Rebecca York: Happy trailers to you

Rebecca York, author of the new romantic suspense novella Assignment Danger, No. 4 in her Off-World Series, shares how she jumped in to learn how to make her own book trailers.

Rebecca: At a recent publicity seminar, I learned that book videos make good content on social media. When I asked how much they cost, the speaker said, "$100." Too much, I thought. But what if I went the DIY route?

Although I'd never made a video, I'd recently seen a TED talk claiming that it takes only 20 hours of practice to get reasonably good at a new skill, and the biggest stumbling block is fear of the unknown.

Emboldened, I downloaded a free program called Microsoft Movie Maker and started practicing — first on a simple slide show of my Decorah Security book covers. Next came a more ambitious project, a book trailer for my just-released Assignment Danger, a romantic suspense novella. The results are at:

(If you can't see the video here, you can watch it on YouTube.)

If you look at the video, you can see how I applied the techniques I discuss below.

The first, and most important step, was deciding what pictures I needed and what the captions (or "script") would be.

My friend Nancy Baggett, who has made a lot of videos, told me, "Shorter is better." I took her advice and decided to tease the viewer about the book, not try to tell the whole story. The finished video is around a minute long.

To keep the length down, I superimposed the text on the pictures, which meant making the captions short so they wouldn't obscure the images behind them. (Another alternative is to put the titles before the pictures, but this can double the running time of the video.)

Where do you get pictures for a video?

I'm lucky that my husband takes a lot of photos on our trips, which meant that I could go through his files and find many of the shots I needed. The hideout in the swamp is a house on Amelia Island. It was taken in the afternoon, but I used photo-editing techniques to make it look like night. The alligator and a couple of the swamp shots are from Costa Rica. I also imported a few pictures from free photo sites. And you can buy from photo sites like Bigstock. Be aware that using copyrighted material without permission can get you into trouble. But good news: Any image from the U.S. government is free.

As you can see, I used my own cover in several different ways, since I bought it from my designer, Earthly Charms. Again, using photo-editing techniques, I put the couple in one frame and the title in another. (You get to see the complete cover near the end.)

In my Decorah Security slide show:

(If you can't see the video here, you can watch it on YouTube.)

I used fancy transition techniques (a feature of the movie program) between the covers. For the Assignment Danger trailer, I thought these would interfere with reading the captions, so I relied on the program's animation features that make the pictures move. I chose zooming in or out, depending on what I want to emphasize — for example, closing in on the alligator and the house. And while the images move, the text stays still.

Next, I shortened the frames from the standard seven to six seconds to quicken the pace. And finally, I added music, which I found on the Web for free. The music is important, because it helps set the tone of the video; but again, be careful that you're not using copyrighted material without permission.

It takes some practice to become familiar with the Movie Maker features. Although sometimes I still make mistakes, it's easy to quickly "undo" them. But basically I've added a fun new skill to use as a book-promotion tool. And if I can do it, you can do it.

Here's the blurb about Assignment Danger:

Jack Younger agrees to risk his life when he takes on a dangerous undercover assignment. He doesn't count on his old love, Sophia DeAngelo, ending up in the middle of the action.

What if he has to choose between fulfilling his mission and saving her life?

Find out more about Rebecca and her books at rebeccayork.com.