Silicon Valley Techy Offers Ten Do-It-Yourself Video Tips

Samanthi Fernando video advice is especially valuable because she has a Silicon Valley tech background and she is the author of what some call the hard-to-promote genre--a book of poetry. Special thanks to her for her contribution to this blog.

Author Samanthi Fernando is using a promotional video for her new Inspirational poetry book – RADIANT ROSES. 

Samanthi is a corporate communications professional in the Silicon Valley, and she says, “We find that videos make the most impact on our audiences— especially when the expected result is for employees or customers to take action” – Being a techie and a poet, she uses technology to promote her poetry.

If you are an Author you probably already have a Blog or Website – Do you have a YouTube Channel? Upload your book previews, poetry readings and share, share, share.

Amazon Author Central offers a great way for Authors to share video updates and book promotions. So upload your videos there too and showcase your work.

Here are some video making tips for Authors from Samanthi:

1.       Write a short engaging script – practice out loud before you record your sound

2.       Select your text content – an excerpt from your book and any key messages to display

3.       Take plenty of photos and pick the best visuals for your message OR record the message as a video

4.       Keep the color theme aligned with your book cover

5.       Pay attention to the transitions between images – keep it simple and smooth

6.       Select appropriate intro and closing music

7.       End with a prompt for action - where to find more information or how to buy your book etc.

8.       Play and replay before you upload

9.       Before sharing: Test your video on all platforms & devices – Windows/Mac, Mobile AND all Internet Browsers – IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari

10.    In addition to sharing the Link to the video, copy the “Share –> Embed” HTML code from YouTube to play the video on your website/blog

Samanthi used Apple iMovie to create her video. Take a look at her Book Preview here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eom9vM7CY8Q

Note: While you’re there, won’t you leave a “like” for Samanthi? We’re authors sharing with authors here.

----- Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The multi award-winning second edition of The Frugal Editor; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .

Memories, Your Videos and Making Some Moolah

 

Memories lead to memories lead to, yeah, something I'd like to remind you about. In this case, I was answering questions for an online interview to promote the SouthernUtah Book Expo and I mentioned my high school newspaper and yearbook and recalled that getting sponsorship ads for those things was as vital to their being as the photos, writing, and layout of those parts of high school life we all value.

That reminded me that authors can do the same kind of thing with their Web sites, their marketing materials and, yes, even their books. I am a sometimes actor and occasionally I notice how carefully a director will place a picture on a wall or a can of Coke on the table in the shot he's taking. That's placement advertising and we—as consumers of both the Coke and the ad itself—hardly notice. It's subliminal. It's natural to see them there. And besides, this country lauds capitalism and monetary independence. In fact, many metaphorically wave the flags of commerce in our politics (though some suddenly become shy about doing so for their own books!)

Just as I'm thinking about that, I ran across a related article in the business section of the LA Times. Of course! It's about product placement in videos and how it's growing. And how it's making some smart video companies and producers some really big dollars. Why am I not surprised? Here's why. The Love Boat, the TV series from several decades ago, was one giant product placement sitcom! This kind of marketing is not new—nor is it unacceptable.

For any author to do it and make large quantities of money requires an audience (we authors call it a platform). But it can be done on a small scale—perhaps out of the goodness of your heart or perhaps in trade with other authors who are out there making videos and otherwise promoting and building their platforms like crazy.

The video entrepreneurs featured in that article remind others that audience is "more important than any brand deal." They say that if they love a product it feels good to do something with it commercially.

Some advice for successful product inclusion:

1. Don't interrupt the story (the arc or thread) with an "unrelated product message." I'd extend that and say at its best it should never feel like an interruption at all.
2. A product or its logo might work best if it doesn't appear until half way through the video. If you should decide to use an actual ad, put it at the end of the video (or end of a book) because if a person has hung in long enough to see that final frame, they probably will be more open to a product than if it's flashed up front where it might discourage a person from watching at all.
3. Try a title card. Entrepreneurs McLaughlin and Link Neal use product placement well into their cat video and then a brand name "title card" at the end. I'm thinking even the title card could add something more than just an ad. Perhaps it could look like a cross-stitched "Kitty Snoozing" sign hanging from a doorknob. It could be designed with Friskies colors, a logo, and little kitty-food-can tassels hanging from the corners. The question now is, what would the title card on your video look like—beyond just your bookcover image and a Web site address.

In past articles for this newsletter, I've also mentioned that when the ad is both pertinent to the story being told and also offers something special—something that will help with a career, project, or pocketbook—that can only make it more satisfying for everyone.

So what are the guidelines for success—whether it is a paid-for project, a bartered one, or from the goodness of your heart?

1. Passion
2. Appropriateness
3. Perceived Benefit
4. A Promotion Partner so you can share both real expenses and the time it takes to promote it.

On that latter point, one of my subscribers, Reno Lovison, once made a slide-show video for me without even asking. He sent it to me as a gift with suggestions of how I might promote it. It was an interesting turn around because his own promotional materials and video business were the product placements within the ad he made for me. Talk about partnerships! His Web site is http://authorsbroadcast.com/ and if you look at the books on his Web site, you'll also see the cover of one of my retail books for which he made a more traditional sales video several years ago (and which I still use in multiple spots on my Web site).

If you'd like to read more check the LA Times story by Madeline O'Leary, Tuesday, July 29, Business Section (B3).

Happy Writing, Editing, and Promoting,

Carolyn

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  Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .

A Holiday Video Resource for Writers

This is like an early holiday gift for you authors who subscribe or follow this blog. As you know, I try to give you resources, especially frugal ones! (-: So here is a service offered by Aggie Villaneuva at Promotion a la Carte.  

The little video she just made for a group of her clients is at the top of this blog. Fun, huh?  She also everything she does like crazy. On her Web site and on her social networks.

If you would like to help spread the word to your author friends, you can pick up the html code at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDZYjFErRlU


Whether you choose a promotion like this for the holiday season or some other, I hope you will  promote!

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Book Video Trailers Work for Print Communicators, Too!

By Reno Lovison

It seems counterintuitive to speak to authors and publishers about video. After all these are people engaged in the printed word. Some people have asked, “Aren’t print and video in competition with one another?”

I would like to dispel the idea of various communications media being in competition. As authors, publishers, video producers, webmasters, speakers or whatever we are first and foremost communicators. The medium we use primarily may be our specialty but the media is not our message. We should be willing to explore whatever media provide the best chance of communicating what we want to say. Just as traditional television and video has used print to promote its message so should sellers and providers of print be willing to use video to bring people to their message. What has changed is the fact that video promotion via the Internet is now within the reach of small businesses and niche markets.

If you are not familiar with the term; “book video trailers” are short videos similar to movie trailers that aim to pique the interest of viewers. These short multi-media productions typically less than two minutes and often as short as thirty seconds have the ability to provide potential readers which much more information by simultaneously using pictures, graphics, written words, spoken words and even music to set the tone and describe the content of a book. You can view some videos at www.authorsbroadcast.com.

Video trailers are fast becoming an essential aspect of book promotion for the same reasons that video is becoming an essential aspect of business promotion in general. Now that nearly 90% of Americans have access to high speed Internet connections at home, school or work; video is viable. YouTube has brought attention to video on the web by serving up over one billion video views per week as of October 2009, essentially bringing it out of the shadows and making it a mainstream Internet activity. This demonstrates that people are willing to watch video on the web and all reports indicate that people are actually seeking video content as a preferred information medium making YouTube the second largest search engine after Google.

Think back only a few years ago when ecommerce began to really take off. Book buyers were among the first adopters of online buying, spawning amazon.com and changing the face of book buying forever. Books are still one of the most actively sought and most often purchased items via the web. It only follows that there are millions of people looking for information about books online. How do you stand out from the crowd? How do you ensure that your message is everywhere your potential readers expect to find it? Video allows you to control and deliver your message efficiently and effectively. Video is the medium du jour but it is also the technology that will potentially change the Internet significantly as the lines between broadcast television and online video continue to blur. Our static websites and current web pages will be quaint when compared to the interactive, multi-media rich websites of the near future. I predict that by the end of 2010 nearly every website will have at least one video presented. Web video and book video trailers are not some avant-garde futuristic curiosity. Rather they are a growing and essential web element. The sooner you embrace the technology the better chance you have to use this short window of time to be an early adopter and thus attract more attention to your message.

Reno Lovison has seen book marketing from both sides. He is a producer of book video trailers and the author of “Turn Your Business Card Into Business.” Learn more about book video trailer production at www.authorsbroadcast.com .

Note: Here is my personal recommendation. A few years ago I had a book trailer done that was not at all satisfactory. The producer didn't understand the concept of marketing, particulary not for nonfiction books. I approached Reno with trepidation. I have been thrilled with the results. Here they are:







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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog.

Videos and Book Trailers--Reaching Thousands of Eyes

Subscriber to this blog have known me to say that I love videos for reaching the largest number of people in the most memorable way possible. You probably--if you've been subscribed for some time--also heard me caution you against poorly produced or feebly conceptualized book trailers. There are just so many of them out there including one of mine. And once they are out there, there is little you can do about retrieving them all on the big, humongous Web.

For those reasons, I advised that even fiction writers use videos of themselves talking about their books rather than trailers. Well, I finally found someone I can recommend for trailers. Ta da!

He is Reno Lovison. His prices are reasonable and because he has a strong background in marketing and as an author, he gets it. You'll find him at

http://www.authorsbroadcast.com/titles/frugalpromo.htm.

I found Reno even has a background in retailing (which is one reason I figured it was worth trusting him with a video promo for my new A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques (www.budurl.com/RetailerersGuide).) It's brand new and you are the first to see it on my site where I just installed it. To see it as a sample go to:

http://www.carolynhowardjohnson.redenginepress.com/frugal_in-store_promotions.htm

You should also know that it is his gorgeous voice doing the voiceover. Even my husband, a voiceover professional, thinks he is pretty amazing. Here is his contact information, too. Check out his prices and see what you think:

Reno Lovison Marketing, 5250 N. Broadway, Chicago, IL 60640, (773)989-1960), reno@renoweb.net, www.renoweb.net

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog.

Green Expo Book Pavilion To Help Authors Promote All Year Long

As many of your know, I was born Green. Nearly as green as Kermit.

And now I will be a host to publishers, literary agents, authors--anyone who considers themselves Greenies--at the Book Pavilion at the Green New Media Life Expo.

Kindle readers and e-books, bring on the video interview!

The series of Green New Media Life Expos will include Book Pavilions at all venues of the Expo. Anyone in the publishing world who considers themselves green (and most should!) may feature themselves at the expo and the new media technology that is part of the Expo package will continue to broadcast their books and services online long after the trappings of the festivities have been swept away. And, of course, that New Media technology will reduce their promotional footprint to help keep the environment green.

One of the neatest things about this is I get to play host to the exhibitors and guests and will interview many of the participating authors, publishers, printers and more for their own videos that are included in the reasonable cost of the booth space.

I have been interested in the environment since the 1970s and im also an official blogger for the Green New Media Life Expo (www.greennewmedialifeexpo.com). I often feature green tips for authors in her Sharing with Writers online newsletter (www.hotodoitfrugally.com) and on this blog.

The Green Expos will be held at the Ontario Convention Center, Ontario, CA; the Cal Expo Fairgrounds in Sacramento, CA, and the Pomona Fairgrounds, Pomona, CA--all this fall. The first is Sept. 12-13 at the Ontario venue. Well-known TV and Los Angeles radio host Rey Ybarra is producing the event. Sought-after Randy Detroit will coordinate the filming. Author Patricia Kokinos is coordinating publicity.

To get a green publishing message world wide contact
Rey Ybarra, 818-464-3726, rybarra106@aol.com
Gerry Fisher, 760-961-2728, 702-467-9411 cell, gefisher39@aol.com

To keep up with all things green and the coming Expos visit:
http://www.greennewmedialifeexpo.com/
To follow my Green Expo and Green Book Pavilion blogs complete with green guests like VH Melville: http://www.greennewmedialifeexpo.com/content/writers-can-be-fantastically-green

Anyone who would like to help pass the word, please know that support materials including articles on the benefits of new media video and more. Oh! Yes! You'll read more about those benefits in coming days on this blog!


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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog.

Best Selling Author TV To Be at LA Times Festival of Books

Big Video News!

Rey Ybarra, the interviewer for the video many of you have seen and commented on is fantastic. So is his cameraman, Randy Detroit, and so is the equipment they use! And so is their knowledge about getting that video out to places that most authors know little about.

They will be filming at the Authors' Coalition booth at the LA Times Fair April 26 and 27th with a special introductory price for videos. I'm hoping lots of authors drop by to see what this team can do for them besides film a really nice video. Learn more at www.bestsellingauthortv.blogspot.com .

Explore the videos they have done there. Check out Rey's amazing past in radio and TV.

There will be more on this opportunity in my newsltter later. You can subscribe by sending me an e-mail at hojonews@aol.com. Use the same e-mail address to make advance appointments or ontact me with questions.
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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author THIS IS THE PLACE; HARKENING: A COLLECTION OF STORIES REMEMBERED; TRACINGS, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T; and THE FRUGAL EDITOR: PUT YOUR BEST BOOK FORWARD TO AVOID HUMILIATION AND ENSURE SUCCESS.
Her other blogs include TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com and AuthorsCoalition.blogspot.com, a blog that helps writers and publishers turn a ho-hum book fair booth into a sizzler.