A book trailer is a great promotional tool for authors looking to get the word out about their books! With Animoto’s free online book trailer maker, you can easily promote your book on social media, your website, your Amazon author page, and beyond.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to make a book trailer in just a few minutes using our free book trailer template linked below. We’ll use photos and video clips you have on hand, or can easily shoot yourself.
TLDR: A book trailer is a short promotional video for your book, acting like a movie trailer to generate interest. Follow these tips to create your own book trailer:
- Keep it concise and under one minute to hold a viewer's attention.
- Your trailer should have a clear story arc: a beginning, middle, and end.
- You can easily create one using a free online tool like Animoto, with or without your own video clips and photos.
Looking for something a bit more mysterious? Try this book trailer template!
For a quick teaser rather than a full trailer, try this vertical template:
So grab your book and let’s dive in!
How to make a book trailer
Before you start creating, take some time to plan the story you want to tell in your video. While you've written the full story, the trailer should only share enough to build excitement without giving too much away.
Here are a few key planning tips from author and life coach Mary Schiller:
- Have a clear story arc: Your trailer, like a movie trailer, should have a beginning, middle, and end. Set the stage, introduce the conflict, and then let viewers know where they can buy your book.
- Be concise: Keep your trailer short to hold a viewer’s attention. We recommend keeping it under one minute.
- Match the tone of your book: The tone of your book trailer—from the visuals to the music—should reflect your book's genre and mood.
Gathering assets for your book trailer
Once you know what story you’d like to tell, it’s time to gather photos and video clips to tell your story. Our Torn Pages Book Trailer template uses stock images and videos. Our other book trailer video template includes stock imagery as well as photos of the book and author. You can easily take a similar approach by scanning pages from your book or using your phone or camera to shoot video clips.
If you don’t have any photos or video clips to use, or your book doesn’t have pictures, that’s ok. You can create a book trailer using stock images and video clips too. Animoto offers a stock library of over 1 million photos and video clips from Getty Images.
Find "Stock" by opening the Media Library tray to the right of your video builder screen. Search for terms related to your book and the story you want to tell in your trailer. Check out tips for getting the most out of our stock library.
How to make a book trailer (with examples!)
Step 1: Log into Animoto and select a template
First you’ll need to log into your Animoto account. If you don’t have one yet, click here to use Animoto’s book trailer maker for free!
Once you’re in, you’ll notice that you can choose a template or start from scratch. For this example, we’ll be using our Book Trailer template.
This template starts out in landscape mode. Once you create the first version, Animoto makes it easy to convert to any other ratio.
If you’re creating a book trailer for the social media feed, we recommend going square. If you’ll be posting your video on YouTube or embedding it on your website, we recommend landscape. Choose vertical if you're sharing on Stories, Reels, or TikTok.
Step 2: Upload your assets or search for stock
Next, upload all of the photos and video clips you gathered to tell your story. Or, search for stock imagery related to your book. All of this can be done in the Media Library tray while you're working on your video. You can upload files under the “Project” tab or search for stock under the "Stock" tab.
Step 3: Drag and drop photos in order
Drag and drop your photos and video clips from the Media Library tray directly into your project in the order you’d like them to appear in your video.
Try different layouts to make your media stand out.
Step 4: Add text to tell your story
The most important part of your book trailer is the story! Click on the "T" text icon to add text to your video. You can add a title and subtitle to each block and adjust the size and colors. Or, double click a text box to alter the text. You can also change the font, size, color, and position of your text easily.
Introduce your main character, major plot points, and a cliffhanger. You can also copy and paste reviews into your book trailer to add credibility and entice new readers.
Step 5: Adjust the look and feel to match your story
Next, you can make adjustments to the way your video looks in design settings. You can change the theme or fully customize font, text colors, background colors, text styles, video styles and more. You can even add your brand watermark!
Step 6: Choose music
Once you’ve finished telling your story, the last step is to select your music. Professional users can add up to eight music tracks to capture each mood of your story's arc. The Animoto music library has a variety of mood filters, which can be useful for finding the right song for each part of your book trailer.
Step 7: Finalize and share your book trailer
Once your music is selected, click Export in the upper right-hand corner to see how it looks. If you’re happy with it, click Download to create a video file, Share to upload directly to social media, or Copy Link to share through email, on your website, to your publisher, or anywhere else!
Book trailer video FAQs
Try Animoto’s free book trailer maker
Ready to share your story and create your own book trailer video? Click the button below to get started for free. It’s as easy as dragging and dropping to transform your story into a professional and captivating video.
Happy video making!
