Top 5 Tips to Use Book Trailers to Drive Sales

I recently read Darcy Pattison's book, The Book Trailer Manual, and I highly recommend it. One thing that struck me in reading this book is how much a video trailer is like a mini-movie. In addition to covering the more technical aspects of video making, Darcy's book gives tips for developing the storyline and using text, images, music, and voice to tell the story.

Today I have invited Darcy to share some tips on how to use video trailers to promote book sales.

Top 5 Tips to Use Book Trailers to Drive Book Sales

by Darcy Pattison

Book trailer videos are the hot, new rage. But the driving question is how to use these trailers to drive sales. Some recent data gives ideas for some surprisingly effective ways to use book trailers.

Tip 1 - Use book trailers as part of your marketing mix.

When Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunter World (vampire novel) was released, it was given a huge push by its book trailer which landed among YouTube's Most Viewed video listing. How did the publisher accomplish this?

With a summer release for the paranormal romance, St. Martin's had a huge investment in a 350,000-copy first printing. They hired professionals to create a 33-second book trailer, Dark-Hunter Acheron, then hired Zeitghost Media  to manage the campaign. The publishing house sent an e‑mail with a link to the video on YouTube.com to 90,000 people, which was preceded by teasers several days before announcing that something big was coming. Zeitghost Media distributed the video across the Web, and dozens of blogs and Web sites picked it up and continue to feature it. It's had more than 429,000 views.

On the Dark Hunter website and offline, they also used these marketing tools:

• Ebook giveaways
• Wallpaper, screen savers, cursors, banners
• Dark Hunter quiz
• Publicity through media channels such as Publisher's Weekly
• Twitter feed, Facebook Fan page, MySpace page,
• Free short story to download

The video was important as a destination for potential readers, but email announcements were used to jumpstart the video. Once on the site, there were other ways to find information about the book. There were downloads, giveaways. In addition, St. Martin's used traditional press and many social media. Was it the book trailer that made the difference in people choosing to buy the book? Or was it the combination of efforts? No one knows for sure, but it's likely that it's the combination that matters.

For your book trailer, consider how it will integrate with your other marketing efforts. Take along a laptop and run the trailer at a conference or convention. Add a link to the trailer in your email signature. Be creative and cross-promote in every way you can.

Tip 2 - Use a series of book trailers.

In a recent report, 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 percent 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 one to three weeks apart.

Tip 3 - Put up your video on your site and on your own YouTube channel.

Anthony Bruno reported in Billboard that fans are more engaged with videos posted to individual artists' Web sites. Of course, they are talking mostly about music videos, but we can generalize this to book videos. They report that 29 percent of the videos streamed on artist and label sites are watched in their entirety, compared to only 12 percent from aggregation services. Warner Music Group, then, doesn't license content to places like Vevo.com. The company, instead, drives fans to artists' sites through custom‑branded channels on YouTube. You should create your own YouTube channel, too.

Tip 4 - Tweet about your book trailer.

Bruno reports that another interesting finding is how social media services affect viewing. According to the study, fans linking to online videos via Twitter watch an average of 2:30 minutes, compared to 1:30 minutes on average watched by those finding the same videos via a search engine. Yet 76 percent of streams on artist or labels sites come as a result of online search, such as Google. After uploading your book trailer to YouTube and your website, tweet about it.

Tip 5 - Master and use Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Before you start distribution of your book trailer, you should understand the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There's no reason to create a website or book trailer or any other content online if that content can't be found. That means you've got to think like a search engine. For many sites 50 to 80 percent of visitors come from search engines directly to a page deep within the site. Each website page should be optimized so that search engines can find it; likewise, you need to optimize your book trailer so people can find it.

I can't give you a full understanding of SEO in one post, you need to study this topic. But one immediate thing to do is pay attention to the keywords that can be used to find you and your video:

Keywords

On YouTube, there is a difference in tags and keywords. Tags can be used by anyone, while keywords are only used when you want to participate in the Promoted Videos ad program. In practice, though, a tag is a keyword and is crucial to the success of your video because viewers use tags to search.

You need to know what keywords people are searching for and Google makes it easy with their Google Keyword Tool.

Simply put in a couple important words about your video and you'll get a list of the various ways people search for your information and traffic counts for each keyword or phrase. Use the list to choose what keywords you'll emphasize for your video. On YouTube.com, you only have about 100 characters for keywords, so choose keywords that are specific to your book.

For example, if you have a World War II history book, specifically about D-Day, you might consider these keywords:

• WWII - 4,090,000 monthly global searches
• D-Day - 1,500,000 monthly global searches
• d day wwii - 5,400 monthly global searches

Obviously, you should use WWII and D-Day as your main keywords, not the unhyphenated combination.

If your pen name includes three names, consider omitting the least used name, usually the middle name. You'll still be found with your first and last names and you can use the valuable space for a more important keyword.

Often, authors want to include the publisher's name. However, if your publisher has 1,000 videos on the hosting service, you must ask yourself this question: will your video come up in top ten responses for that name? If not, then omit the publisher's name in favor of topical keywords.

Finally, scan the list of keywords for any potential unwanted traffic. For example, the keywords "little girls" might get hits from those looking for pornography. Try to anticipate the audience searching for the keywords you've chosen and make sure they are the right audience for your book.

Edit your book trailer's page on YouTube and include these keywords as tags.

Create a mix of formal and informal trailers and, in today's world, get comfortable with creating videos - and lots of them.

About the Author

Darcy Pattison is the author of The Book Trailer Manual which provides specific how‑tos for creating and distributing trailers. Included are 42 sites to submit to, 14 approaches to content, 10 options for combining images and sound, 8 ideas on creating a book trailer series, 5 case studies, 3 tips on SEO, and recommendations for hardware and software. See recommended book trailers at The Book Trailer Manual YouTube Channel.

Comments

[sheila glazov]

This is helpful, valuable and perfectly timed information, Dana. Thank you, Sheila

[Dana Lynn Smith]

Thanks Sheila, I'm glad you found this helpful. Darcy has some wonderful tips about book video trailers.

[John Sparger]

Making a book trailer is one thing, but what to do after it's created is a whole 'nother animal. Thanks Darcy for sharing some good info on next steps. While YouTube is the daddy of video hosting sites, don't forget other potential targets. We uploaded our first promo (goofing on Charlie Sheen's whole "winning" concept - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Tg2xhcaUj8 ) to Funny or Die, among others.

[Dana Lynn Smith]

Thanks, John, that's a great tip. And Darcy's book has a list of 42 places to upload videos.

[Rose Ector]

As an additional tip, in creating book trailers, aspiring book authors can get inspiration from movie and TV trailers/teasers. That way, they would have an idea what theme they can use that would encapsulate the content of their books. Thanks, Dana, for giving tips in creating video hits.

[Dana Lynn Smith]

Rose, thanks for the tip. I agree that authors can learn from movie and TV trailers.