Book Trailers

     Movie and book trailers have become the marketing phenomena. This new world of trailers, in which the internet has turned ads of one to three minutes into events that people analyze and judge, influencing whether they should buy the book or go to see the movie.

     There’s minimal statistics on the growth of book trailers, but movie trailers are now watched more online than in theaters, streaming more than 5 billion trailers worldwide in 2011, and that number is growing.

     The growth in movie trailers has influenced the way to promote books, along with the upsurge of eBooks, and buying books online. Movie trailers influence the fan that still has to go to the theater, but when a book trailer creates a sell, the buyer simply goes to a link and buys the book, or downloads it to their eReader and starts reading. Talk about instant gratification.

     Book trailers are the newest rage in the publishing industry. The main difference is that a movie trailer already has visual images to work with utilizing clips from the film. With a book trailer, the author, publisher, or a professional, has to convert the written words into visual images.

     Some authors make their own trailers running from one to three minutes. They can be anything from the author reading a passage from the book, to an elaborate mini-movie. If you want to produce your own trailer, go to YouTube and search for “book trailers.” Spend some time watching as many as possible, regardless of the genre. Take lots of notes. See what piques your interest, and what you would want to emulate.

     Write out some ideas for your trailer. Create some of the text and make lists of pictures you’d like that relate to your story. Keep in mind that you want to convey a sense of what the book is about, without giving away the ending or describing the characters. Your goal is to end up with a video that will stimulate a reader’s imagination.

     Think about the movie trailers that made you want to go see the movie. Did the intensity in the scenes and music escalate as the trailer progressed?

     At this point, you have to make a decision to produce your own book trailer, or possibly search for a professional. If you pay someone to do it, the cost could range from $250 to $20,000 depending on what you want to accomplish, and of course what is within your budget. A lower budget gives you a video compiled of still images and written text. Costs increase with a mixture of stills and canned video, along with narration, and the complexity of the trailer.

     Emulating the movie industry, professionally produced live book trailers, will be the new rage costing $7,000 to $20,000.
     What do you get in a live book trailer? The only sample I have comes from my new novel co-authored by Louis Pagano. Go to http://angelsgateheist.blogspot.com/ to view the book trailer from Angels Gate based on a true story of the greatest heist never told!
     Now that you have your book trailer, you need to upload it. Start with YouTube. That’s where the vast majority of viewers will happen upon your video. For maximum visibility on the internet, consider uploading to other video-sharing sites such as Yahoo, Google, and MySpace. 

     Have links posted on your blog, websites, and Facebook. Then announce it to your family and friends, your fellow writers, and your readers. Invite them to link to or even post your video on their blogs and websites. Encourage them to share the link on e-mail loops, bulletin boards, and via private e-mails.

     Whether you create your own book trailer, or have a professional produce one, you will be one step further in successfully marketing your book on the internet.   

Self publish, or not?

     Many first time authors attempt to get published by sending off hundreds of query letters to literary agents in hope that one will be interested in representing him/her, and promote their manuscript to big publishing houses for review, and hopefully a contract to publish their book. Meanwhile, they sit around waiting months for the dreaded rejection notices.

     I was one of those authors completing my first book in 2007. I learned that, agents will reject almost every query, because they’re not taking on any new authors. Or if you’re lucky you might be asked for a chapter or the first fifty pages be sent for her/him; only delaying their final rejection.

   Getting published can really become a disheartening task to first time authors. There’s no doubt that a lot of good manuscripts are collecting dust on a shelf, or stored in the memory of a potentially good authors computer.   

   Some new authors may choose to self-publish their work, presenting a whole new set of problems, but they can be overcome. Even though self-publishing is an alternative, you'll still need to gather the information needed to do it yourself, and approximately $10,000 to $25,000 investment to get started. This will cover printing of 2-4000 copies, based on the size of your book.

   This option is not available to struggling authors that lack the funds, and if you’re not a good sales person, or contract with a marketing company to promote your book, you’ll have cases of your books collecting dust instead of your manuscript, and be out the money invested.

   Say good-bye to the rejection of traditional publishers and the two-year publishing cycle. Say good-bye to the hassles of independent self-publishing, like guessing print-runs, managing inventory, and the responsibility of order fulfillment. In the last few years the brick and mortar book stores sales have dropped, while the growth of internet and eBook sales have grown exponentially.

   The growth of internet book sales and eBook market, if anything, has picked up pace, which means that the growth of potential buyers for self-published books is growing faster than ever. Of course, so is the number of available eBooks, but it is still time to catch the wave and get a book out there.

   The rise of eBooks slowly began in 2006 reaching global annual revenues of $3 billion, with projected annual revenues from eBooks delivered to portable devices growing to $9 billion by 2016. This robust growth is due to the increasing penetration of eReaders and tablet devices in households throughout the world

   For self-published writers, this is good news. The success of a well-known self-published author like John Locke, who sold over 1.1 million books in five months, was due in part to the fact that they caught the eBook wave at the beginning of its rise. He also chose Telemachus Press to produce and print his books sold over the internet.

   I chose Outskirts Press to produce my books. Outskirts Press offers you the best of both worlds by combining the advantages of independent self-publishing with the advantages of traditional book publishing.  Before, during, and after publication you will receive the assistance of a dedicated group of publishing professionals, all the while maintaining 100% of your publishing rights and 100% of your profits. Their “Diamond” package costs $1000, to design a front and back cover, and produce a quality book, ISBN number, list your book on Amazon, and Barns & Nobel, and provide marketing instructions to sell your book over the internet.

   The number 1 & 2 selling items on the Net in the United States are software and books. So if you’re going to write books and sell them on the Internet, you'll have a very large and responsive market. The only difference will be that your books will be available through internet book stores and in a digital format, allowing you to publish your book through Amazon Kindle, Smashwords, and other eBook publishers.

   Finally you'll have full control over your book and when it gets published. You can set the selling price, receiving 70-80% royalties. But, before you go off and start the process, make sure your book has been professionally edited. No one wants to read a book with a bunch of errors, even if they only paid .99 for it.

   Now that you saved all that money from not self-publishing a book, and you’re ready to publish, and sell on the internet, you might consider hiring an internet marketing company to promote your book, or learn how to do your own promotion. Now the only question is will you take advantage of this exciting and rapidly growing market?

Hard work, pays off

My wife Lynn and I attended the Global eBook Awards presentation, in Santa Barbara CA last Saterday. I was a finalest for Angels Gate, catagory, True Crime, and waited patiently for the results. It seemed to take forever, but it was worth it, when I was announced the winner.
We had a nice dinner, and met a lot of great authors. I'll be entering Reaper 6  next year.

Fishing~The greatest past time, threatened

     I was born in 1946 in San Pedro, California, and grew up in a commercial fishing family. Through high school, I worked on sportfishing boats, and at the age of seventeen went commercial fishing with my father, captain of a large purse seiner, during summer vacation. Two years later, I took a friend’s place on his father’s ninety-foot fishing boat named Diana, for a four-day trip fishing off the coast of Santa Barbara. Little did I know that I would almost lose my life when we got caught in a freak hurricane force storm.

     These events later served as inspiration for my first nonfiction true-life adventure, Red Sky Morning.

     I wrote most of this novel at my office. I read excerpts of the story to my manager to see if she liked it. Carri said she did, and found the story to be similar to one told by her grandfather, a commercial fisherman who almost lost his life in a storm. Upon further discussion, it became apparent that her grandfather, Ike Ventimiglia, was on the Diana, and that we had pulled him out of the net floating in the thirty-foot seas, and then I resuscitated him. It truly is a small world.

     Ike passed away. He was in his eighties and lived near Redding, California. Thinking about Ike inspired me to work harder to complete Red Sky Morning. Strangely, I’ve somehow come full circle from my past to the present. Nowadays, in the early morning while having a cup of coffee, I watch boats like Diana making sets for fish off Cabrillo Beach.

     The San Pedro fishing fleet has dwindled down to a dozen boats or so. The fisherman of the past made a good living, but today they can barely make it. Most of the fish are gone, and in the recent years, squid―better known as calamari―have become popular. If it wasn’t for the local squid fishing, I don’t think the local fishermen could survive.

     Forty-six years ago, when this “true-life adventure” began, I was fishing on the Western Ace off the coast of Maine. My dad, the captain, pointed to these huge Russian trawlers that were dragging the bottom indiscriminately, catching every living creature that would go into the net. Dad said that type of fishing method would wipe out the cod fishing industry on the East Coast. His prediction came true. Indiscriminate fishing methods like that, along with long lining and gill netting, are now being restricted or banned.

     Today we face a lot of challenges. Our world has become a lot smaller. Countries throughout the world are forming alliances to address these problems and are also starting to be more aggressive about over-fishing and the polluting of our oceans.

     Unfortunately, positive changes breed interest from radical environmentalists, who wield a tremendous power in our liberal state and national governments. They’re not satisfied with implementing better management of our resources, but want to close all hunting and fishing on our coasts and rivers.

     SaveCAfishing.org was formed as a collective effort between United Anglers of Southern California, the Partnership for Sustainable Oceans, KeepAmericaFishing, BD Outdoors, as well as several other sportfishing organizations and companies to fight back against the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) initiative. Sportfishing is extremely popular in the state of California with 1.9 million anglers, who, through their passion for the sport, support $5 billion in economic activity. If these draconian measures are passed, it could threaten a way of life for millions of people.

     Unfortunately as of January 2012, the fishing industry lost considerable chunks of viable fishing grounds, some 350 square miles (close to 15% of California’s coast) of coastal water will become State Marine Reserves or State Marine Conservation Areas. In total, 49 separate areas will become MPAs at some point. 

     Our rights are slowly being taken away. Fishing and hunting may not interest you, but there’s other freedoms disappearing daily. Get your head out of the sand and make a stand. 

The oceans are our life source! We have the technology to change the course we’re on. It will require a worldwide effort to protect and preserve our biggest asset, our oceans.

     I love the ocean, and go sportfishing as much as I can. In the near future, I plan to retire. I hope that my friends and I will continue to enjoy the sport of fishing. I also hope that our families, and especially my grandsons, will have the opportunity to enjoy the ocean and fishing as much as I do.