Making book videos

In the time of TikTok, authors have had to learn to market their books with videos. Some have taken to it with ease and skill that I envy, talking to the camera about their books and other interesting matters almost like pros. I can’t do that. I’m not a fluent speaker of English, and my voice doesn’t work well, thanks to an asthma medication that affected my vocal chords.

But there are the book videos and trailers that feature only the book. Done by professionals, they are delightful ads for the book that pop out in the stream of stationary images. So, about a year ago, I set out to learn how to make those.

Not easy; let’s start with that. Or, it would maybe be easier, if I’d settled with the easy-making tools, where you upload a couple of images and the desired text, and let the programme handle the rest. I found those dissatisfying and inflexible.

Instead, I downloaded a free video editor called OpenShot Video Editor. It’s an open source software like GIMP (a free Photoshop type of software), and the provider should be reliable. There are no ads or registrations required. It looks a bit like GIMP too, and operates in layers like it.

It took a long moment to figure out the logic of constructing a video. Time runs horizontally on the timeline that consists of layers of tracks. The duration an image shows on the video is manipulated by stretching and shrinking it on the timeline. There’s the base image(s) on track 1, on top of which different elements are added and removed on their own tracks, so that they appear at the desired moment in the video.

Fresh table. Mine is in Finnish, but other languages are available.

However, the images themselves can’t be made with the video editor. For those, I use GIMP. First I need to decide the shape of the video, vertical or horizontal, and the size that the social media sites can show (usually 720x1280). I decide on a short story, a few images and text, and make the elements I need with GIMP. Some elements, like the text, are on transparent background, so that they can be layered on top of the images.

Everything is uploaded on the video editor, and then it’s the simple matter of arranging the images in a desired way. Simple being a misleading word. It’s amazingly tricky to make the timeline work without gaps or overlaying images. I think the editor is a tad too sensitive for an amateur like me.

The story should make sense too, and it shouldn’t be too long. Usually, my first set of images doesn’t work, but I can only assess that after I’ve made the first version of the video. The editor offers all sorts of effects as well, animation and fade-ins, some of which work the way I presume, others that don’t. All in all, the editor has features that would make my videos much better if I learned to use them.

On top of everything comes the music. I’ve used royalty free music from Pixabay. There are all sorts of short tracks available there for every mood. Sometimes, after I’ve added the music, I need to tweak the timing of the images to fit the beat. The video editor is particularly good for that, allowing the minutest tweaks.

Work in progress.

Once everything is done to my satisfaction, after a week of tweaking and cursing, the video is saved in a video format, which has to be selected especially to match the form you’ve built it (it doesn’t select the correct one automatically, which is odd). And then you watch it and decide it needs more work, and start again…

I like making book videos, but it’s frustrating work, at least for someone who makes one or two a year. I tend to forget everything in between and have to start anew with every video. The end results aren’t exactly professional looking either, but I’m happy with them. Whether or not they have any impact with readers, I have no idea. So far, they haven’t moved any copies, so the amount of work that goes in them is sort of wasted. But they delight me, and I hope they delight others as well.

Here’s the latest video. It’s not my best, but I like it anyway.

If the video doesn’t show, or it looks wonky (Blogger doesn't seem to understand vertical videos), you can watch it on my FB page here. And you can read more about the book, My Happy Time Loop Fail, here.

Announcing My Happy Time Loop Fail

Sometimes, a book takes a long time to write. Book five of House of Magic has barely gotten anywhere in three months. Occasionally, though, it doesn’t take any time at all.

Three weeks ago, I came up with an opening line for an isekai time loop short story. Those unfamiliar with the Japanese term, it means a genre of fantasy where the protagonist is transported to or reborns into another world. And then, occasionally, the time keeps looping and the protagonist keeps being reborn.

The opening line was “My fourth time loop was different.” I just went with it, intending to write a short story of about 5000 words. But then the words kept piling up and the plot kept becoming more complicated. Soon, I realised I had an m/m romance in my hands as well. And that needed more space.

Two weeks later, I’d written a short novel, fastest I’ve ever written anything. It ended up being about 35.000 words long, so quite a few times longer than intended. And I like it! It has a nice plot, satisfying romance and my first ever m/m sex scene too, which took a bit of work. I hope I got it right.

Since I wrote it, I absolutely have to publish it. The book is now with the editor, and the publication day is set at the end of April. I made a nice cover too, trying to honour the Japanese origins of isekai. I like it very much, although it might give a notion of a sweeter romance than the reader gets. Be warned. 

First two undedited chapters are available on my website, and all the preorder links are up too. And here’s the description:

My fourth time loop was different. For one, it was painful. For another, I returned as my sister.

Henry Sanford has a perfectly normal life in Oxford—until he dies in a drunken accident. Next thing he knows, he’s being reborn. But that isn’t even all. He is born into a completely different world that has magic—but no dragons to his disappointment—as Petl, a son of viscount, with all his memories of the previous life. Not that they help, because he dies again. And again. And again.

But after the latest death, he isn’t reborn. He isn’t even Petl anymore. He finds himself in the body of his younger sister Lisl, only a year before he is killed by a traitor. And said traitor is about to propose to her.

Determined to stop it, he—she—proposes to the first man she comes across: Maleth Boderl, a son of a powerful man, and someone with whom Petl has a complicated history. Not that Maleth knows, because of the loops. And it’s about to get even more complicated, because Lisl is smitten with him at first sight.

It is Lisl who is suddenly lusting after Maleth, right?

Petl can’t dwell on that. He has a war to stop, a traitor to kill, and possibly a heart to conquer too—if he can figure out how he is feeling first.

This is a stand-alone m/m romance with mistaken identities, betrayal, love, and some spice too.

***

You can preorder the book on Amazon, Apple Books, B&N and Kobo, among other places. It comes out on April 28th.