Sara Wilson Etienne's PROtrack Workshop: Book Trailers: Storyboards, Scripts, Lookbooks, and Everything That Puts The 'Tease' in Teaser

Sara presenting on book trailers

Sara Wilson Etienne went to college in Maine to become a marine biologist. But when research on leatherback turtles transformed itself into a novel, she realized that she loved fantasy more than fact. Though she didn't become a scientist (or, luckily, publish that first story) the craggy coastline and wild seas stayed with her and became the YA psychological thriller, Harbinger (2012, Penguin/Putnam).

Her book trailer for Harbinger is remarkable...



Now she's going to tell us what we need to know about doing one of our own!  (Helping us short-cut the nine month learning curve she went on to make it.)

Remember that a book trailer is just one piece of bigger promotional picture

Your trailer must have a hook:  you have to make your book trailer special if you want it to work for you.

Having no book trailer is better than having a bad book trailer.

The first question you need to answer is

Who is my audience?  

If you write middle grade or picture books, the audience is going to be parents, teachers and librarians.  If you are writing young adult, then your audience is also your readers.

Next, you need to figure out,

What are my resources?

Take stock of your money, skills, friends, family and community, locations...

Start with what you have when coming up with your concept and build from there...

Sara covered the many steps to create a book trailer - showing other book trailers to illustrate her points and letting us see examples from her own book trailer process - covering:

Tips for dreaming up (and solidifying) your concept

A, B and C plans

The first draft of her book trailer outline

Things to watch out for

Techniques to get a handle on your book trailer before you spend any money (like a lookbook and an anamatic)

Storyboards...

and the answer to "How do you actually make this?"

It was fascinating to see version #4 of the Harbinger trailer, when the final trailer was version #16.  She also shared her behind-the-scenes "making of" video, and answered the many audience questions.

The entire session was packed with useful and practical advice... and whether you were in the audience or not, in the upcoming SCBWI Publication Guide, you'll be able to read Sara's article on book trailers, which is sure to be indispensable!

Christopher Cheng: A Step by Step Guide To Making Your Own Book Trailers

Books trailers. You love 'em. You hate 'em. You watch them. If they're good, they make you wanna read the book.

Christopher Cheng is an accomplished author, co-Regional Advisor for both Australia and New Zealand and was Ambassador for the Australian Government's National Literacy and Numeracy Week Initiative. He even has the #1 app for kids books on the ipad! You can check out these two trailers for Christophers books here. I'm really excited to get to sit in on Christopher's Pro Track session on creating your own book trailer.

He believes we as authors and illustrators have to get off our butts and promote ourselves.

"You gotta tell them how great you are and how great your book is - when kids see the trailers, kids take them out of libraries."

You need to make the trailer, because the publicists and editors don't have time.

He does trailers and merchandise. He advises to get your trailers on youtube (schools block this), teachertube, and Christopher is working on an upcoming kids book trailers portal. Oh, and YOUR website!

"Think outside the box - ways your trailer can get out there. Get your audiences to pick up your books!"

He uses keynote on a mac, and garageband for the audio, then imovie. (On a PC you can use powerpoint and moviemaker.)


He went over a list of do-s and don't-s, simple rules, analyzed what worked and what didn't work about a bunch of trailers, and shared some of his favorite book trailers.

Here's one of Christopher's favorite book trailers:

Haunted by Chris Eboch




Christopher is so good at teaching authors how to make trailers, here's one that an author made during a single session with Christopher (like this one!)

Ned Kelly and the Green Sash, by Mark Greenwood and Frane Lessac



He also showed us a trailer he built this morning in half an hour for his new picturebook, "One Child," and pulled apart elements to show us how it was built. Check the trailer out on his website soon... I bet it will make you want to check out his book!

"Cause that's what a good trailer does.

What an awesome session.