Book trailers

One of the biggest challenges to me as a self-published eBook author was to create a book trailer.  I did not have the time to learn Adobe Flash, nor the money to hire a professional.  So I decided to do it myself (you can view may trailer on this blog). I used the free online tool Animoto.  Caveat: the free part gets you a mere 30 seconds, but I felt that was enough time to plug my small nonfiction book.  If I ever self-publish again, I will probably upgrade to Animoto Pro.

Second, since my book is pure text and doesn’t really lend itself to visuals, I chose to use words as images, except for the photo of the cover and of me.  I happen to own copyright to both those images, so I saved some money there.  Then there was the matter of music.  I chose music for which I paid a license fee—about $50 for a 30-second clip. 

Since making that first book trailer, I have discovered there are some free sources or Creative Commons licenses for music you can use in your book trailers:

“14 Awesome Open Source Music Sites for Digital Creatives”

Learn by watching rather than reading

Recently I found a wonderful tool for research at snagfilms.com.  You can access free documentary films to view from this site.  I downloaded a free app that allows me to view films on my iPad, but you can view them on a computer as well.  I tried the site tool “movie matcher” that allowed me to narrow my search.  I was interested in the history of the “go green” environmental movement in the U. S. (you can also find Canada, UK and international documentaries using this tool), so I clicked on “go green” and “history” and the tool located six results for me.  This might be a hit or miss way to research something you want to write about, but if you like to get your information via film rather than via reading, it might be worth a try as a research aid.