Making The Author Video

I’d been hearing the talk— Author Videos are the new thing— more effective than a book trailer the in way to connect with your readers. I gulped. Nothing to do but give it a try, so here’s what I did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CspE5fXW17M

My husband found that I have moviemaker on my computer and we have an inexpensive camera which we routinely use for Skyping with our children. That was the basic equipment, although we found— on about take 6, as I recall— that the sound was crisper if we used an external mic.

I knew from my Skyping experience that lighting is all-important. I turned on all the lights in the room and set up two extra lamps. And that was it for technology.

As to the script I considered doing an interview format, but settled on a combination of talking about my book and reading an excerpt. I wrote an outline of the points I wanted to talk about and selected my cutting.

As always when doing a reading, I edited the passage by selecting from my manuscript, cutting out anything extraneous to the immediate action, bumped up the font size, and inserted the printed pages into my book so it looks like I’m reading directly from the book.

Timing was a problem. Although this is a much more free-flowing format than a book trailer, I knew it should be short. I think 3 minutes would be best. I had to keep it under 5 or the file would be too big to upload to YouTube. After several takes and edits of my manuscript (I lost count of the retakes), I still came out at the long end and can only hope that viewers will stay with me.

Someone more tekky than I am could go from here, add a cover, put music behind it, insert your website or book-buying information in printed form rather than the sign I simply held up,. . . Still I was pleased with the results. Exhausted, but pleased.

You can see the results here and judge for yourself: http://ning.it/JLmusC

And you can find A DARKLY HIDDEN TRUTH here: http://ning.it/JLxUg7

Donna Fletcher Crow is the author of 39 books, mostly novels dealing with British history. The award-winning Glastonbury, an Arthurian grail search epic covering 15 centuries of English history, is her best-known work. Donna and her husband live in Boise, Idaho. They have 4 adult children and 11 grandchildren. She is an enthusiastic gardener.

Her newest release is A Darkly Hidden Truth, book 2 in her clerical mystery series The Monastery Murders. She also writes the Lord Danvers series of Victorian true-crime novels and the romantic suspense series The Elizabeth & Richard Mysteries. To read more about these books and to see book videos for A Darkly Hidden Truth and for A Very Private Grave, Monastery Murders 1, as well as pictures from Donna’s garden and research trips go to: www.DonnaFletcherCrow.com.