You Have a Book Trailer. Now What?

We produce book trailers for many of our titles, and are producing more per season each year. (Visit the Savas Beatie homepage to see ours.) Creating a book trailer is good, but the question is, how can you make it work as a marketing tool for your book? Here is a list of steps that we take when we have a book trailer completed:

1. We post the trailer on Facebook, Twitter, and in the next issue of our monthly newsletter. Whenever possible, embed the video so a thumbnail screen appears instead of just a link. People are more likely to click on a visual as opposed to a text link for viewing.

2. Pass the file on to the author. Ask them to distribute it to all their contacts via social networking sites, email, etc.

3. Send the trailer to those in your database of contacts who would be the most interested in it. For example, when we have a Civil War book trailer, we email it to our database of Civil War bloggers, authors, and publications. Have this list ready to go so you don’t need to reinvent the wheel for each release.

4. In addition to sending the file out to your regular contacts, seek out genre and topic-specific blogs and other media who would be interested in this trailer in particular. For example, we are working on a book trailer for our new Indian War release Dakota Dawn by Greg Michno now. We don’t publish as many Indian Wars titles as we do Civil War books, so we are expanding our database in this genre now. For a cavalry book trailer, find cavalry blogs, for a Lincoln book trailer, find Lincoln blogs.

5. We also email each trailer to our distributor Casemate for posting on their website and YouTube channel.

6. If the book is a selection of a book club, such as the Military or History Book Club, send them the trailer for posting on their site. We even take it a step further and create a version of the trailer with a different final slide, complete with their ordering info.

7. Enter the trailer into book trailer contests. Here are two: You Gotta Read Reviews Book Video Contest and The New Covey Trailer Awards. We’ve even had a couple books win book trailer awards!

8. Post the video on sites such as YouTube,Vimeo, and Daily Motion. More hits, more clicks, more views, more orders!

9. Have the author post the video on his or her Amazon Author Central page. If you are an author and you don’t have an Author Central page, create one!

I hope these steps are helpful. Stay tuned for a peek at our latest trailer, for The New Gettysburg Campaign Handbook, coming soon.