal to the athletic interests of your audience. Or, this time use a lot of testimonies from fans and reviews. This trailer has military personnel talking about how much they enjoyed Craig M. Mullhaney’s book, The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier’s Education. Book Trailer – “The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier’s Education”
• Video 3. By now, your audience is somewhat familiar with the story. This is the time to tell a story: about yourself, the idea behind the story, etc.
• Video 4. With this video, let your audience know about any extra materials to go with the story: teacher’s guides, book club guides, free computer wallpaper, online games, book marks, etc. Be sure to mention the various formats of the book in this trailer, too: Kindle, iTunes, paperback, audio, etc. It’s also a good time to offer a discount coupon for a very limited time; setting a time clock ticking encourages response. Here, Neil Gaman talks about buttons: It’s a book trailer for his book & movie, Coraline.
• Video 5. If your book is nonfiction, take time here to answer any questions that you’ve received. Where did you find the original source materials for your research? Will this how-to book help me do such and so? I’m confused about the time-line, can you clear it up for me? Or, give advice, for example, to young writers, as Neil Gaman does.
• Video 6. For the sixth trailer, let your readers talk for you: interview readers about their responses. Or, highlight fan videos, quote from reviews. Another idea is for you to read from the story. Or attend a conference and ask a person there to read a paragraph, then give it to another person for the next section and so on until a good sample is recorded. Here, Eoin Colfer reads from The 7th Dwarf (World Book Day 2004)
• Video 7. What have you been dying to tell your audience? Maybe you want to explain the dedication, the illustrations, tell the story of how you sold the book, or just look the camera in the eye and tell readers thanks for reading. Or, wrap up the series with a recap of the most important things about your story. Another option is to provide links to related sites. See, Neil Gaiman’s Worst Comic Book Characters of All Time
• Video 8. Look ahead to the next book in the pipeline and give them a hook that leaves the viewer wanting more. Or, maybe by now, you’ve got great news of awards that your book has won.

It’s fine to include a mix of polished trailers with informal trailers that you tape as events unfold. YouTube.com has proven that audiences respond to great content, regardless of the production quality. Just keep promoting the trailers in every online and offline venue possible.

While you’re thinking about doing one book trailer, you should also think about doing a series. After all, each trailer will give you more experience and they can only get better. And a series will keep your book in the audience’s mind for a longer time.

Example of using more than one Book Trailer:

1. Million Dollar Throw trailer by Mike Lupica This trailer is a teaser for the story.
2. Mike Lupica author video, Million-Dollar Throw The author talks about character relationships.
3. Million Dollar Throw Today Show. Lupica appears on the TV show.

See other Prairie Storm Videos:

1. STORMS: A Chant of Months
2. PRAIRIE STORMS: Sounds of the Prairies

Read more about The Book Trailer Manual

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Want to put YouTube videos on your Facebook?

ReelSeo has a couple tutorials for you:

• How to Add a Video to Your Facebook Welcome Page
• The Definitive List of Video Apps for Facebook Pages

Book Trailers: Is It Budget or Aesthetics that Matters?

On my sister-site, BookTrailerManual.com, I’m having a discussion with Melissa from YABookshelf about teen book trailers. What’s the most important thing in the success of a trailer? Is it the budget, how much you spend on the trailer? Or is it the idea, the aesthetics with which you approach the book trailer? Come and join the conversation.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Tips for Skype Author Visit: Be Prepared

More and more, librarians and teachers are using video conferencing software to connect with authors. Before I did my first Skype Author Visit today, with a school in Arlington, VA, I went through several fine-tunings of my setup. These are all small tweaks, but I felt like they were important to let me relax and enjoy the presentation.

Turn Your Office into a Video Studio

Lighting. My office is a dark attic, perfect for writing, but not good at all for a video studio. Looking around for tutorials on lighting for video shoots, I saw that it was important to have three types of lights.

Main light at about 2 o’clock to light one side of the face. It needs to be strong enough to light up your face without glare. Because I have an attic office, I just use a shop light and bounce it off the nearby ceiling.

The main light is about 2 o'clock from my face, bouncing off the ceiling.

The secondary light just bounced light onto the opposite cheek.

Camera. With the lights in place check the camera settings.

• Tilt. Is it capturing your full face? I also position the screen showing small shot of myself as near the camera as possible, so I am mostly looking at the camera.
• Reverse Image. I also found it better to reverse or flip the image that I’m seeing of myself. That way, if I reach up to touch my hair, it looks right to me.
• Zoom. Zoom in or out until you get a shoulder shot. I like it zoomed out enough so you can easily see my gestures, because I talk a lot with my hands. It also gives a small window into my office and sometimes, I got questions about my unabridged dictionary which is on a book shelf behind me.
• Color balance.
  • Set the white balance first.
    Click on Auto-focus on the white balance. Hold your foam core or other white object about where you’ll be seated. Let the auto-settings work. Then, click OFF the auto-focus, forcing it to stay at that setting. My office has windows, so I do this check each time I do a video, to allow for differences in light coming from the windows.
  • Then set brightness, contrast and color balance to your liking. I like to balance the color closer to the b/w side, so it’s not glaring.

Turn Yourself into a Movie Star

Make-up. With 3-4x the light, you’ll need makeup. I’m a minimal make-up person, but I’ve found that it helps to pay attention to my eyes and to add a bright red shade of lipstick. This helps make me stand out.
Also, if you tend to have dark circles under your eyes, adjust the lighting to avoid this, and use a yellow-toned concealer, or look for something like Ooh La Lift , which lightens this area. Use the screen capture function of the camera to take shots of yourself for comparison

Clothes. Test a couple colors and styles of clothing. Use the webcam to take a series of pictures for comparison.

Triple Check All Equipment

Once you have the lighting, makeup and clothes right, test your microphone using Skype’s call service. Finally, try a test call with a school a day or so before the real thing to make sure that all equipment is functioning on both sides. I like it if any face-tracking software is turned OFF during the visit. Face-tracking tries to find a face and focus on it; but with a classroom or even just a couple people, it tends to move from face to face and I find this distracting.

Lights, Camera, Action!

10 Minutes Before.

• Last equipment test. About ten minutes before, test your equipment one last time.
• Props. Gather all your books as props, and any other props you plan to use (I forgot to do this on the first Q&A, but made a beeline for the books before the second).


Make sure you have your props nearby. Water, too.

• Review purpose and audience. Make sure you know the age of the audience and what type presentation you are being asked to do and make sure you’re ready for that. For example, you might have sent ahead a handout for the kids, or perhaps a Powerpoint which they will show at the same time they show your video feed.
• Water. Also, if you need it, set a cup of water beside your computer/camera set up.
• Minimize disturbances. Turn your phone off or to vibrate and warn anyone else around that you’re doing a video, so they’ll stay out of your “video production room,” or at least enter quietly.
• Expect technical problems. Be read for technical difficulties by becoming familiar with the camera, microphone and Skype settings. For example, in my test visit, I talked only to the teacher. But in the real visit, she turned up the speakers so everyone in her library could hear, resulting in feedback. We had to play around with the sound on both sides to find a comfortable level which was easy to hear, but avoided feedback.

Action.
Once the Skype visits starts:

• RELAX. Just have fun. You’ve done all the setup work, so you don’t stress in the middle of the session, so now be confident, relaxed. If kids are coming into the room, wave at them and say, “Hi.” Do whatever kinds of interaction you would normally do before and during an author visit.
• Consider the Technology. Talk slowly, allowing for the slight lag time of Skype.
• Focus on audience. Focus on the students and meeting their needs: If a student has a question, ask that they come up close to the camera to ask their question. Answer questions simply and clearly. Ask them for follow-up questions. It’s all about the kids.
• Look at the camera. Remember to look AT THE CAMERA, not down at the computer screen where your image and their image are displayed. Looking at the camera will make it appear that you are making eye contact and that’s important for any speaker. To make this more natural, it helps to maximize their video feed, making it fill the screen. If possible, move the smaller image of yourself near the camera, so you can see it from the corner of your eye. But whatever you do, make yourself look AT THE CAMERA. It was one of the hardest things to do today.
• Multiple presentations on one day. If you are doing several presentations, common for short Q&A sessions, hang up and have them call back in between. This allows you time to take a bathroom break, reapply lipstick, check email, Twitter just once (Okay, twice – it’s short), and just relax a few minutes. But be sure you’re back in the room, ready for the next session.
• Very Important: Touch NOTHING on the camera or Skype settings in between sessions. This is NOT the time to tweak things, unless you absolutely have to. If you DO tweak, call back five minutes early to reconfirm that everything is working right. I looked at possible Avatars and either I did something or the librarian did something to settings and somehow, I missed the second call.
• Tip: You’ll get an Orange Pop-up Box from Skype to tell you when the other party is Online. You can expect the call shortly after that. If you don’t get the call on time, call them: there may be some technical difficulty going on.

I’m a fast learner. The first Q&A, I felt too stiff; the second Q&A lasted only a few minutes because of technical difficulties. But by the third, I was starting to feel comfortable and like this method of connecting with readers. I hope to do it again, soon.

To the students at SMS: Thanks! You had some great questions!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

The Best Info About Book Trailers

I’ve followed the book trailer phenomenon for a couple years and wanted to do a post. In 2003, it was just beginning; in 2006, there was lots of experimenting; in 2009, it seems here to stay and writers should take it as a given that they need a book trailer for trade books. Here’s some of the best about book trailers from around the web.

The Book Trailer Manual

42 Sites for submission

14 Ways to approach content

10 Ways to combine audio/video

5 Case studies

Much more. . .

CLICK HERE to Learn More.

How To Create a Book Trailer

1. The Book Trailer Manual
2. Book Trailers Squidoo
3. How to Make A Book Trailer — Easy And Free
   EHow has step by step instructions for making a trailer with Powerpoint.
4. The Making of a Book Trailer. A four-day account of an author making her own book trailer.
5. Animoto.com. Animates still pictures.

Articles or Posts about Book Trailers

6. How Will Your Book Trailer Upend Readers’ Expectations?
7. In A World … Where Books Are Hyped Like Movies A 9/2008 National Public Radio article, with links to the audio.
8. Book Trailers that Matter
9. Every Book Needs a You Tube Video From CamCorderInfo.com. Of course, the Camcorder people would recommend book trailers; yet, the article is fairly balanced and has lots of links to new info.
10. What Can You Do with a Book Trailer? by Karen Dionne (billed as the “new Michael Crichton”) write a general article about trailers touching on where to share them and best practices.
11. Book Trailers Coming to Bus and Mall Billboards, buses (one company already busted!) and more links.
12. Book trailers might be overkill. 2009 post: How do you make your video stand out? It’s about finding interesting ways to tell a story.
13. Book Trailer Videos. A general article.
14. VIDEO BOOK TRAILERS: Coming to a Library near You!
    When kids make book trailers they are more engaged with the story.
15. Book Trailers, a great way to promote your children’s book The downside of trailers: less imagination needed.
16. In-Transit Viewing of Book Trailers – A Potent New Book Marketing Venue. Kids watching book trailers on the school bus.
17. Book Trailers: The Key to Successful Video Marketing. From Poets and Writers Magazine.
18. New York Statewide Summer Reading Program
    Featured book trailers for teens from their reading program.
19. A Survey of the Imperfect Art of the Book Trailer. The marriage between book jacket blurb and the video – review of 7 trailers.
20. Trailers for Sale or Rent . 2007 optimistic look at the impact of book trailers on children’s books from PW.
21. Watch Before Reading: Art-House Book Trailers. Book trailers are interpretive, rather than plot-focused.
22. Promoting your novel: How to make a book trailer. Author Brenda Coulter poss her experiences making a trailer for her book on Gather.com
23. What makes video trailers for books effective? (5 keys) Over 1 million views of a book trailer!

Ongoing Series about Book Trailers

24. Book Trailer Tuesday. Another regular posting on trailers.
25. Video Wednesday.Scholastic column which presents a book trailer each Wednesday.
26. Fuse #8 Productions does Video Sundays and sometimes features Book Trailers.

Where to Display Book Trailers (Besides YouTube and Facebook and Good Reads)

27. BookTrailers.net
28. Bookscreening.com
29. ComicBookTrailers.com
30. Blazing Trailers
31. The Red Room Where the Writers Are
32. Books Toolbox: 50+ Sites for Book Lovers
    From Mashable, this post lists many more social media sites about books.


Featured List: 42 places to submit your book video trailer.

Book Trailer Production

33. Circle of Seven Productions: Book Trailers
34. JKS Communications: A Literary Publicity Firm
35. Moving Stories Book Trailers and Book Videos
36. WritersDirect.net
37. Author Bytes
38. Living Jacket.com

Book Trailer Contests

39. Book Trailer Competition for High School Students
40. Authors Promoting Authors
41. Fantasy Book Reviews
    This UK site has a yearly Book Video Award
42. Outsourcing the Book Trailer Production to Your Fans. Authors Megan McCafferty and Lynn Messina ran book trailer contests for teen girls – a great example of a trailer contest.

Are Book Trailers Effective?

43. Publishing Monday: Are Book Trailers Effective? This author is charmed by trailers.
44. Are Book Trailers Effective? This post quotes the Wall Street Journal: “”There is scant evidence . . . that the average book trailer actually has much impact on book sales.”
45. Book Trailers Work! From LatinoLA!

Lesson Plans

46. Lesson plan for Book Trailers. (pdf). References to NCTE/IRA, NETS and CTLanguage arts standards.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win