A book trailer is a great promotional tool that you, as an author, can use to advertise your books. It contains video clips, photographs, text or voice narrations and music presented in a way so as to inform the viewer of what your book is all about, and at the same time entertain them. Its main purpose is to generate interest, it should fascinate viewers to the point they will buy the book and at the same time share the trailer with their friends who might buy the book themselves.

Looking at the implications, a great book trailer is a very powerful tool you could use to boost your sales and increase your book’s popularity. The question now is how do you create one? You just can’t grab a few pictures, combine it with music and subtitles, add your title and your name, save it as a video file, then start posting it on all the video sharing websites you can find. If you do that, you could end up with zero sales plus a damaged reputation.

So to help you in creating a great book trailer, the steps and tips in making one are outlined in this article. First off, before you start creating your own, you should watch book trailers made by other authors and, at the same time, trailers that were made by professionals. This will give you an idea on how to create your own book trailer and help you avoid mistakes.

Next, you should decide on what video editing software to use - iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, Sony Vegas or other computer programs. The important thing is, you must be comfortable with the tool and you should be able to enjoy using it. If you are encountering difficulties, you could always look up some tutorials on the internet and look for tutorials that will help you incorporate effects to make your trailer look polished and professional.

After that, it’s time to create your trailer, and the first thing you need to do is to create a plan. Make a step by step guide on how your book trailer will progress. And in order to gain and hold the interest of your viewers, keep your trailer under two minutes. To do so you should only add information that will intrigue your viewers; a brief summary of your book and one or two vital or dramatic events.

Then gather your resources; create a list of photographs, video clips, sound effects and songs that will express the book trailer you want to create and then look for them on the internet. Make sure that you gain permission from their creators or owners first if you are going to use them.

The next step is editing; this is where you use the video editing software of your choice to combine the images, the video clips and the audio files you have and create your book trailer. The knowledge you have gained from watching those other trailers will help you a lot in this step, so make sure you use them. And before finalizing your trailer, show it to other people first, get their feedback.

The final step is posting your book trailer on online websites for people to watch, like and share. Do not forget to upload it to your own blog if you have one; also make sure you post it on major networking sites like Facebook and video sharing sites like YouTube.