YouTube is a free video sharing website that has more than one billion users watching videos every month. This makes it the perfect tool for authors looking to promote their books to online viewers. There are three main strategies used by authors to promote their books on YouTube.

Strategy One: Trailers

The first and often most popular strategy used by authors on YouTube is a book trailer. A book trailer is a short promotional video meant to get viewers interested in the book, just like a trailer for a movie or TV show. Creating and putting together a trailer often requires knowledge of digital imaging, photo editing, and video creation software. Due to the advanced level of knowledge needed to make a professional book trailer, many authors hire a freelancer through sites like Fiverr and Craigslist to create a professional book trailer. Hiring a freelancer to make a professional trailer can be a bit pricey, which is why some authors choose to make their own book trailer as a PowerPoint presentation or as a Prezi presentation. While these options are less expensive, they tend to fail at pulling in viewers and evoking an interest in the book. For these reasons, it is often best to pay for the best if the author is truly interested in pulling in viewers via a book trailer.

Strategy Two: Author Speaks

This is the second most popular type of YouTube promotional video and one of the cheaper options as all it involves is the author of the book filming themselves talking. During these videos, authors typically talk about their book, answer a few fan questions, and maybe hint at something new or exciting that is going to happen in their book. Some of the more creative authors even ask fans to leave any questions that they want answered in the comments section, and a certain number of the author’s favorite questions will be answered in a follow up video with a shout-out to the user. Authors that are in the preliminary stages of writing their next book sometimes host contests of votes that allow readers to slightly influence the follow up by picking a character name, choosing which way a love triangle will go, or if a character should live or die.

Strategy Three: Giveaways

The third and often most popular strategy used by authors on YouTube are giveaway videos. In these videos the author hosts a contest or random giveaway that will allow a certain number of fans to get a free signed copy of the author’s current or next book. For a contest, the author will sometimes conduct an online scavenger hunt that requires contestants to find certain thing in the author’s book or website with the first three to provide all the right answers winning a prize. Then there are also giveaway videos where the author asks all those interested to comment on their favorite part or character and the author selects a few random users to get a free copy of the author’s current or next book.