Book Trailers - A beginning

Ripped out of the internet marketing and services arena, my life went to utter crap at the end of last year all the way to the point where I didn't have a place to live with my son and daughter. My offline life crumbled. My daughter stayed sick continuously, and I couldn't cope. I crumbled.

I slowly got back on my feet, lived with my parents in a tin can making $80 a month, all of it going to my children.

This is my little short story of what I did to get back where I am right now, 8 months later.

Its taken me 8 months of hard work, going online once in a while with a usb flash memory stick at a local cyber cafe, grabbing things to read at night. My current work is not original by any means, and if you have seen it, which you may have, you probably would not have seen it as out of the ordinary, or even how effective it is.

First things first, a canadian publisher is now my main client, everything I do is for their authors, and I don't have to go looking for money anymore. But it was by sheer dumb luck, not by great skill that I got that.

I am focusing on gaining other publishers, now that my services are becoming a bit bigger, and I have metrics to prove how effective it is.

What I did...

I wrote a book for amazon, a short story about a fictional planet and good vs bad kids and their adventures. Kind of like harry potter but my story is still pretty unknown especially since I didn't do anything for it and it has a crappy cover. But it still sold a few a month. I wanted to promote books on amazon, since everything else is pretty tired like video game amazon sites littering the internet.

I started with blogging, the only free thing I could think of at first, with reviews of books. Of course, I couldn't afford them so I used other people's reviews and made them my own unique reviews. I added pictures, and then wanted to add video.

Which I couldn't find of course.It's not like there were trailers for books... but what if there were?

What makes a person go see a movie?

The actors?
The trailer and story?
What others said about the movie, like critics?

What makes a person read a book?

The writer?
The story?
What others said about it in GoodReads?

So I took that idea and hit powerpoint. I created my first "Book Trailers".

They sucked, but they got views.

Then I realized that I didn't know anything about video or youtube really.
I started studying at work (I was cleaning houses and doing laundry...by hand).
I started drawing and creating my characters, developing my ability to tell the whole "meat" of a story in video form, like a regular movie trailer.

My first really good trailer was developed in illustrator and after affects. It was for "Under the dome", by Stephen King.

It got a lot of views, it made a few sales, and I figured that I could track the metrics in both youtube and amazon.

Then I figured out (you must understand I was youtube/amazon retarded) that you can use both amazon and youtube as a social media platform.

So I started putting up a few more videos, excellent quality taking me at least 3 weeks of non stop work to create, and then commenting on comments, getting subscribers and then talking to them, and then using other social media to gather avid book readers to come and watch my shows.

As good as I am doing, I am still not at the top of my game, I haven't begun to peak.

I can definitely develop awesome videos, with great voice overs provided by fiverr (cheap because the videos are all about 45 seconds to 1 minute).

But I haven't broken the ice in using amazon and youtube yet. I just scratched the surface.

I was contacted by an author that I did a video for by proxy. I wanted to promote one of the books, and they sent me a message thanking me for a great job, and if I could do one for another darker book.

His publisher contacted me next. They hired me to do a different authors "Book trailer" and have more on the way.

So in the end, I am hoping to start a much better income developing $150 1 minute trailers for books.

This does sell books by the way, if you are selling a book on amazon, I suggest you use a real quality trailer for the book, develop a youtube channel specifically for your books, and then use that as one of your platforms to get people to purchase the books through your own links.

As I said, I am just beginning here, but I had to tell someone.