Animoto: Making Your Own Book Trailer

We all know authors are becoming more and more responsible for promoting themselves and their books. I've written several blogs about this very thing, but I wanted to share another site I've been using that can really assist broke authors in the task of self promotion. It's called Animoto. I'd heard about it a few months ago from several friends, and then recently was introduced to it again by a colleague. But you know how it is with social media. The key is having the time to play around with it!

And I'm so glad I finally did.


See, I'm the PR rep at my school this year and part of what I do is come up with activities after school for teachers to attend. Now, I don't know if you're aware of it, but teachers don't actually always like hanging out together off campus. I mean, you spend all day working with kids, you're tired and cranky at the end of the day, and the last thing you really want is to relax with people who feel just as frustrated as you do. I've had to come up with inventive ways to get my co-workers to chillax together at the end of the work day and the most effective tool I've found (besides putting up propaganda on the bathroom walls where they're forced to see it) is movie trailers. I've become a genius at using iMovie! I send out iMovies about every event we have and it's lots of fun to use.


However, since discovering Animoto, I've been venturing over to the dark side of film making. Animoto lets you to make short movies (30 seconds) for free, and it has awesome still images, live action clips, and music for you to use. It even allows you to import your own images and music, too. If you want to go even longer with your movie, there's a $5 a month option that gives you more choices or you can go Pro. Right now, I'm using the $5 option and getting a lot for my money.


Of course, this got me thinking about book trailers. I've seen some great ones and some that could...well, use a little more work. I'm currently working on the book trailer for my urban fantasy, Nephilim, using Animoto, and while it's not quite ready for public consumption yet, I do have a small one that promotes my publisher, Lyrical Press, Inc. Click on the link to check it out! Maybe it will give you some ideas for your own book trailer!


Click on the words Lyrical Press to see the trailer.


Lyrical Press