Author Michael Murphy

 Michael Murphy is visiting today to talk about book trailers. He creates his own and he has some advice for other authors who want to create the trailers for their books. Michael is an award-winning author who lives in Arizona with his wife, two cats, four dogs and five chickens. His seventh, and latest, book, Scorpion Bay has just come out, so I’m excited he had the time to stop by Straight From Hel.

Please welcome Michael Murphy.

Producing a Book Trailer

Since I’ve produced book trailers for most of my seven novels I’m often asked about their value. I recently read a post from another author that indicated only family and friends read an author’s book trailer. Because I have more than 6,000 views of my first book trailer for Try and Catch the Wind, I replied that I didn’t have that many friends.

My experience has convinced me that book trailers can be a valuable component of a comprehensive book promotion program. If you are an author about to release a book and you haven’t produced a book trailer, I urge you to give one serious consideration. Fortunately you have a number of options.

For a professionally produced book trailer, expect to pay between $200 and $500. There are a number of companies that produce book trailers and they do an excellent job, such as Circle of Seven Productions. If choose to produce one yourself (if I can do it, you can), be sure to use royalty free images and music. This isn’t as hard or costly as one might expect. For my Scorpion Bay book trailer, I paid $4.30 for all the music and sound effects through Itunes.



Images and music should reflect the genre of your book. If your book is spooky and creepy, match it with that kind of music and those images. Soft and sweet...well you get the idea.

After your video is produced, spend as much time inspecting the detail as you did with your novel. No typos! Post the video to You Tube and link the video to your website and blog. But don’t stop there. There are a number of sites that will post your book trailer for free, such as Blazing Trailers.

Market your book trailer like you would your novel. Use social media to get out the word and track the traffic on You Tube.

Will a book trailer translate to book sales? I don’t have any direct evidence to support my position, but from my experience the answer is yes.

Thank you Michael.

If you’d like to get to know more about Michael Murphy, you can hook up with him on Facebook and Twitter.

You can find Scorpion Bay, his thriller (with a sense of humor), on Kindle and Amazon.

If anyone has a question or comment for Michael, the comments section is open. I’ll start us off: Michael, you said you found music and sound effects on iTunes. Is there a special section just for that or did you listen to various songs and then seek permission to use them?