Book Trailers for Children's Books - Mistakes, BEST Practices, BEST Tools, Examples

did you know that most big traditional Publishers create book trailers for their children's books and what is really interesting is that while the creation of book trailers for any other genre has drastically decreased over the years the the creation of book trailers for kids books has not so if you've been wanting to add a book trailer to your marketing strategy of your children's book then this video is for you now whether or not you want to give it a try and create your own or looking to hire

someone to create a book trailer for you I'd encourage you to watch this video because either way you will want to make sure you understand what makes a great trailer and what might make that trailer less effective hi there I'm Evie and award-winning children's author and Ghost Writer over on evjones.com and the creator of children's book University I create videos specifically for children's authors so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss my weekly videos in this video I'm going to share wit

h you what book trailers are why you might want to consider using a book trailer places where we can use them or add them to so we truly get the most out of them the main elements you will want to make sure to include in your trailer the main layout options including examples some tools I would recommend and the most common mistakes so that you can avoid them throughout the video I will also share fantastic and free Resources with you that I used to use a lot because many moons ago I used to own

a small Motion Graphics Studio that specialized in creating book trailers for all genres not just children's books and I created book trailers for authors like New York Times bestselling author Nicholas Sansbury Smith and USA Today best-selling authors like Deborah Webb and James Hankins and during that time I created lots and lots of book trailers for fellow children's book authors and seeing the recent and nude growth of book trailers for children's books is really exciting to me to see which

is why I created this video for you because especially for children's books book trailers truly work if and that's a big if they are done well so let's Dive Right In what are book trailers book trailers can be a wonderful addition to our marketing strategy there are essentially 60 second or less Snippets of our children's books that are very much like mini commercials another industry that uses trailers very successfully is the movie industry right we see those all over all the time and the mai

n goal for both book trailers and movie trailers are the same one they are meant to inform potential viewers about the existence of the movie or in our case our children's book and two they are meant to have potential viewers or readers decide whether or not the movie or our children's book is something they might be interested in watching or reading book trailers work especially well for children's books which is why most of the big publishing houses continue to create book trailers for their c

hildren's books and that's because most children's books are visual anyway right because of all their beautiful illustrations now why should we consider using book trailers being able to reach potential readers directly is the Holy Grail for us children's authors right and the number one place we can do this is during school visits and Book Fairs but to reach little ones on an even bigger scale we can and should make use of the web nowadays students are all over YouTube in my book how to self-pu

blish a children's book I mentioned that between 35 and 45 percent of kids in the UK between the age of four and seven use YouTube every week from age eight upwards that jumps to 60 increasing to around 80 percent by age 11. and a smarty pants brand popularity survey of 6 to 12 year olds here in the US found that YouTube beats other brands like Disney Netflix for kids and Nickelodeon and so that's where the use of book trailers comes in but where can we use them book trailers are not new but wit

h the growth of platforms like tick tocks they have made an incredible comeback especially for authors that are taking marketing matters into their own hands there are a number of places where we can share and use our book trailer we can upload our trailer onto YouTube we can share our trailer on social media platforms such as Facebook Instagram Tick Tock and even LinkedIn we can add it to our Goodreads profile we can embed it on our website if we have one and we can add it to our Amazon author

page these mini videos generate more buzz on social networks and help us Engage New audiences in an exciting way so I said earlier that book trailers work extremely well if they are done right and in order to create a great book trailer we will want to make sure we know all the different different parts or elements of a trailer so let's look at the main ones and while not all of these elements I'm going to mention here are necessary they are the main components that will make your trailer captiv

ating and help it distinguish itself from a simple slideshow element number one are images animations and videos these are the media agents that will represent our book now finding fitting images and video clips usually takes a long time when creating a trailer for books other than children's books and that's because those usually don't come with any imagery right other than what we can see on the cover for children's books on the other hand this is much much easier because we already have all t

he images so usually we don't really have to go out and find any fitting stock images because we can simply use the illustrations of the book and that was always one of the biggest reasons why I loved creating trailers for children's books element number two are are text Spurs that is the line of text that often appears on the screen throughout the trailer this shouldn't be more than about nine texts total to keep the screen from feeling cluttered and overwhelming to the viewer nine is actually

already on the very high end so if you can have less than that even better and so we really want to make sure we make every line of text count most viewers don't want to read a whole block of text let alone scrolling text unless it is for something like Star Wars because we as viewers commit ourselves to watching a video we want to do just that right watch it most viewers don't want to read a whole block of text let alone scrolling text unless it is for something like Star Wars always go with th

e shortest possible phrase dropping unnecessary words and if need be break it up meaning you show the first part in one scene and the second part of the text in the next scene almost like a little cliff hanger at the end of the scene that then leads into the next one when creating your own text lines the main question you can ask yourself to help you guide you is this one right here what is the one main idea of my book I want to bring across if your lines of text can answer this question in as l

ittle words as possible then you have achieved your goal so let's look at two examples here these text lines right here are from the trailer for the book boy and Bod by Amy Dyckman where the number in front of each line indicates that the text occurs during different scenes so here we only have six very short lines do they answer our question as to what the one main idea of the book is that the author wants to bring across I think it does by watching this 49 Second trailer I know that the story

is probably about the friendship between a boy and a robot would this help me make the decision as to whether or not my kids would like this book I believe it would another example I wanted to share here is from the trailer for the book wherever you go by patsylo Miller here the lines are as follows when it's time for a journey to learn and to grow roads guide your footsteps wherever you go roads give you chances to seek and explore want an adventure just open your door so here we only have four

lines of text four simple but beautiful lines written in rhyme and taken right out of the book and even though it's super short it's it still manages to let the viewer know what the book is all about helping the viewer make a decision whether or not they might enjoy this book Element number three of our book trailers are voiceovers or narration now this isn't always included but voice over is a recorded spoken narration for our trailer this element is completely optional a well done voice over

or narration will add an extra Dimension to our trailer if you decide to use a voiceover you will have to write an enticing script that can then be read and recorded by either yourself or by a higher voice Talent if you decide to hire someone be diligent with the screening of your voice talent because you will want to make sure to select the right voice that you feel would go well with your book a few things you might want to think about are whether you would prefer a male over a female voice a

voice that is Young sounding versus a voice that sounds more mature a deep and serious Voice versus a more cheerful and upbeat voice as well as what kind of accent or dialect you would like for the narration there are a lot of different options I usually hired someone to do the narration for me except for the book trailer I made for my children's book about my own childhood and the resource I used over and over again to find and commission voice talents was fiverr.com so I went ahead and added a

direct link to my description below that goes directly to fiverr's voice over section reading through the different voice talents to find just the right one for your book might take a bit but I'd really like to encourage you to listen to the freelancer samples they provide and then based on that decide whether or not their voice might be a good fit now something you will want to remember is that once the recording is done changes cannot be made so before submitting our script for The Voice Tale

nt we will want to make sure that there aren't any mistakes and if your script contains unusual words it's always helpful to phonetically write out how you want the narrator to say that word my number one ninja tip when it comes to voice recordings is this always wait with the hiring of a voice Talent until the very end when all the scenes of your trailer are already created and put together that way you know exactly how long your trailer is so that you can let the voice Talent know how long you

want the voice recording to be and that way they know how to paste the narration now when preparing your script it's important to know that voice talents often base their price on the word count which is yet another reason why we want to keep it as short sweet and concise as we possibly can and just like with text first we will want to keep this question right here in mind what is the one main idea of my book I want to bring across now because we can hear faster than we can read a narration can

share a bit more than textpers I always try to keep the script below or around 100 words this right here is a great example it is the narrated script for the book The Good Egg by jewelry John it's only 94 words long but lets the viewer know what the book is all about while also managing to bring across the mood or tone of the book itself now a request I received many many times was to include text bursts and a voice over at the same time and my recommendation here would be that unless the lines

of text mirror what is being said like subtitles I wouldn't recommend adding both to your trailer and the reason why I say this is because it's hard trying to read something that doesn't match with what is being said and so what would end up happening is that the viewer who can't focus on both just gets frustrated and that's not what we're going for right we are going for a fun experience for the viewer of our trailer if you need to alter your audio file in any way be it to shorten it to speed

it up to change the pitch to make the voice higher or lower the tool I always used for that was audacity a completely free multi-track audio editor and recorder I'll make sure to share the link in the description below it's truly amazing element number four are sound effects these can be simple sounds like thunder or the creaking of a door or the popping of bubbles this gives a trailer additional depth and adds to the viewers overall experience of watching the trailer I used to love adding sound

effects but again this is is completely optional the main resource I used again absolutely free was freesound.org I'll be sure to link to it in the description below I would simply type a description of the sound I was looking for into the search bar then select the type of audio file I wanted to narrow the results down and then I would download the sound that I liked the most we will have to create an account and log in in order to download the Sound but again it's absolutely free now when add

ing the sound to your video we will want to make sure it doesn't interfere with our voice over so we want to keep the volume relatively low unless of course we don't have a voice over element 5 is music just like with most of the other elements adding music is completely optional that's the music played in the background where the volume is usually very low especially when it's combined with a voice over and it's really just to support the underlying message or feeling we are trying to convey wi

th our trailer so for example if our book is a happy cheeky story we'd want to pair it with happy bouncy music now my number one advice here would be to choose music without lyrics because this could potentially be very distracting to the viewer now here are a number of ways we can go about this with many different options we could commission an artist and have a piece created for our trailer we could pay for the ride to use a certain song we could purchase stock music or find a provider that al

lows us to use their music for free I actually used all four of these options before but when I was working on platforms that didn't offer any music my favorite resource was the music by Kevin McLeod over on income Tech I'll be sure to add the link to the description below this site has a lot of options and the reason I really like it is because I can search by what I want the music to feel like be it calm humorous or intense again this is absolutely free all this Creator asks for in return is t

hat we attribute the used music to him by simply adding the title of the song his name and his website and you can do so at the very end of your trailer in the very last scene or frame element number six are reviews sometimes book trailers showcase a couple of reviews usually towards the end of the trailer I personally prefer not doing so because that takes precious time out of our less than 60 seconds that we could use to show more of our book instead but if you should decide to do so I would e

ncourage you to adhere to two things one only include high level reviews or highly relevant reviews now what do I mean by that high level reviews would be reviews by influencers that you know others would recognize by name or professional reviews by organizations like kirkus Publishers Weekly School library journal or book list highly relevant reviews would be reviews by teachers or Librarians or maybe a lactation consultant if your book is about breastfeeding or a vet if your book is about dogs

so if the reviewer somehow ties to our story we will want to make sure to mention the reviewer's title right after their name like doctor or third grade teacher or School librarian and two only display a little snippet or a short sentence or two of the review oftentimes especially professional reviews can be quite long so even though it's tempting to think that more is better only showcase your favorite sentence that way you won't have to use too much time to Showcase it while still making sure

that the reader has enough time to read it a really great example is the trailer for after the fall by Dan sanded where we have a three second scene of the book in the background and a one sentence snippet followed by where the review is from element 7 are transitions now this one I almost didn't include because it's something that is rarely noticeable to the viewer unless they pay attention to it a transition is the change from one scene to the next now transitions can be super simple where on

e scene simply ends and the next one begins where nothing else or no effect is added but if you have worked with any kind of video editing app or program before you may have seen different options that can be used for example where the new scene is spanning over the previous scene or where the new scene is fading in while the old scene is fading out there are all sorts of Transitions and they are simply meant to make the change from one scene to the next a bit smoother perhaps a bit more interes

ting and more professional looking but again unless you want to get really fancy most don't worry about making that transition anything special element 8 is all about the book information and the credits the book information here would entail the book cover where we can easily read the title of the book and something I would like to encourage you to include is some sort of call to action where you let the viewer know what to do next for example you could write something like find it wherever boo

ks are sold or get your copy today and don't shy away from mentioning specific places so for example if you know that your book will mostly be available on Amazon then say that and you could even include a visual like the Amazon logo so people will see right away where they can get your book and if you are active on social media like insta Instagram for example you could even include your handle right next to a little Instagram icon and credits here refers to the listing of any media materials t

hat require crediting or attribution per their terms that's not always the case but some of the songs we may decide to use may require us to share the title and song creator for example if you decided to use one of Kevin McLeod's songs for your background music that's when you would mention that right here and this book information and credits element is usually at the very end of your book trailer now when creating your book trailer a great way to get started is to watch other children's book t

railers and to pay really close attention to the different layouts or builds they are using meaning paying attention to how the different scenes of the book trailer were put together a video consists of separate scenes and as children's authors we should shoot for about four to six separate scenes six is probably the max number of scenes any more than that would make the trailer too long so for each scene we will want to plan what imagery we want to show what text we want to add and what narrati

on we want to hear if you choose to add narration so let's look at a number of different layout options when it comes to choosing the right one for you and your book I would suggest you choose a layout based on what programs are available to you and that you feel comfortable using number one is still images this is the first and also the simplest layout option where your backdrop is a still image that does not move and each scene would have a different image which is most likely going to be an i

llustration of your book and here we can create some depth with animated textures or by adding a voice over the second layout option is where the backdrop image is moving by sliding or panning from left to right or by zooming in and out and here the movement is meant to create some some depth and again we can add our text Spurs for each scene or add a voice over the third layout option is a bit more advanced where we have parts of our backdrop animated like the eyes of the character or a moving

head or moving arms and legs the fourth layout option is the most advanced where the entire scene is animated almost like a cartoon and unless we have access to programs like after effect that's an option I would not recommend if you are planning to make your own book trailer my number one recommendation here would be to watch a number of children's book trailers and see which ones you feel you could emulate and to help you with this I have compiled a list of really great example trailers for yo

u and added the link to it in the description below so make sure you check them out when it comes to the actual video editing tools I could recommend a whole bunch depending on your experience and your comfort level back when I created book trailers I used Adobe After Effects but that is now subscription based and also has a rather steep learning curve so I wanted to focus on two resources that are fairly easy to use and that also have a free option the first tool is canva now I mentioned canva

quite often and that's because it's truly so versatile so if you want to create a trailer using the still image layout option or the panning or moving image layout option then canva is a great choice it has a number of image animation options as well as text animation options the second tool I'd like to recommend is movely movely also has a free plan and is fairly easy to use at the making of this video the maximum free video length is two minutes which is more than enough for a book trailer it'

s slightly more advanced than canva and what I really like is that I can add keyframes which gives me a bit more control over the timing of the animation of the images is and the text I may make a separate video with some tips and tricks for these two tools but for now just know that you can't go wrong by simply giving either one of these a try now at the beginning of the video I said I would share the most common mistakes that most authors are making when they are creating their own children's

book trailer I see them being made over and over again and they can truly make or break a good trailer so let's take a look so you can avoid making them mistake number one is to create a trailer that is just too long this is by far the biggest and most frequent mistake I mentioned earlier in 60 seconds or less is what you should be shooting for where 60 seconds is already on the long end so if you can be below that even better please don't be tricked by thinking that the more you share about you

r book the better the attention span of people is just not there and if we can't convey what our book is about in less than 60 seconds then we have to Simply tweak our message and not make it longer mistake number two is to allocate too much or too little time per text burst or scene if it's too little time viewers won't be able to finish reading the line of text and if it's too much time people will get bored so my number one tip here would be to read the line out loud at your regular reading s

peed that's how long that particular scene should be mistake number three is to choose a song that doesn't go well with the mood or Vibe of the trailer that's why the income Tech resource I previously shared with you is so valuable because it lets us search their songs by the feeling or mood so for example if your story is sad we will want to match that with a somber music in the background because remember the music is meant to help us bring the overall feel of our book across mistake number fo

ur is not to show the cover and a call to action at the end of the trailer here we will want to make sure the title is easily readable and since our books are are mostly being purchased via Amazon you can absolutely go ahead and save that directly you could even include an Amazon logo that's easily and quickly recognized and so people will know exactly where to go to get your book without having to perform a separate Google search trying to find you on the Big Wide Web mistake number five is to

have an intro scene to show your book title and oftentimes also the author don't do this this takes out precious time what we should be doing instead is jump right into your trailer otherwise people will already be gone unless you're an already established author whose name is widely recognized don't do this and if you watch trailers by big publishing houses you'll find that they jump right in as well unless the author is a known one and mistake number six is to say something like coming soon at

the end of the trailer that trailer will instantly become irrelevant or less accurate once the book goes live and even though we can continue to show and share the trailer after the publishing of the book it will just unnecessarily confuse people people won't pay attention to the actual date and no matter how old the trailer is might assume your book isn't available as of yet and we'll simply move on without further looking into your book and that's not what we want if it works for the big publ

ishing houses it will work for us book trailers for children's books have been around for a long time and are still going strong and that's because it's a wonderful way for others to discover our beautiful children's book and a great way to share more about our book I really hope you found this video helpful and that it may have encouraged you to try making your very own book trailer please give this video a thumbs up and subscribe if you haven't yet it really encourages me to create making vide

os for you just like this one here's to your very own book trailer for your beautiful children's book bye