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Jenni Bowring-McDonough of St. Paul, MN, writes:
“My husband, Tim McDonough, is a graphic artist who is now producing book trailers at Standard Book Videos.
“Because I work in publishing, I introduced him to our president who hired Tim to design several trailers (book videos) for us. That’s terrific, but Tim needs more exposure to attract more clients. He advertised in the event catalog for a regional publishers conference and he will be running an ad in ForeWord Magazine’s national online newsletter later this month.
“We have reached out to other local publishers to introduce Tim’s business. He’s on Twitter, and we will be building a Facebook page soon. We have also reached out to other contacts via the local Book Publishers Association, but thus far, to no avail.
“I even pitched Tim’s story of reinventing himself after 20 years in broadcast news to several weeklies and dailies, but no one bit on the idea. We have also begun branching out into web videos and hope to expand into promotional/sales web videos for small businesses. Thanks for any and all advice!”
Go the extra mile and add captions or subtitles to your trailers. You’ll make a lot of people happy — not just those who rely on captions. So few videos are captioned, so folks like me mention those that are (and worth it) — word of mouth. 22frames.com lists ALL captioned videos or videos without words — so submit your videos there to reach that audience.
Twitter: Write a bio. A lot of us won’t follow someone without a bio. A photo works better as an avatar than Shakespeare — but at least, you have something which is better than nothing.
Meryl, your suggestion about captions could be what differentiates Tim from any other graphic artists who do book trailers.
Also, you’re right about the Twitter bio and photo. Anyone who uses Twitter for business should definitely have a Twitter bio rich withkeywords. I prefer tightly cropped photos instead of cartoon-character type gravatars.
I wrote about gravatars at my MysocialMediaSolution.com blog. You can read it at http://tinyurl.com/useagravatar
I love Tim’s trailers — especially the speculative ones focusing on history. While I know he could “do it all,” he might want to begin by specializing in historical nonfiction, targeting his pitches to editors and the marketing folks at publishing houses or even agents. (Be sure to include the folks in children’s publishing, too!) But it seems that the real buyers of trailers today are authors, since the houses claim they have no money. Find out from the houses/agents what their upcoming lists will include and have them pass your information along to their authors.
Yes, you’re right about the houses having very tight budgets. Authors, even those published by major houses, complain about this all the time.
Hi Tim,
After seeing your website, I contacted you myself to see about a book trailer for my book.
Maybe you can connect with independent publishers through the Independent Book Publishers Assoc (formerly PMA). They have a monthly newsletter that goes out to all the publishers. You could place an ad or write an article on the advantages of book trailers for book promotion and list your name and website address.
Martine
Martine, you beat me to it!
I was going to post my own comments here, suggesting that Tim write for trade newsletters:
–First, Tim, concentrate solely on traditional and social media for the writing and publishing industries, at least for the time being. Publicity in daily newspapers is great if you can get it, but I think your time is much better spent going after your target market.
–Write articles about video trailers for publishing industry newsletters. Here are two excellent ones. The SPAN Connection is published by The Small Publishers Association of North America at http://www.SpanNet.org. Contact editor Lisa Gilman at info1@Spannet.org or call 719-475-1726. IBPA Independent is published by the Independend Book Publishers Association. The editor is Judith Appelbaum, editor, at judithappelbaum@aol.com. Pitch your idea to both of them first.
–What should you write about? All the ways to use video trailers and how other authors have used them. How you create them. How they pull in traffic. Different types of trailers for different types of books.
Jenni, check back here periodically. This blog post will continue to pull in traffic from the search engines, and you never know when another Publicity Hound will suggest a fabulous idea for Tim.
Thank you, everyone, for your support, encouragement, and suggestions! Tim’s added a bio to his Twitter profile (d’oh! how did we miss that one?) and is looking into the other ideas you generously shared with us. The support from this blog is wonderful and it encourages us that we can make a go of this business! Many, many thanks!
-Jenni