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A Quick Announcement:
The BookBuzzr Grand Contest starts today with over $2,000 in Prizes. There are daily prizes from today until the grand prize is given away on the 30th of June. Entering is easy. Simply go to The BookBuzzr Grand Contest page and tweet a simple message.

We have some great prizes lined up and they are perfect for authors who are looking for an edge in marketing. So, don’t wait, put in your daily entries now! All the best!

Now onto Laurel’s article on The Book Trailer Lament:

Can Authors Achieve High Production Values on the Cheap?
Guest Expert: Laurel Marshfield

Does Dan (The Da Vinci Code) Brown need a book trailer? Well, no. Dan Brown does not. He’s got two ever-so-suspenseful and special-effects-filled Hollywood movies based on his most popular novels. Novels that sold millions of copies, worldwide, before they were ever adapted for the big screen.

But few authors are Dan Brown.

The Book Trailer Dilemma
Book trailers are for authors whose books have yet to be made into blockbuster Hollywood movies. Also for authors whose novels have been made into movies (Jodi Picoult, for instance, several of whose novels were adapted — including My Sister’s Keeper, which was made into a feature film starring Cameron Diaz). But even for these very fortunate (and hard-working) authors, a book trailer is one of the most arresting ways to attract readers who might not know their latest book exists. Or might otherwise pass it by.

Here’s the thing, though. As an author (who’s not yet as famous as Dan Brown or Jodi Picoult) you most likely can’t afford to spend zillions on a book trailer with production values that rival a Hollywood movie. And yet, as someone with an eye for art — not to mention, craft — you know a schlocky book trailer will persuade no one. And may even be worse than no trailer at all.

So How Can You Create a Breakout Book Trailer?
You want a book trailer that is as visually compelling as it is conceptually evocative. You want a trailer that will give potential readers the overwhelming sensation that your book is definitely due a serious glance-through (and preferably after purchase). But is a book trailer like that do-able on a non-Hollywood budget?

Well, yes, it is — but only if you focus on a simple but artful concept. Only if you put aside any thought of doing a complex, special effects-ridden, multi-sensory-overload, Hollywood-ized treatment that is designed to blast viewers out of their seats.

Just so you can visualize this impossible-to-reproduce type of promotional film (impossible, if your budget isn’t in the millions), here’s one movie trailer for The Da Vinci Code:

Exciting? Without a doubt.

But remember, readers enjoy the solitary pleasure of imagining the world that a good book creates. While movie watchers (the same person, in a different cultural-consumption mode) ex

Guest: Thomas Doane

1. The ‘Viral’ Element: Style/Content

The style of the trailer reflects the content of the book. Shteyngart’s book is a satire; therefore, his trailer is satirical. Obviously, this particular trailer is hilarious, which helped it to become a viral sensation. At 150,000 views, this is not exactly Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday,’ but it’s pretty damn good for a book trailer. I’m not going to go super in-depth into the math since these things are always highly variable, but if the conversion rate on views-to-sales was 5% then that would make this book a bestseller.

Which, in fact, it was. The book charted at Number 11 on the New York Times bestseller list the month it came out.

Obviously, not all of us write satires. The important thing is to match the style of your trailer with the content of your book. If you do this it will engage the audience you’re targeting.

But how do you disseminate your trailer to your target audience? That brings us to the next step in our dissection of Shteyngart’s trailer.

2. Use all media outlets.

This trailer went viral because it was disseminated across all available platforms: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, blogs, PPC, email marketing, etc. It was on the publisher’s site. It was mentioned on Fresh Air. Not all of us get interviewed by Terry Gross but YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are available to everyone – for free! In some cases, you (or your agent) might want to hire someone to amplify and accelerate this process of dissemination across these mediums. Or you could invest some time into learning how to optimize this part of the process yourself.

There are plenty of materials teaching you how to most effectively use social media to promote yourself out here on the blogosphere. You get to choose your own level of engagement obviously, but the whole point of making a trailer is to leverage your impact across these platforms, so don’t neglect this step. More or less, you’re guaranteed to get out of it what you put into it, but you could get a whole lot more out of this step than you put into it.

You want your trailer to go ‘viral’ on some level—whether that means hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of views – and you will be scaled according to a few factors. One of those factors is your level of prior exposure/popularity. That may not be something you can control. But another factor is: How effectively are you using social media? That’s something you can control.

3. Interviews/Budget

Notice the trailer is packed with interviews. Interviews are cheap to shoot, easy to edit, effective, informative and engaging. That’s why. The convention grows out of common sense and is dictated by the generally small budgets we have available to shoot our book trailers.

It would be nice if we all had the budget to ‘engage’ our audience with exploding cars and supermodels. If we had that kind of money, maybe we wouldn’t be so concerned about pumping up our sales. Since we don’t have that kind of budget—and since exploding cars and supermodels are often completely superfluous to the books we’re promoting—interviews will have to do.

Choose great subjects, edit lovingly, and this part should go just fine.

4. Timing

Note that Shteyngart posted his trailer on YouTube July 7th when his book

Expert: Claudia Jackson

In today’s book publishing world, old publicity techniques are no longer enough. Talking your local paper into writing a small blurb about your opus won’t get you anywhere. Social networking and Internet promotion are the keys to success in the new world of eBooks and print on demand. One way to stir up a lot of really good noise about your book is a multimedia book trailer.

What’s a book trailer you ask? Never heard of one? Well, a book trailer is just like a movie trailer, except that it is a “preview” of your book. They are quickly becoming a popular way to market and sell books. Below is a sample book trailer:

How to Make a Book Trailer

Last year, while researching book trailers, one of my very helpful tweeps, @winsloweliot, started sending me links to various book trailers. While watching one of these book trailers, I witnessed first-hand the impact that trailers can have on book buyers. I was watching a book trailer for the book titled, “Lethal People” by John Locke. My husband happened to be looking over my shoulder and within the first 10 seconds said, “I have to buy that book.” It taught me (1) trailers make a marketing difference and (2) I better get working on making the trailer for Death of a Cure. (a novel written by my husband and the first book trailer I created).

So, after a lot of very late nights and about 50 hours later, I uploaded my first book trailer to a test page on my company’s website. I received some excellent, and more importantly, helpful comments from my “tweeple” on Twitter. Twitter is a great resource for getting help and opinions from those that are neither close friends nor family. And believe me — they are much needed, appreciated and sometimes “brutally” honest opinions. After I made a few changes, I uploaded the video to YouTube.

Since that first trailer, I’ve had people ask me, “How did you do it?” Well, I continue to attend the, “school of hard knocks.” I started with lots of pencil scribbles that morphed into a storyboard on paper. Yep, sometimes you still need paper. Notes will help you keep organized, focused, and most importantly, keep your expenses under control.

Here are the steps I take when making a book trailer:

• Read the book. (OK, you may have written the book, but when was the last time you actually “read” your book as a “reader” and not a “writer.”)

• Think about the concepts or the point that you are trying to get across. You want to entice the reader (tease if you please), not tell the story.

• Make a book trailer scene list, scenes from the book that communicate your concept. What is the message you want to send? The trailer should be about the story, NOT the selling of the book or all the awards it has won. Sell the story don’t make a “commercial.”

• Write a Script. I created spreadsheet with columns for subject (content – i.e., man at desk), file name (the photo, video, audio file name – i.e., de

Guest: Bethany Ramos

First of all, what is a book trailer and how does it play a role in marketing your novel? Just like it sounds, a book trailer is similar to a movie trailer. It is intended to pique the interest of your reader to increase the sales of your novel.

Here are several keys that you can use to make a compelling book trailer to market your novel:

• Get your creative juices flowing. If you’ve already written a novel, then you’re probably quite creative. Make sure to use that same creativity to write the script for your book trailer. Some book trailers may have a narrator voiceover, while others may have words that appear on the screen to describe the plot of the book. The point is that this trailer needs to be interesting, imaginative, and unique to stand out from your competition.

• Start out with a storyboard. A storyboard can be used to piece together the scenes of your book trailer picture by picture. If you’re making a video book trailer, this will help to save you serious time in organizing your content. After that, gather the images or video shots that you would like to use in the trailer. It is important to either purchase stock images or use public domain photos that are not copyrighted.

• Add text and music to your images or video. Once you have your still images or video organized, now you need to spice it up with text and music. Remember, this book trailer is supposed to be similar to a movie trailer. You want it to grab and maintain the attention of your audience so that they will be interested in buying your book. Once again, don’t use music that is copyrighted since you could be sued for copyright infringement.

• Now it’s time to go public. After you have edited your book trailer with your images, text, and video, it’s time to market your trailer on video sharing websites like YouTube, Vimeo, and your own blog or website. And don’t forget to share a link to your book trailer with all of your followers in social media to help spread the word!

Creating a solid book trailer is a powerful marketing tool for your novel. Try to make your book trailer as brief as possible, anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. If you create a trailer longer than 5 minutes, then you’re likely to lose the attention of your audience and turn off potential buyers.