So you’re an author on a budget and have heard of the advantages of having a book trailer. However, you’re on a budget and would prefer to do it yourself. After all, how hard can it be? Nowadays, there are many book trailer makers and tools available that make it easy to assemble a book trailer. You heard many other self-published writers doing it. You’ve read a few blog posts about it. You believe you can also do it yourself.
In this article, we will talk about software that is available for making book trailers. If you’re looking for a step-by-step guide on how to do a book, this ultimate guide on how to create an effective book trailer has all the relevant information and tips you need.
But let’s remember, why do you need a book trailer again?
Why you need a Book Trailer
A book trailer or book teaser is a promotional video designed to entice your potential audience to read your book.
Unlike the written blurb from your book, a book trailer brings visual appeal and, depending on how well it’s done, can build an emotional connection between the book’s story and the potential audience. Since it’s visual, it’s easy to promote it on social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, enhancing discoverability. It’s also a valuable addition to an author’s website. As book tours and book review websites grow, a book trailer can be a powerful visual tool to leverage reviews and book tours.
Types of Book Trailers
I’ve personally noticed there are two main types of book trailers out there:
PowerPoint-style Book Trailers
These trailers are created in a similar style to a PowerPoint/Keynote presentation. Effects are added to images, with background music and titles/captions introducing the book. Usually, the visual assets are gathered from stock libraries.
Cinematic Book Trailers
These book trailers feel more like short films. They are usually produced by authors with a larger budget who can afford to hire a production company, actors, and other professionals. The scenes reenact the book’s characters, settings, and story. They can feel like a movie teaser. For example, the following is one of my favorites:
Software Options for DIY Book Trailers
So what is the best software to make a book trailer? Where do you make a book trailer? For those on budget, we have software that can help create the first type of trailer. I’ve taken a look at a few of these tools: Animaker, Biteable, Flexclip, Veed, and Invideo
General observations
These tools and booktrailer apps are built for creating videos and graphics, from promotional videos to training videos, explainer videos to book trailers. In other words, they are not specifically made for book trailers. They often have a landing page targeting book trailers, but their workflows and templates are not specific for writers.
Examples of landing pages
As mentioned above, these tools are not specific for book trailers but most of them have created landing pages targeting people who want to create book trailers. Here are some sites to create a book trailer:
- https://www.animaker.com/book-trailer-maker, https://biteable.com/trailer/book/ , https://biteable.com/trailer/book/ . https://www.veed.io/create/trailer-maker/book-trailer-maker, https://flixier.com/create/book-trailer-maker https://simplified.com/video-maker/book-trailer
Free and Paid plans
Some offer free versions with limitations in video length, downloads, uploads, and access to assets and music. For some authors with a single book trailer to produce and very few demands, the free version might work.
All offer priced plans. As a person who works with video and AI tools, in my opinion, these are not cheap tools. These plans are often justified when you are a video editor, marketer, or frequent user who will use this tool in a company, agency, or maybe as a freelancer building videos for others. All of them have this tricky thing where you see prices per month, but they are actually billed yearly. So when you switch to monthly payments, the prices are higher. Monthly plans start at around $20, but usually, the plan that allows you to have commercial rights, no limitations on assets, etc, is a higher plan. Authors who are looking to make only one video will probably need a monthly plan. A yearly payment is probably not the best option for writers. Depending on the needs of the book trailer, the lower plan might work, but sometimes to access all the features, a higher plan might be needed, and a reminder to cancel the monthly payment after the book trailer is done, unless they want to work on more videos.
Onboarding and User Interface
With most of these tools, the onboarding experience can be different from what a writer expects, with a selection of roles, backgrounds, and templates that are not related to book genres but can still work. In none of them, for example, I was given options to select my book genre and get template suggestions according to that.
If you’ve used Canva, I would say that many of these tools are very similar; even the user interface is not very different. They are very easy to use as well, mostly with a drag-and-drop interface. And yes, you can make a book trailer on Canva too.
Features
Almost all of them have integrated with stock libraries for images, videos, and music. You might be able to find images or short video clips related to your story. If you write fantasy or science fiction, maybe not so much.
They all allow you to upload your own images and videos as well. You probably want to upload your book cover, and you might have some other interesting material to work with.
Some of them, like Animaker, are more focused on cartoon-style animations and have interesting options for animated characters. This might be very interesting for children’s books, but not so much for the other genres.
All of them include options to add your own voice or a recorded voice.
Use of AI
Some of them include AI features that help you generate images and voiceovers, or they use AI entirely to generate the content for you. With Biteable or Invideo, for example, you don’t have to think of a script or create a storyboard; the AI will generate some material for you based on your description. Biteable’s outcome is very similar to the others, where you can edit the text, images, etc. Invideo’s outcome is a video where you can modify the script and assets.
Additional Tools
Here are some other additional tools I found online but haven’t tested yet:
And of course, you can also use more traditional video editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Spark, iMovie, Camtasia, DaVinci, etc.
Creating Cinematic-Style Book Trailers on a Budget
So what happens if you prefer a cinematic-style book trailer but lack the budget to hire actors and a production company? Are AI and stock assets enough?
It depends. You might struggle to find assets, especially video clips of fantastic, surreal creatures flying or characters that are not common. Your story setting might be quite uncommon, depending on your genre. Your genre could be fantasy, science fiction, or a historical drama that is so specific that you can’t find useful stock assets that match your story.
As an alternative, I create book trailers with the help of AI, generating characters and settings tailored to your description, and animating them in the way you imagined. This is my service, and you can see some examples here:
As you can see, they not only adapt to fantasy but also to historical drama and mystery, as well as any genre.
My Service vs Generic Tools
So what is the difference between my service and the tools above that use AI? The tools above will use a description of your book to generate related generic stock material. The AI will try to find assets that match your story, but it will not make sure they are specifically relevant to your story.
The idea of a cinematic book trailer goes beyond a PowerPoint-style book trailer, and there’s nothing wrong with these book trailers, but sometimes as writers, we really want to provide a more compelling and enticing experience for readers.
Conclusion
Social media is flooded with visuals, and people don’t always have time to engage with presentation-style videos with generic animations that don’t make much sense. You need to tell them the story of your book, add a cliffhanger, and entice them with your characters. While I love the book trailer for Amish above, not everyone has the budget for a high-end trailer like that, but you can still create something impactful. Contact me if you need more information on my book trailer services.