People who want to publish their own books often face difficult decisions about the methods they should use to promote their books. Sometimes they have to choose certain methods because they take less time. In some cases, they choose the methods that will cost less. The return on investment is also something that self-publishers have to consider. In other cases, it is simply a matter of whether the method works or not. One method that people are still unsure about when promoting books is the use of videos. However, the following facts will open your eyes to the effectiveness of videos.

1. Websites that have embedded videos have better rankings on Google searches than those without videos.

2. It is much easier for a video to go viral in electronic media than simple text or photos.

3. Nowadays you don’t even have to host a video on your site. You can upload it to YouTube and post a link of the video on your website to save you bandwidth.

All these are great to know, however, do videos actually help an author to promote his/her book? The answer is yes. According to research, people are twice as likely to interact with content if it features heavy use of photos and/or videos. People who make video trailers of their books are therefore likely to have better conversion rates than those who don’t make videos of their books.

Why are videos so important?

In this day and age, video is everywhere. We use our smartphones to get updates on everything and like to watch videos a lot. It doesn’t matter whether it is catching up on the highlights from yesterday’s game or finding out how to instantly cool a Coke without refrigeration. Because of our frequent exposure to videos, our brains are more able to absorb the information in videos than a block of text. A well-made video trailer of a book can be just as effective as a trailer for a blockbuster movie. It can significantly increase the anticipation for your book in your audience.

How do you create great videos for a book?

The job of creating a video trailer is not one that should be taken lightly. There are two main things to take into consideration when making a video. You should make sure that the quality of the video is top-notch and that it has great and relevant content.

Quality

A video trailer should only be a few minutes long. Use professional cameras to record the video and if you are not confident about your skills, you can hire a professional videographer.

Content

Since you are the one who knows what your book is about, you are the video’s creative director. Figure out which parts of the book to use for the video trailer and the dialogue to use. Make sure that the video: sells benefits of your book, tells the story, gives viewers a peek behind the scenes, is fun to watch, shows the story instead of telling it, and is short.