Some “Booktok” video trailers for The Heron Kings Books
Recently my “publisher” tried to coerce me into making some inane videos of myself on…shudder…Tiktok. Christ. Of course I refused. If you look at any other section of this site you’ll know I’m not too interested in plastering my ugly face all over, well, anyfuckinwhere. It won’t sell any books and it’ll just mortify me. But according to the Kidz on teh InternetzTM that apparently decide things now, “hashtagBooktok” videos are now yet another must for anyone wanting to promote any book. Sigh. It never fuckin’ ends, does it?
So, in lieu of the previously described bullshit, I threw together some book trailers for The Heron Kings and The Heron Kings’ Flight in the most annoying video dimension I’ve ever had the misfortune of battling with. I posted them on, let’s see. Tiktok, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, and probably other places I can’t remember. So far no views or engagements. Big surprise.
Except for the vertical format, I did enjoy making them though. They took a few hours each. I did one on Saturday and one yesterday. I used mainly OpenShot for the video assembly and editing, with some help from Canva and some sites that provides free and license-free music & images for download. Don’t recall which ones, but they were near the top of search results. This was the first time I’ve ever done anything like this (and on Linux no less, which adds its own layer of headaches, but I refuse to go back to Windoze) so they’re a bit rough. But I did enjoy it, and maybe you’ll enjoy the goofy results as well, if only to laugh at. I also did an extra little “aggressive book marketing” video at the bottom there just for fun.
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Update: I also made some improvements and put together horizontal video trailers:
