What a book trailer is, and why one is worth more than a month of posts

A book trailer is one piece of finished film made from your book: title cards, your own artwork or photographs, music, and a structure that gives a stranger a reason to want the rest. It differs from short-form video in almost every way that matters. Short-form is disposable by design — it exists to be scrolled past or watched. A trailer is an asset. It sits in your website, your email signature, a media kit, a reviewer outreach pack and a sales conversation, and it is still doing that work a year later.

How many trailers come with the tier

• One cinematic trailer on Enhanced and Foundation; two on Starter and Growth, which allows for different cuts or different books in a backlist.
• On Enhanced, the trailer comes with a long-form video and avatar narration — an extended version where the book is presented in a way suited to a newsletter link or an About page rather than to a feed.
• Delivery of the finished files to you. The trailer is yours, and it stays yours.
• A vertical and a horizontal cut, because a trailer embedded in a newsletter and one opened on a phone need different framing.

How a trailer is assembled from your manuscript

• Reading the book. The strongest trailers are assembled from the author's own material rather than invented around it. That means reading enough of the manuscript to find the images already inside it.
• Agreeing the angle. Tone, whether characters speak or text carries it, and whether the film reads as a teaser or as a statement about the book's world. This is a decision you are asked to make.
• Storyboard and cut. Scenes laid out against a runtime, then assembled. Music is chosen or commissioned to fit.
• Grade and deliver. Colour, typography, and an end card carrying the title, the cover and the link.

The material we need to cut a trailer

A link to the book, any images you own and want used, and an answer to one question: who is this trailer for. A trailer written for people who already follow you and one written for cold readers on a newsletter list are different films. Also tell us if there is anything in the book you would rather not see on screen. Most authors have at least one such thing, and it is much cheaper to hear about it now than after a cut is finished.

Why trailers get built twice, or too long

The commonest problem is that a trailer gets commissioned before the book has settled — before the title, the cover or the final wording of the blurb. Build early and you build twice. The second problem is trying to tell the whole story. A trailer that summarises a novel reads as a lecture; the ones that work show one moment and leave the rest alone.

Who a single cinematic film will not work for

Not for an author who wants more posts in the feed. A trailer is one asset, not a cadence, and it will not do what regular short-form video does. It is also poor value if your book has no visual world to draw on — a very small-press title, an experimental work, something defined entirely by its prose. Not impossible, but the honest advice would be to spend the money on the video stream instead.

The approvals a trailer needs from you

Two or three rounds of decisions rather than hours of labour. You will be asked to approve an angle, look at a rough cut, and give a final sign-off. Reading a draft to check names and dates is worth doing; anything beyond that is our job.

What a trailer that lasts looks like

One file that is still relevant a year later, usable everywhere you need to say what the book is, and which does not have to be rebuilt each time you start a campaign. That is the whole argument for spending money here: it stops being a post and becomes something you own.