Cheryl Cowtan on Writing

I've been watching YouTube videos of authors, and I have to say, some videos made me feel closer to the author, some impressed me, and some made me wish I had never watched it. Presenting yourself in video can be a great way to connect to an audience. The question is, "who" do you present? Do you show them your funky, home personality, or dress up and be professional, or get quirky and align yourself with your genre? I think these questions have to be answered by the person filming themselves. Usually, I go for professional, but today I killed two hours (and cracked myself up) creating an instructional film called Don't be a You-Boob on YouTube   I believe this film might be the beginning of my author-platform evolution from words to video. Watch the film to learn and laugh about the many things (namely 10 ... or 11) that you can do to improve your YouTube production.

Make Book Trailers with Smilebox Authors started using book trailers to persuade viewers to purchase their novels in 2003. Though there are many programs you can use to create your own book trailer, each one requires different levels of expertise. For example: using MovieMaker or another film editing program would require more skill in film editing, and access to copyright free images and music. However, the benefits of using film editing software is the flexibility you have as a designer. If you don't have a lot of film editing skill, Smilebox offers a number of template designs that you can manipulate into a trailer. They also have two to three music choices and a fairly good music library to choose from for each template. The many choices of templates allow you to set your mood in the trailer using imagery, animation, colour and symbols. You can also add your own images. I made this book trailer for my novel "The Precious Quest" in about 2 hours. The novel is a d...