Video is becoming the standard in marketing. Companies that never did video before are now hiring videographers to profile their businesses. USA Today made a big format change, and suddenly half of their content is video. That happened within the last three months. The question is, how do we as authors get on this train and use it to engage readers more deeply?
Thomas: Why is video important? Why can't I just write a book and not have to mess with this?
Jim: It's funny, I used to be a running back when I played football, so I love watching lists of the greatest NFL running backs of all time. One video came up that was essentially still pictures of the backs with their stats. There was no actual footage of them running. It was an incredible fail. I was done with it after about 20 seconds because I wanted to see them in motion.
The power of video is not just seeing an author's picture but seeing them in motion. Readers want to get to know us, and pictures can only go so far.
What's the difference between a book trailer and a live video?
Thomas: There are two completely different approaches to video, and I've seen authors use both. One is the classic book trailer, a well-produced video with an expectation of high production value. People compare the book trailer to what they see on TV and in the movies, where millions of dollars are spent.
That's why people are often critical of Christian films. Christian films are independent films, and compared to other independent films, they hold up quite well in production value, acting, and story. But people don't compare them to other indie films; they compare them to Avengers, which was a $100 million budget blockbuster. You might think that's unfair, and you'd be right, but you're not going to educate everyone about how production values work.
There's another kind of video where you don't need high production values, where people almost expect a homemade feel. That's live video on Facebook Live or Periscope. Suddenly people want to be invited into your house.
They want a rougher video quality, and what they get in exchange is scarcity. They can only watch it live. It's also interactive, so you're engaging with all your fans at the same time, which makes it feel fun, real, and raw.
Jim: People want authenticity.
Thomas and I aren’t big fans of book trailers, because you're just not going to compete with a movie trailer. Most of us don't have that skill set.
If you have done some drama in high school or college, or spent time in front of a camera, you should explore this option.
How easy is it to get started with live video?
Thomas: With Facebook Live or YouTube Live, you push a button, and suddenly people are watching you.
Jim: Even if you're saying, “Jim, I am not comfortable in front of a camera,” you've probably already done this. Anytime you've engaged with readers at an event, a book signing, or a conference, you've done this. People want to see the authentic you, even if you're not that comfortable.
Thomas: The key is to have fun. If you're having fun while you're doing it, people are going to have more fun watching it. Once you stop having fun, stop.
The nice thing about live video on Facebook or YouTube is that you don't have to fill a time slot. Jim and I have both done radio, and with a 30-minute radio show, you have to talk for the whole 30 minutes. With this podcast, if I only have 15 minutes of material, I just stop talking. That's what you want to do with live video. Go as long as you can be interesting.
How do I get started making video?
Thomas: I'd start doing Google Hangouts and Skyping or Zoom with friends just to get comfortable with video chatting. I wouldn't make your first time doing video with a live audience of strangers, because there are sometimes bugs to work out with audio and camera.
On an iPhone, it's as easy as pushing record because it all works automatically. If you're on a laptop, the camera's often already there and configured. But I'd practice on Google Hangouts a couple of times, then experiment at different times of day with different audiences.
Don't spend a lot of time or money promoting it at first. You want to build your skills and confidence, because you'll be more fun to watch the more confident you are.
Jim: Let's talk about equipment. If you're a speaker or want to get into speaking, you don't have to buy a high-end camera. If you have a smartphone, especially with a friend who has some background in filming, a recent iPhone can do a great job.
The issue is usually audio, since a PA system doesn't sound great on camera. There are remote mics you can buy that work with your iPhone to get decent audio along with the video, without spending much money.
Thomas: $50 can often get you a pretty decent microphone. Just check Amazon for the highest-reviewed options.
If you have wireless earbuds, those have a built-in microphone. If you tilt your head away from the camera, so you're shooting your left profile with the earbud in your right ear, people won't see it, and it captures clean audio right off your face.
Check out the following episode:
How to Look and Sound Professional on Camera
What's the easiest way to edit my videos?
Jim: How do you edit it? You're not going to post your whole 20-minute talk. There are a lot of different apps. For PC users, Microsoft Movie Maker isn't a great editor, but it does the job when you're starting out.
Thomas: Macs have iMovie, which is great. I've personally switched to Camtasia, a paid service that's great for screen captures. A lot of what I do is shoot tutorial videos on how to use a plugin, or capture a presentation with slides in real time. iMovie is free and comes with your computer.
There's also a third option, zero editing. Don't post it, so the only way to watch is live. This creates scarcity. I started doing this with some of my talks. They're not available online. If you want to hear the talk, you have to come hear me live.
It makes those live events more valuable, because it's tempting to download everything and never actually interact with people. Come to the live event. It's fun.
What should authors talk about on video?
Jim: If your books have deep themes that resonate with people, talk about those, since they're probably universal. You could also talk about trivia from your novels, the behind-the-scenes kind of content.
Thomas: You can answer character questions, or make it a mix of these things, kind of a party. I see this a lot for launches, where authors run a Facebook party, give away a book every few minutes, do trivia, and play games to make it interesting.
You can also do behind-the-scenes extras. Most of this gets easier on your subsequent books. If your first book isn't out yet, this isn't really a technique for you yet.
You could talk about the book, but authors are usually far more interested in talking about their own book than anyone else is in hearing about it, unless you really know how to pitch it. What you want is to make it as interactive as possible.
Go to your launch team and say, “Come up with some questions to ask,” and don't get the questions ahead of time. You want it to feel off the cuff. Once you get a few questions and comments, you'll get more.
Jim: One other idea, if it's not Periscope or Facebook Live but an actual video you want to edit, take it to your next conference or event, and don't make it about you. Get interviews with your readers instead. Let them become the star.
They'll tell other people about it, saying, “You have to see me on this author's website, it was so fun doing an interview with them.” You interview your readers, and you can edit that into a fun compilation.
How do I get good lighting and sound at an event?
Thomas: It can be a challenge to get good video from an event, especially at a hotel. Hotel lighting is famously awful for video, because the light comes from above and puts dark shadows on everyone's face, making them look old and tired.
So a couple of quick video tips if you want to look young and fresh. Wear makeup if you normally wear makeup, even if you're a guy, as long as you're also using the next tip, light.
You want light behind the camera shining on your face for simple one-point lighting. More advanced lighting has a main light from one angle, a fill light from the other side, and a hair light that lets people see the top of your head. That's advanced stuff.
At its most basic, if you're at a hotel with a window on one side and doors on the other, and the light's coming in from the window, face the window. You don't want your back to the window. Just that small change will dramatically increase the visual quality of your video.
For sound, get as far away from the noise as possible, and keep the microphone as close to your mouth as possible. The classic mistake is having someone hold the camera far away from the speaker in a noisy room, which gives you bad sound. If you're in a quiet room with the microphone close to the speaker, you'll get good sound.
Right now my family is in the other room watching football, and you probably can't hear them, because I'm talking right into the microphone. It doesn't have to be very loud to capture my voice clearly, which means their cheering gets lost.
Jim: Going back to lighting, if you're in a hotel with natural light coming in, go outside. Natural lighting is great, though you have to watch out for harsh overhead light.
Photographers know the best times to shoot are early morning or just before sunset, because of the colors and how the light works. You can Google the best times to shoot outdoors with natural light. If you do that, you don't have to worry about a lot of the lighting gear.
I did a video for my latest book, The Long Journey to Jake Palmer. I went to the lake where the book is set, and my wife filmed me with my iPhone in a kayak, since kayaks play into the book and I was talking about the actual location.
It was right in the background, and that was really powerful, because I took my readers to the actual site where the story happens. I didn't have to worry about lighting issues, because it was outdoors at the right time of day.
How long should my videos be?
Jim: Short. Short, short, short. We've all heard the cliché, and it's a cliché because it's true, leave the audience wanting more. That's what you want to do with your videos.
I'd rather have a 40-second, really powerful video where people go, “Oh, that wasn't enough,” than push 3 minutes. Most of the time, you won't even get there, because at 2 minutes they'll be gone.
The shorter the better. Think blog posts. In-depth posts can work well sometimes, but for the most part, shorter blog posts are more effective. Same with video.
What's the biggest mistake authors make with video?
Thomas: The principle here is when in doubt, cut it out. This is especially true for video. With a blog post, someone can scroll past the boring parts and still buy your book at the end. They're less likely to, but they might.
With a video, if someone stops watching two minutes into a three-minute video, and you don't mention the book and where to buy it until the very end, you can't convert that viewer into a buyer. The 90% of people who don't finish never find out where to buy your book.
We want to help you become bestselling authors on this podcast, which means you have to actually sell books. You can't just give them away for free.
Should I add music, graphics, or B-roll to my videos?
Thomas: Music can work if you use good music, but you have to be careful not to get into legal trouble. Typically you'll pay for music on a site like Pond5.
There are a lot of audio clip websites where you can buy 2 or 3 minutes of a song created specifically for video backgrounds, and you can search by mood: romantic, dramatic, exciting, technological. The going rate is between $15 and $30 a song, sometimes as low as $10.
I wouldn't recommend the free music that comes with iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, because everyone has heard those songs a million times, and it'll make your video seem homemade and cheap.
Jim: There are sites where you can get decent music for free, but that's a painstaking process.
Thomas: It's weeding through a lot of hay to find the needle you're looking for. One thing I've noticed is that authors don't value their time.
When they compensate themselves for their effort, they're paying themselves 50 cents or $1 an hour, and they'd rather work an hour than save $5. If it takes you two hours to find the right song for free, and you could have bought it for $20, you're only paying yourself $10 an hour. You can do better than that at McDonald's, and it's less than minimum wage in some states.
Value your time and pay for professionals. It's one of my pet peeves with authors, that they don't respect themselves enough to pay for professionals around them. They want to do everything themselves and end up insisting on staying poor.
If you want to do this well, get a job, make some money, and invest in your craft. Invest in professional editors, professional cover designers, and professional music.
You can also buy what's called B-roll, footage you can insert into your video. It's like a stock photo, but video. If you're talking for two minutes, one way to make it interesting is to splice in B-roll, so it's still your voice, but instead of watching your talking head for two minutes, you cut in clips, a soaring eagle if you're talking about eagles, or whatever fits.
You'd be surprised how much of the TV shows you watch is B-roll. When an airplane lands to show characters flying from one city to another, the crew didn't film that landing. They bought B-roll of an airplane landing and spliced it in to show they'd arrived in Tokyo.
Jim: You can imagine the price on that footage is dropping, because instead of needing a helicopter to get that shot, you can do it with a drone. Their cost is dropping, so ours is too.
Thomas: Another thing to consider is graphics. One way to make graphics interesting is the Ken Burns effect, where the camera, and I mean that in quotes because it's all on your computer, pans across the picture to give it a sense of motion, or zooms in and out.
It's named after documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who made documentaries about the Civil War. Instead of showing the whole battlefield, he'd start on one part and pan across as the picture moved, so it felt like video footage from a still photo. It was very effective.
Jim: He did one on baseball too, if I'm thinking of the right guy?
Thomas: He's done a whole bunch. My favorite is the one on the Shakers, one of his lesser-known documentaries about a religious sect in the United States that didn't believe in having children or getting married, and lasted for about 100 years.
Jim: Wow, some old-timers then.
Thomas: Well, no, they recruited new people. For about 80 years in the United States, they took care of all the orphans in the country, since they couldn't have children of their own.
How do I know if my video is actually working?
Jim: Get a critique partner. Practice on Google Hangouts or something like that, then get a critique partner just like you have for your manuscripts.
Before you post these, have a friend tell you what's working and what isn't. We're often too close to our own work to see it clearly, so find somebody who wants to do this, and be brutally honest with each other. That's how you learn to do it well.
Sponsor
My Book Progress Just in time for National Novel Writing Month. This free WordPress plugin lets you track your progress and hit your deadlines on your website.
Power Close: You have been listening to James L Rubart and Thomas Umstattd Jr. on the Novel Marketing podcast, giving you novel ideas on how to promote yourself and your writing, offline, online, and everywhere in-between. Thanks for listening.
