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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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