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.

Q&A a la Ann Landers: Book Trailers ™, Videos and Your Book

Question: Do you think videos, movies and the like actually help book sales? Or generated more interest in your books?

Answer: I'm repeating my old refrain here, I know. But videos, like any other kind of promotion, will only work as hard as you work it. A few stragglers will find a video if you post it and that's not necessarily a bad thing but a few stragglers are not enough to warrant the effort and the expense (I'm the FRUGAL book promoter, remember?). But if you let people know about your trailer or video in the thousands of ways one might do that, it can certainly help you with exposure and that's part of your branding and branding--if not sooner then later--eventually leads to sales.(-:

Even if you promote your trailer or video, it must still be a part of a frequent and long term campaign. You might want to see the one that was just done for me by Rey Ybarra on the home page of www.howtodoitfrugally.

One of my online pals Nikki Leigh, listmom to WelcometoReadersStation@yahoogroups.com, noted that it seems a bit redundant to have to promote what you produced to promote. It does, doesn't it! But here are ways to utilize your videos or moving collages or whatever without spending a lot of time doing it. Let's call them passive promotions of your video:

1. Post them in places that your readers will visit anyway:
 Your website
 Your blogs
 Your social networks (like Shelfari and Facebook)

2. Give them to people who promote for you:
 Your publisher(s)
 The editors of websites that interview you or use your articles

3. The obvious place that most people are using for their videos, YouTube will get more visits if you:
 Include the URL for it in your e-mail autosignature
 Include the URL for it everywhere you do anything, all the places listed above, maybe even the taglines in the freelance articles to write and more.

4. Use them on computer and TV screens when you speak, sign books or do other events.

Do you have any other ideas our readers could use to passively promote videos? Let's hear about them in the comments below.
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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.