5 Ways to Use Videos to Promote Your Books

Book promotions can be daunting. It’s an area that new authors generally avoid, mainly because they don’t know how to do it. Some say that writing a book is way easier than promoting it! With video promotions, you can reach more people.

Promotional videos are one of the most impactful things you as an author can do to promote your books. Why? Because interesting videos outperform other traditional forms of book marketing. In fact, on social media, videos get 10 times more engagement and reach than sharing images and links.

Consumers are watching more video content online than ever, whether that’s book promos, product demonstrations or tool explanations. YouTube has become the biggest search engine for “how to” information.

Now, coming to the different ways you can use videos for promoting your book, they are:

1. Book Trailers

Just understand the way movie trailers have an effect on you as an audience. Book trailers work in the same way. They help in creating awareness, helping you engage with prospective readers, and enticing them to purchase the book.

Book trailer visuals offer a glimpse of the story’s general preview and the main characters. Or for non-fiction, the main themes and takeaway. This evokes curiosity and thus engages the audience. Your book trailer should be sweet and short if you really want to make it appear awesome.

Make sure the book trailer is not more than a minute or a minute and a half in length. Anything more than this length will not be a trailer anymore. After all, what’s a trailer? Is it just a glimpse of the main story, right? So remember, it’s just the preview and not a movie on your book. Therefore, hold back the important sections or plot twists. Not to mention, if fiction, the viewers should not get any hint about the ending.

Make the perfect book trailer, and it can be used on your social media, YouTube channel trailer, and to share a quick summary of what it’s about with friends.

Jennifer likes to make book trailers or other video promotions with editing tools. See one below.

2. Create Behind-the-Scene Videos

Many readers are interested in knowing the face behind the words written in the book. The creative writing procedure of accomplished writers fascinates avid readers and novice writers. As an author, you can make amazing behind-the-scene videos on a subject like sharing your writing routine and place, or talking about inspirations for your book.

Make sure your behind-the-scenes book promotion videos are as authentic and casual as practical. So, there’s no specific preparation needed on your end, apart from holding the phone steady with a mini tripod. Just work on keeping the video free-flowing and natural.

Use a video editor to edit your video but with minimal extra graphics, to keep the content as authentic as possible. ‘Behind the scenes’ videos present you and your writing space the way they are. Hence, they are very effective in making personal connections with the viewers.

You must create your video so that it builds instant interest and trust of the viewers in your work. Such things will lead to more readers and followers eventually. Always try creating behind-the-scenes videos on the subject that your target audience can relate to and enjoy. Obviously, keep the central theme of your book in mind.

3. Author Interview Videos

Making author interview videos is a marketing technique that harks back to traditional publishing times. This kind of publicity campaign needs to be crafted very well. The authors are shot in high definition partaking in interviews, either with an audience or between two people.

Such videos can serve as one of the most authentic ways to connect with prospective readers. On YouTube, you can find several author interview videos and look at what topics they cover — more than just the book.

However, consider the length of such videos because they ought to be from 45 minutes to an hour-long or so. That said, you have the option of splitting the visual into several topical clips, as this works better with younger generations: Gen. Z and Millenials.

You can also create videos featuring the interviews of other authors. For this, you must look out for published authors in the genre you belong to – those sharing a similar target audience as yours. Always choose authors with a decent fan following on social media platforms.

Do face-to-face interviews with these authors and post this on your blog. You can even ask the other authors to share the video on their social media profiles. This way, you will get the attention of their readers as they will visit your site to watch the interview of their favourite author.

As part of the interview video or while they are on your site, the target audience will get information about your book. This way, the chances of these viewers picking up a copy of your book increase.

4. Create Book Reading Videos

No, this is not at all an outdated book promotion method in these present times. In fact, some readers love good book-reading sessions. It will help in meeting your readers in person, such as at the local library, where many libraries let you host a talk for free.

You must set up and film this session, to cut into a video later. The benefit of this method is that you can publish the event video on your website, on your YouTube channel and other social media platforms. Such read-aloud sessions are also a good way of keeping the kids entertained, educated and active, if your target audience is children.

5. Make Unboxing Videos

You can shoot yourself opening the package of your book box for the very first time and highlight the pages within it. This is a fun way of promoting a book and showcasing the real book cover. Tag #Ingramsparkauthors in your video for a chance of promotion, if you bought from them. Tag #kindlepublishingauthors for KDP authors.
Through your expressions, you must let the viewers know how excited you are for them to go through your book. This will also promote the packaging of your new book. Such videos are great for authors producing special book editions with limited availability.

The Bottom Line on Video Promotions

The final idea is that you must think of strategy and spend time selecting the right way to promote your book. It’s amazing how you can use simple video promotion tools or in-built camera editors quickly for this purpose.

As well as choosing between talking about your book and using animated graphics, you can be even more creative with videos. The choice is all yours. Just go with the perfect option for your book and the way you want to present it.

Also, you can check out our re-made course, Book Creation Success, helping authors to publish independently!