Pay the Writer!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!  This is just too cute not to pass on…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

Do Book Trailers = Book Sales?

 Ahh…the million dollar question.

 

A couple of months ago, the editor of a publication asked my opinion on whether book trailers resulted in book sales.  He was gathering information about the subject because although book trailers hadn’t been around that long (actually five years according to one firm who coined the term in 2002), we’ve not really had time to gather concrete statistics relevant to know whether sales were a direct result of our book trailers.

 

As CEO/Founder of Pump Up Your Book Promotion, we rely heavily on online promotion.  That’s what we do and that’s what makes us popular among those authors wanting to tap onto those online sales.

 

We’ve explored various internet marketing options and one in which fascinates us the most are book trailers, but for the sake of not plagiarizing on the trademarked name, we’ll call them book videos.

 

The fact that these book videos fascinates us is that although we know how to make virtual book tours work (our specialized service), no one really knows for sure just how book trailers will play an overall part in determining whether it is a vehicle to sell books or for amusement purposes only.

 

When I created my first book video for the paranormal THE SEARCH FOR THE MILLION $$$ GHOST (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOklaNgirZI), it was my first try at seeing how much of a difference they would make as far as book sales go.  Frankly, I couldn’t really tell whether my buyers were buying my book because of the book video or not because I did not know who my buyers were so I could ask them and I think that’s what is making it so hard to get real concrete statistics.

 

The way I look at it is that book videos are visuals.  Instead of your reader perusing your website or publisher’s website reading text, you are providing for them a visual to find out about your book.  Basically, it’s a promotional ad about your book that they can watch.

 

But, it’s all part of the whole campaign.  Each part has to come together to convince someone to buy your book and if you have a visual, how are you to know that they don’t base their buying decision on that visual? 

 

There is no secret formula for selling books.  Your neighbor might be selling hundreds of books to your one or two, but it could be because of a variety of things and one of those things just might be that visual, so you can’t really say book videos aren’t worth their weight in gold in convincing someone to buy your book.  You just never know. 

 

I encourage my clients at Pump Up Your Book Promotion to include their book videos or have someone make one for them, or we can do it, so that we can include it on their tour page.  I feel it enhances their tour and gives our visitors a visual to help understand what the book is about. 

 

Sometimes text gets blurry after reading for a long time over the Internet and that book video gives our visitors a break from that.  They can sit back and enjoy my clients’ videos and perhaps base their buying decision on that.

 

The thing is, you can use these videos to promote your book by downloading them at YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, the list is endless.  And what I found out that is really great is that Google has now started listing them in their search engines so that a small graphic of your book video shows up when someone puts your key search words in their search box.

 

To sum it all up, book videos are great.  You can download them to your website and blog and your visitors will just love it.  And, who knows, maybe it’ll do the trick to convince them your book is worth buying.

 

Now, I have a question for you.  I’m compiling my own survey on whether or not book videos result in sales.  If you would like to leave your comment below and tell us whether you think book videos increase sales or they don’t really make an overall difference.  You may include your book or book trailer info to back up your responses.

Tags: Book Marketing Buzz, online book promotion, book trailer, book video