If anyone knows my other blog, Rainy Day Thoughts, they know I love to put together images and music. This sometimes has been all photographs and other times digital or oil paintings. Then when I began to do covers for the eBooks, those found their way into this mix of music and art.
There was always a complication as most of the music I wanted to use was not available to average people to use on anything but a private site. I found a classical site, but it added a recorded ending to their website. When I'd visit sites that did offer more popular sounding music, at a reasonable price, it sounded electric and usually had little melody.
That changed when I visited one of the Amazon artist forums and an author, Peggy Henderson, whose books I had bought because they sounded good (but haven't had time to read yet), said she had created a book trailer. To be honest, I had not been too impressed with the book trailers I had seen to that point. If they tried to tell the story, they lost my interest fast, but this one depicted the characters, atmosphere, and energy of the story more than just the plot. Plus it had very good music that fit her chosen images--
At that point, I went looking at where she said she had gotten her music. Jewel Beat offers diverse music for $.99 which includes a license. Peggy said some of their music is free if you put a link to their site at the end of your video. What I like about their music is it has the emotional energy I always want but not so expensive that I cannot justify its use.
I bought three of their songs that same night and used one with a set of my covers (published and unpublished) along with some of the paintings that I felt went with the characters and their settings. This is the kind of thing I have done for the fun of it; but for the first time I could eventually put it on YouTube as an additional opportunity to bring people to my books-- and frankly as an indie writer, you need every way you can find.
One author wrote they didn't believe you could ever sell a book with a trailer and that it took up too much time to do them. I don't know about that, but as an author and artist, I love to work with both mediums and appreciate someone else's ability to use images, music and words.
Eventually I will give a book trailer a try although that will be more complicated than what I did do. A book trailer requires thinking of the images that fit the characters as well as the country into which the story is set. Then putting together some words with the images. Not that words are hard for me but limiting them to the essential ones-- that's the tough part.
