Julie Broad walks through what videos work on Amazon Author Central pages. Upload a 30-second promo, book trailer, unboxing, or short read-aloud. Avoid mentioning other retailers, and check file size and format limits before you upload.
Questions this video answers
MP4, AVI, WMV, FLV, MOV, or MPG.
Smaller than 500 megabytes.
Less than 10 minutes.
No longer than 30 seconds.
Avoid stating that the book is available at all other retailers (do not mention other retailers).
Chapters
Lonnie sent me an email asking for guidance on what the video should be that he uploads to his Amazon Author Central page. My videos here on Book Launchers TV have recommended that you upload a video, as have many other site, and many tell you how to do it, but nobody has addressed what those videos should be or what they should contain. So Lonnie, I did a deep dive into this subject for you. And so if you're wondering what video content is the best for your Amazon Author Central page, well then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers, a professional self publishing services firm helping nonfiction authors write, publish and promote books that will grow brands and businesses. One of my favorite things is when I get comments on videos, hint or emails with questions that spark an idea for a video topic, especially if it's one I haven't covered yet. And that's what happened when this one came in. Hi Julie, longtime fan of yours. What sort of video should an author make about his book for uploading? When you publish your book on Amazon, there's plenty of guidance out there on how to upload, but nothing really that says go make one structured like this that's about this long. Thanks, Lonnie. Well Lonnie, that's a darn good question. Before I answer it, let me show you what he's talking about. So the last thing I personally uploaded was my unboxing video for Self Publish and Succeed. You can also see where the spot is to upload media like photos or video. Now in preparation for this, I searched through 20 different successful nonfiction authors. Looking for examples, I searched traditional published authors and successful indie authors and I found a very limited number that had any video up here at all. Does that mean it's not worth doing well? Well, Amazon gives you the space to use, so I would say it likely has value or why would they have you upload a video here at all? But the fact that I see a ton of successful authors that have nothing on there does make me wonder how much time and effort you should put into it. When I did find a top selling author with video content here, it was usually a book trailer or an unboxing or a short excerpt of a talk given that was about the book or where they were reading an excerpt from the book and they'd filmed it. Whatever approach you take to your video, ensure it is in an acceptable format which is MP4, AVI, WMV, FLV, MOV or MPG. And it has to be smaller than 500 megabytes and less than 10 minutes long. Now, guessing what content is going to perform best here and if you know or have seen research on this, please post in the comments below so I can get this right. But I couldn't find anything in any of the places I looked. So a lot of this is a guess, but. But an educated one. There is a lot of information on Amazon product videos and what they recommend. And so this is part of what they say there. Amazon recommends that your videos be short and to the point no longer than 30 seconds in the video, focus on the buyer and the key selling points of the product because it increases the likelihood of someone being interested and clicking through to buy after you are done. In other words, open it like I open a lot of the videos you see here on the channel, which is tell them why they should watch the video, flash images of the book, maybe the table of contents, some awards you've won or amazing endorsements or something like that. Okay, you know what? I'm just gonna do one of these for you so you can see what my take on this is. So let me just hold that thought. I'm just gonna go quickly do that. Okay. Okay, I'm back. All right, here it is. Take a look. You've been told you should write a book. You even know you should. But how do you do it? Should you get an agent? Should you self publish? Should you hire a writer? Do you need a book coach? Writing a book is a big project with a lot of decisions, especially when you care about producing the best possible work and most importantly, writing and publishing something you'll be proud of for 5, 10, or 20 years. So how do you write something worth reading, sharing and selling? Self Publish and Succeed is your guide to write a noboringbook that is set up to sell after winning 13 different awards, including the IPPY Outstanding Book of the Year Award in 2021 and being touted as a complete course of DIY instructions for aspiring nonfiction authors wanting to be commercially successful in their efforts by Midwest Book Reviews. Well, you should just stop what you're doing and buy the book today available in ebook, print and audiobook. You can listen on the go or read it in your breaks. Either way, this book is the one you need to finally write your book and do it so that you can write a book that has an impact on your life, your income, and your reader. You could also do something that is a little bit more like a traditional book trailer. We've done some for our authors. The absolute most successful One was about the book Killers Keep Secrets. The trailer got posted on Reddit and true crime fans went crazy. Most trailers don't get traction like that one did, but a well done trailer can certainly be an option for you for your Amazon author central page. What is a book trailer? Well, a book trailer is a short promotional video which introduces your book and your marketing message. As always, make sure it's not just about the book, but it's actually about the reader and why they should want to read your book. Remember all you know about your reader, what's keeping them up at night, what motivates them, what inspires them, and and focus your short video trailer on that. In other words, focus it on your book's hook. Just like the Amazon product video or the recommendations they had for those. I think this should be 30 seconds or less and you should focus on the outcome which is buying the book, but the outcome of the outcome the reader is going to get when they buy your book. Using powerful imagery to express the tone of your book as well as music or other audio samples could really draw your viewer, AKA reader in. As I say that make sure you have the rights to the music or the audio that you're using in creating the trailer. But there's plenty of places to get music that you can use or that you can license to use. And of course, of course, no matter what video this is, make sure there's a call to action to make the move. Buy and read your book. You can include your website as well, but the real goal of the trailer is to get someone to buy and read your book. So focus on that. Now if you're planning to upload this to Amazon, be careful about stating that your book is available at all the retailers because Amazon won't like that and they might reject your video. So you're best to focus on just telling someone to buy your book. You could create two versions, one that directs people to the outlets to buy your book and one that doesn't, so you have both on hand. So Lani, I don't know if that really totally answers your question, but I can't wait to see what you create. So I hope you come back to this video and comment with a link to whatever you've created. And if you're wondering about filming an awesome unboxing video, well head over here because this video has you covered. And if you want to know all about submitting for Editorial Reviews so you have some cool snippets to share like mine from Midwest Book Reviews, well, this video is about that. When you get to either of these, please comment on the content and share a link to the video you create after you make your own.
