Free guide
The Book Trailer Playbook
Ten rules for a trailer that sells the book you wrote.
- 1
Make it for one screen first
A 15–20 second vertical clip for TikTok and Reels and a 90-second widescreen trailer are different films. Start with the vertical one: it's what readers actually watch, and it doubles as an ad.
- 2
Win the first two seconds
Open on a face, a voice or a question, never on a logo or a slow establishing shot. People decide to keep watching before the music has started.
- 3
Tell one person's story
Pick one character's point of view and one question the viewer should leave with. A trailer that tries to show the whole plot shows nothing.
- 4
Let a character speak a real line
One line of your own dialogue, said by a character who looks the part, does more than any narrator reading the blurb. It proves the book is real and yours.
- 5
Keep faces the same in every shot
Nothing breaks the spell faster than a heroine whose face changes between shots. Decide each character's look first and hold it.
- 6
Cut to the sound
Lay down the music and the lines first, then cut the pictures to them. Leave a breath around each line.
- 7
Caption everything
Most people watch with the sound off. Burn in captions for every spoken line, large enough to read on a phone.
- 8
End on the book
Finish on your cover, shown as a real book, with the title, your name and where to buy it. A trailer that ends on a black card leaves sales on the table.
- 9
Say it's AI, say the book is yours
Switch on the platform's AI label and add one caption line: the trailer was made with AI, the book was written by you. Readers who object to AI books mostly object to hidden AI.
- 10
Test it like an ad
Run the 15-second cut against your best cover image for a week each, on the same budget. Compare clicks to your book page, not views.