Love this Wish Trailer!!

Check out this amazing trailer for Wish

Made by the amazing Charlii

In Ashley Hayball's 4th grade class

at Amelia Earhart Elementary School

in Indio, CA

Thank you, Charlii!!!

Things I Love Thursday

Today is a special Things I Love Thursday.

Today I love sharing with you

the new trailer for

 On the Road to Mr. Mineo's!

But, um, where is it?

Oh, there it is....

over on Mr. Schu's blog.

He and Colby Sharp of Nerdy Book Club fame teamed up

to present the world premiere

of the trailer

for

On the Road to Mr. Mineo's

Drum roll, please....

Click here

Wait, we're not done yet......

I'm a guest blogger over at The Nerdy Book Club.

Wait, we're still not done.

Colby Sharp has an interview with me on his blog.

Okay, now we're done.

 

Tomorrow! Tomorrow!

Tomorrow's the day!

The trailer for On the Road to Mr. Mineo's 

will be revealed

at Watch. Connect. Read.

AND

Mr. Schu is giving away The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester and The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis

AND

There will be some other cool stuff

at The Nerdy Book Club

And just to add to the awesomeness of Thursday

Not only is Mr. Schu revealing the trailer for

On the Road to Mr. Mineo's

on Thursday

BUT

He's giving away 

and

So, on Thursday.....click here

Trailer Reveal

Only two more days until....

the world premiere of the trailer for

On the Road to Mr. Mineo's

THURSDAY

Over at Watch. Connect. Read.

and some other cool stuff

over at The Nerdy Book Club

Book Trailer Reveal!

Coming Thursday to a blog near you....

the world premiere of the trailer for...

 

AND

some things going on at the Nerdy Book Club

Book Trailers for Dummies

I've been making book trailers for 4 years now.

Mine are simple.

No bells or whistles.

Just photos, music, and script.

My first one was Greetings from Nowhere:




Then The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis:






Then The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester:






I'm currently working on one for my October release of On the Road to Mr. Mineo's.

Here are the steps to a VERY basic book trailer:

1. Find photos. I use iStock Photo. They always have great photos that fit my story. I download the small size. Each photo costs a certain number of "credits." The credits needed for this trailer cost about $180.  I also sometimes use this site.

2. Find music. This is fun. You want the music, of course, to fit the tone of the book. I use Premium Beat because they have a good variety and are inexpensive. I bought the music for $30.

3. For this trailer, I also added one short video clip, purchased from iStock Photo for $20. 

4. Write the "script."

5. I use iMovie. Easy peasy. Literally drag the photos and music into the project. Add transitions, etc.

6. I spent 5432 hours tweaking it. 


7. Try to keep the total length of the trailer to no more than 2 minutes.


8. Publish to YouTube, Teacher Tube and/or Vimeo.


9. Spread the word online.


DONE

The Healing Spell Trailer

Check this out from the uber talented Kimberley Griffiths Little. I TOLD you the setting is amazing.

Book Trailers

I've made book trailers for my last three books (Greetings From Nowhere, The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis, and my upcoming The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester).

Because I had no idea how to make a book trailer, I put a lot of time into learning how.

For any authors who are fiddling around with making one, I thought I'd pass along some of the things I learned:

• I use iMovie. If you're a Mac lover, you'll like using it.

• You need to have permission to use images. Even though they are "royalty-free", you still have to pay a fee to use them. This usually averages about $100 or so, for me. (I used the small size resolution.) I used the following sites for images.

iStockPhoto.com
DreamsTime.com
ShutterStock.com

• I've used a variety of sources for music. For Greetings from Nowhere, I paid the composer for his original music. I paid a fee from FreePlayMusic.com for the music for The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis. For The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester, I used music available (free) on iMovie.

• You may be inclined to make your frames shorter (time-wise) because it feels too fast. Don't. Slow it down a bit. The viewer needs time to absorb the image and read the text. (It's like when you read out loud and you tend to go too fast.)
  

• If you publish your trailer to YouTube, be sure you also publish to TeacherTube. Many (most?) schools block access to YouTube.

• Test your site on YouTube using the private setting (i.e., not public). Sometimes, parts of the trailer will be jerky. I have no idea why. A couple of times I had to change a "moving" frame to a still frame because I couldn't get the jerkiness out of it. A smarter person probably knows how to fix this.
  

• Your publisher may be able to have your trailer posted on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. But these sites prefer that you not have a pub date or an exterior web site reference.

To teachers and school librarians

If you are unable to access YouTube at your school, the trailer for my new book, The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester, is also on TeacherTube.

Ta da! My new trailer!

So, today is the world premiere of the trailer for my upcoming middle grade novel, The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester.

It's also featured over on Macmillan's MacKids blog.

Enjoy!

And one more talented student

Here's another fantastic book trailer created by a student from Killam Elementary in Reading, MA.

This one is Anna's:

More book trailers!

And more from the students at Killam Elementary in Reading, MA.

Aren't they talented?


Moran's trailer:



Cami's trailer:

Book trailers!

Some talented students from Killam Elementary School, in Reading, Massachusetts, made these amazing trailers for How to Steal a Dog:

Cat's trailer:

Jamie's trailer:

Krista's trailer:






....continued tomorrow!

Book trailers

More and more book trailers are popping up in the children's lit world - or maybe I'm just noticing them more since I just finished one of my own.

Here's a new one (direct link) from author Mitali Perkins:

Ta dah!!!

My new book trailer for Greetings from Nowhere