After I made the book trailer for The Maiden Seer, I went on to make one for Loveweaver, which I felt was more well developed. Since I had a few weeks left on my paid month of Animoto, I decided to create another book trailer for The Maiden Seer.
Using the same format of still slides, I added addition images to further tell the basics of the story. The main thing I wanted to ramp up was the music. After a good deal of searching through websites that ask hundreds of dollars to license a song, I found Melodyloops. $12?! There I also found the perfect score by Jon Wright for my book trailer.
I fully own the fact that the music is dramatic, but the build was what I was after. And because the beats are per second, it made it easier to sync the music to my slides.
I begin and end with my book cover, keep to one font (except for my book title), and don't make you read too much. It's a minute and a half, which is on the long side, but that was to utilize the score.
It's question I didn't need to ask myself since I have some graphic design know-how, Photoshop, and was able to work my way through the process using Animoto. They've got an easy-to-use platform, nice templates, subtle effects and a large selection of license-free music.
I'm not suggesting I've made my two book trailers with the production level of a professional service. But in deciding between the make-your-own and pay-someone options you'll need to consider two things.
Mostly, you'll need to consider how much it will cost to make your trailer. If you're willing to pay someone, I found two sites online, The Books Machine and Circle of Seven Productions.
Between the two, The Books Machine has the prettier website, and offers other services to both readers and authors. I didn't investigate further on those other services, but looked at what they do for you in terms of a book trailer. Their package comes in currently at $390.
Both sites make great looking (if a bit over-designed for my taste) book trailers.
I've never added it up what I spent to make my trailers. I'll do that now, calculate what I spent to make my book trailer for Loveweaver.
I previously had spent a lot of time at Dreamstime searching for images of my hero, heroine, and background images that I used to make my book cover. Even though the money was already spent, for sake of this calculation, here's the total for those plus two additional images I needed: About $100. For other needs, I did hunted around online for "free" low res images that I could blur or revise for background detail.
I used Animto's trial version online until I got the hang of it and then purchased one month of official use for $42.
So, it cost me just under $150 to make my own trailer. The trailer for The Maiden Seer was done via the same scenario, although, I had already purchased the month of Animoto.
The other thing to consider is do you have the skills and talent to design a trailer yourself? You'll need to search for images that suit you, choose the appropriate music, and create an effective storyboard.
Anyway, what I'm getting at a dozen paragraphs later, is that it's very possible for you to create your own trailer if you want to save some serious cash. It's at least worth going to Animoto to play around and see.
The first book trailer I saw for a historical romance had a great use of music. It inspired me to do a trailer of Loveweaver and to try to achieve the same effect. The score of my trailer is one of the things I like the most.
Animoto is the website I used to create my video. Their templates, music library and Help page all make it fairly easy to use.
I spent a long time creating my "slides" but once they were done, they uploaded handily. By adjusting the timing of each slide, I was able to pace the music to fit certain transitions.
