Most book trailers get made first and placed second. That's why most of them collect a few hundred views and do nothing. Placement decides the aspect ratio, the length, the pacing and whether it has to work with the sound off. Work backwards from where it's going and the same budget goes a lot further.
The same story cut three ways for three places beats one polished film with nowhere to live.
9:16, and it has to work with the sound off, because most people scroll muted. Burned in captions, not auto captions. The first second decides whether anyone sees the second one. This is where nearly all the reach is now, and it's the format most trailers ignore.
16:9 for your website, your retail page and anywhere someone has already decided to pay attention. You can afford a slower open here. Someone clicking play on an author site is a different person from someone scrolling past.
For nonfiction and memoir this consistently outperforms the cinematic treatment. Readers buy the person. Sixty seconds of you explaining why you wrote it does more than an animated sequence, and it costs less to make.
One shoot, several cuts. A fifteen second hook, a thirty second version, a minute for your page. Making one long video and trimming it down never works as well as planning the cuts before you shoot.
Video is the easiest place in book marketing to spend money and see nothing.
Every month it sits in the drawer is a month nobody reads it. Tell us where the book is at and we'll give you a straight answer on what it needs.
A fifteen second hook, a thirty second version, a minute for your book page. Planning the cuts before the shoot works far better than making one long video and trimming it down. Raw footage and project files are yours at the end.
You've probably heard that publishing services take your money, take your rights and go quiet. The industry earned that reputation. So here's how we work instead.
Your rights, your royalties, your files. Nothing we make gets licensed back to us.
Scope in writing first. No work starts on a handshake and a number that moves later.
Source files, print ready files, accounts and logins. All handed over, all in your name.
If your book doesn't need a service, we'll say so. That's cheaper for you and better for us.
Real books we've worked on. Covers, interiors and distribution, all of them out in the world.
Every month it sits in the drawer is a month nobody reads it. Tell us where the book is at and we'll give you a straight answer on what it needs.
Five stages, and you sign off at every one. Nothing moves to the next stage until you've said yes to the last.
Tell us where the book is and what you want it to do. We'll tell you what it actually needs.
Scope and price agreed in writing before anyone starts. You know the number up front.
Editing, layout, cover, whatever the scope says. You approve each stage as it lands.
Final proof on the typeset pages, plus a physical proof copy before anything gets printed at volume.
Retailer setup, metadata, categories and keywords. Then the files and logins come to you.
We don't publish testimonials on our own site anymore. Ours live on Trustpilot, where you can check them yourself.
Verified reviews
We publish our reviews on Trustpilot so you can verify them independently rather than take our word for it. Read what our authors have said at trustpilot.com/review/publisherinusa.com.
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