Quality Makes All The Difference

I've talked before about making sure you produce a good quality book video. It can be homemade, but please no more bright red text on bright yellow backgrounds! There's one thing I didn't go into before, however, and it's been a huge pet peeve of mine since I began Way Out Sortie.

No matter how good the quality of your production is - just like a book - if it's not published right, it doesn't matter. YouTube, MySpace, MetaCafe, etc. etc. all are great for what they do. And I'll always continue to distribute my videos for my authors to over 10 different popular sites. However, their quality is not top-notch, and using them takes control away from me and my authors. So the important things:

• High quality final video
• Start playing quickly
• Simple player, with the ability to stop, pause, full-screen, and adjust the volume.
• Easy to distribute/use and inject into sites

I'll tell you after spending the past few days pulling my hair out over this - those are NOT easy things to meet. It's one of the reason why even good quality video production companies still have badly compressed, and poorly published videos all around the web.

Since I've begun Way Out Sortie, I'm more than happy to talk shop, and even get into the technical stuff I do - but I'll save you all from that here. If you're interested in some of the tech behind all this, just drop me a line. However, I've made a significant investment into a better way to compress videos, licensed a quality player, and got a server that can stream these videos for my authors. I'll be including this free of charge with all videos I design from here on out (which, as a quick note, will likely cause me to increase my prices, but I won't do that until March 2009, so sign up before I get totally booked through that time). Shameless plug off. :)

Let's take a look at the difference. Oh! Quick note. I was going to post the Dutch version of Nickie Fleming's Diamonds For The Devil, since I was talking about working on that in the last post. But I decided to go with Shelby Reed's simply because the effects I use in Shelby's show a lot of the common compression problems with YouTube. So, if you'd like to see Nickie's De Medici Diamanten video teaser, please visit my portfolio at http://www.wayoutsortie.com/portfolio.html Thanks!

Here's Shelby's video on YouTube: It's really not *bad*... (since I create these videos in high resolution, YouTube's compression doesn't hurt it like it does some other videos)


But now here's Shelby's video on Way Out Sortie:


Whatcha think? Aside from the lack of advertising and some other random problems with YouTube (like, maybe your network guy has it blocked so you can't surf YouTube at work. bleh.) it comes across sharper, crisper, more... snappy!

I spent so much time trying different things and not being able to track down answers on compression and web videos, like it's some amazing secret that only a few know about, that I will likely post about my workflow in another blog post. If you'd like to hear it, let me know also.

Finally, if you're interested in a book or author video teaser... You know where to find me! It's http://www.wayoutsortie.com/!

As The Boundries Disappear - Translating To Dutch

There's times when the overwhelming awesomeness of the Internet comes full force into your life and you realize how times have changed. Depending on who you are, or what you do, it may be when you buy something from Africa on eBay. It may be when you get an opportunity to claim $30 million Nigerian dollars! For me, it's when I get the opportunity to work outside of my typical American comfort zone. Yes, I'm talking about translating Nickie Fleming's book video into Dutch!

As I mentioned in the last post, Nickie wanted to bring her Epic Historical to a larger audience and recognized the book video teaser as a format that will work for that. Especially for her story. However, as we talked about it, she mentioned that her book sold very well and brought national attention to her in her homeland of Belgium. So, being a good and thorough designer, I offered to work with her to translate her video into a Dutch version for just a small additional fee.

I should say that I do not speak Dutch. But since it's Nickie's native language, I knew that she could do proper translation (in which case, she wanted to rewrite the phrasing to match the dialect - makes perfect sense). How does this create issues with motion graphics? Well, for one thing you have to keep in mind that a different language may be 10 characters shorter for a line of text. Or, better yet, 20 characters longer... This requires constant tweaking, adjusting the fonts, position, and re-aligning a bit of the overall design.

It's an excellent and fun challenge. In this image on the right, I show a couple frames. Primarily the main hook of the video, which is in English, at the bottom: "It's About Time You Read Nickie Fleming's Diamonds For The Devil".

The most important thing on approaching a translation if you don't speak the language is excellent communication with your translator (fortunately, this time it's the author herself). I sent her the English script, line by line exactly from the video. She sent back a Dutch re-write, line by line. In most cases this worked out great, but for this title sequence (which is a big deal - the hook!) she sent it as three lines. I couldn't find a way to work with that so I decided to do what was possible to make this work and have the impact of the title sequences.

The first thing I did wrong was put:
Het Is Dus
Hoog (in the large text)
Tijd Om....

But running it through babelfish, I discover that Hoog Tijd translates (roughly, I assume) to "High Time". So, even without knowing the language, I don't want to put emphasis on "HIGH" and break up the flow of the native language with "TIME" after it. The last thing I ever want to do is make an author look silly in their own language, as I can imagine how my marketing message may look if I got someone from India who didn't speak English to place it for me.

So, that issue taken care of, I designed the text around that... And then, we have a tag at the end: Te Lezen. I'm not going to butcher the Dutch language with poor translations, but it appears to be something like "to read" or "of reading" - those of you who speak multiple languages (or even English, really well), will recognize this problem with translating a design object. Sometimes, other languages refer to a noun afterward, instead of before.

All that taken into consideration, it's just a matter of taking an organic approach to redesigning the graphics that need to be adjusted frame-by-frame and look for opportunities to create the same emotional pull. It's not as important to understand the language, as to understand how it works and excellent communication with your translator.

Thanks to Nickie Fleming for her amazing work, made this task as smooth as could ever be possible or asked for. Please be sure to check out her site and her excellent books in English OR Dutch!

Interested in a book video teaser? In English, or French, or Swahili? Visit WayOutSortie.com for more details and to check out my portfolio!

Nickie Fleming - Diamonds For The Devil Book Video Teaser

Nickie Fleming contacted me through my Way Out Sortie MySpace, and was excited about the possibilities of bringing her book to a video production teaser. Her main interest was because the setting, style, and characters felt - to her, and her readers/reviewers - like they just came off an epic Historical Romance/Mystery/Action/Adventure set.

I honestly tried to talk her out of it a bit. Heh. She was very excited, and I didn't want to do an injustice to the image she'd put together in her mind of what a video promoting her book would look like. She was persistent, and I took the job - I think it turned out really nice. It has a bit of a cinematic feel, but it's entirely geared at selling the book based around a hook (It's about... Time to read Nickie Fleming's Diamonds For The Devil), and generate reader interest, more than telling the story of what the book's about.

I tried out some new tricks with this video, including the photo / 3d scenes, the portraiture, the fancy borders at the beginning, etc. Let me know what you think! Does the video get you interest in the story?



In case you ARE interest in the story after seeing this, please visit Nickie Fleming's web site at http://www.nickiefleming.com or buy the book directly at Amazon.com.

If you're interested in a video of your own - for your book, or promotion of yourself as an author - please check out my site at http://www.wayoutsortie.com/. Thanks!

Promoting Your Book Video

Even though book trailers have been done since COS Productions first premiered Dark Symphony by Christine Feehan in 2003, it's considered a relatively new market.

Partially because of the technical requirements to make them - although they can be made with Windows Movie Maker or any other simple editing program, it takes a high quality video to get real notice. Partially because the expense - as I've been saying here, the market that can benefit most from these book videos is the small published market, which has trouble affording them. Although over the span of an author's career, the initial investment in a book video will be highly justified.

So the question is - where's the best place to promote your book video once it's complete? We know YouTube can get views, but it's not your target audience. You can pay for advertising it on a number of smaller sites geared at niche markets, which may be worthwhile, but it's always a question of risk - is it worth the investment? Especially after you've purchased the video.

The answer is: Amazon! Your Site! Your MySpace!

Three places most likely to get you immediate sales. And it's easy to do!

1) Amazon

What better place to have an advertisement to sell your book, than to someone who's actively looking to BUY a book? If you get someone to land on your book's page at Amazon, and you have a high quality (preferably Way Out Sortie - hah) video on your book's page... You just sold another copy. Not to mention whatever word of mouth it generates. To place your video on Amazon.com, you need to sign up for the AuthorConnect (available through your books page on Amazon - and it has to be a print book. E-books sold on Amazon are not available for AuthorConnect yet). Once you've signed up for AuthorConnect, had your publisher verify you are the author, you can create a blog entry and "Upload your video" to your blog. This allows it to show up right on the book's page. Excellent!

2) Your Site

Whether you have two visitors a week (mom AND dad), or you have thousands of visitors a day, posting your book video on your site ties all your branding and self-promotion tools together. Your site is (hopefully) already geared to send potential readers flocking to the nearest book store to purchase your masterpiece. Now, you have a video that will dazzle and delight them for 1:30 to 2 minutes and leave them with tears of joy in their eyes, and credit card in hand. The easiest way to place your book video on your site is to simply take the "Embed" code from YouTube's page and copy and paste it where you want it in your HTML pages. It takes access to your HTML code (through FTP or a control panel) to change, but it's not rocket science. Just skip the boring stuff at the top, find where your text is, and find a nice gap to paste it into. Viola!

3) MySpace (or..uh... yourSpace)

Of course we want to promote ourselves on MySpace. It isn't called Social Networking for nothing. This is real easy. If your producer already uploaded your video, just search for it by name to find it. Once you click on the video, there's a link on the right-hand side that says "Add to my Profile". Click on that, and you're the proud owner of a multi-media rich MySpace page! If your producer didn't upload the video, simply go to MySpace Videos, and follow the easy-to-use instructions to select the video file from your computer (MySpace supports about 6 of the most common formats), and wait patiently while it's uploaded. It will take a little bit to be converted and made live, but once it is, you can find it under "My Videos" link at the top of the page.

That's a start! Three of the best places to market your Book Video and get your promotion going. I'll be following this up soon with some additional places that focus entirely on book videos and teasers, and also other ways to promote your video - like, through your publisher!

For more details, or to check out some of the wicked videos being produced by Way Out Sortie, head on over to http://www.wayoutsortie.com today!

Writer Webs - Web Design Exclusively for Authors

Both Way Out Sortie and Writer Webs are small design studios. Both are geared at helping authors get noticed. Both provide specific areas to help your promotion, and inspire you and your readers with high quality production.

There are a number of benefits of working with a small design studio, whether you're looking for a book video, or author teaser or trailer.

• Obviously, a small studio has very low overhead, so you're not paying for all the extra things that companies require - additional taxes, support staff, office space and equipment, extra phone lines, workmans comp, etc. This means you can get quality work at a low price!


• A small studio has freedom over the design work it does. There is no red tape or bureaucracy. There are no channels to go through for approval (other than the client, of course). The designer is not buried in 8-hours of just pushing out ad copy, etc. This means that your designer has passion in the work they're doing!


• A small studio generally picks a niche they enjoy. Just like above, a small studio has freedom and can focus not on what market share dictates, or Wall Street predicts, but rather what they are interested in. What they have knowledge of. This means that your designer is an expert in a niche market.


• Finally, a small studio enjoys opening new channels. Without having to go through hoops, a small studio can join in an entire social network, work out deals with other small companies, and get involved in the community. This means your designer is working to find the best way to promote your site or video.

There may not be a huge bank of consultants ready to answer an 800 number at your whim with a small studio. Your designer most likely also has a day job, just like most writers. But, even taking cost out of the consideration, whether you choose Writer Webs or Way Out Sortie, or some other studio entirely, the benefits of a small studio guarantee you have someone who is passionate about doing the best work they can for you.

For more information, please visit http://www.wayoutsortie.com or http://www.writerwebs.com

Creating an Author Video Teaser Hook - Shelby Reed

This time, we'll take a look at Shelby Reed's author video.

An author video presents an entirely new challenge to creating a proper hook to tie in throughout a video teaser. In this case, we're going to be looking at an entire career, an entire library of books, which may all be similar (as is the case with Shelby's), or may be entirely different.

This also presents an additional challenge - how do you sell these books when you're (hopefully!) just providing a few seconds each to them. I can't possibly represent an entire blurb, much less an entire overview of the story, in a visual-rich 15 seconds. Even if some authors think that would be the best way to do it - it isn't! Focus your message. Writers know very well this is often one of their problems. Because they're writers! Telling a writer to "not write so much" is not going to get you very far.

In Shelby Reed's case, I took the term "teaser" across the board. Identifying her greatest strengths from a promotional side (the pouring in of outstanding reviews), and the hook we're trying to create (an interesting draw to get readers to learn more about her), and tie them together.

So we start with "Shelby Reed invites your on a journey...", an for each book we throw on screen, we put a great quote from her reviews, or two, along with a portion of the journey we're moving through. Although the ... ellipses signifies that we are, indeed, writers (don't all authors love ellipses?), it does tie the journey together and allows each book to make a statement that would work an overall.

"Shelby Reed invites you on a journey through wild inhibitions." All the way through "Shelby Reed invites you on a journey through erotic promises." And this sets us up for the hook, as we end with a menagerie of terms to continue the hook: Through love, passion, sex, etc. Before we clear everything, black the screen, and end with our hook. "Shelby Reed invites you on a journey through ROMANCE." and type out the web site address.

Like Leslie's trailer in the previous entry, this creates a nice emotional pull with the music and the message, bringing it all together in a nice, tight, little package.

It doesn't always work out across the board like this, but it's the primary focus of Way Out Sortie - promotion video teasers with a hook. Find out more at http://www.wayoutsortie.com

Hook Examples for Proper Book Promotion.

These may not be the very best examples, and they likely won't work exactly for your book, but hopefully this video hook example will illustrate some of the concepts behind turning your book video into a teaser that builds and audience, as opposed to just a short video that gives an overview of your story. From a marketing stand point, those are two very different items, and one of them will generate sales, and the other will generate people wanting to watch a short story.

So, now that we know we want to market our book with a video teaser, let's take a look at how we can use a hook to build interest. In the example on the right, we have about 10 seconds into the Leslie Ann Dennis Reason to Believe teaser, and the bottom picture is about 15 seconds before the end. Using the phrasing "It all started with a tree..." sets the video up to say that there's more going on than that. It all started.

This allows us the room to play out the basic blurb of the book (which isn't generally something we'd do from a marketing video standpoint), because we've already started the story concept. Since this is a Romance novel, we want to make sure we establish the Heroine, the Hero, the Setting, and hopefully the Conflict within this time. Keeping the entire video to less than 2 minutes. Hopefully 1:30.

Now, we've displayed the details in the middle, and we get toward the end. We repeat the "For Lane Douglas, it all began with a tree." Then fade that out and bring in "But can it end with a... Reason to Believe?"

This does a couple of different things - it ties in the book name, simply because it suited our purpose (book titles aren't an important item to brand, just like web site domain names, but that's for a different post). The other thing it does is create a closure to the opening we started at the beginning. It all started... Can it end with... This encapsulates the message we're trying to get our readers interested in.

This one worked out pretty well because it did two additional things that generally don't all tie in together with a marketing message. One, it asks a question. Can it end with a Reason to Believe? This hopefully will prompt the audience to find out! The other thing it does, is create an emotional wrap-up response in the viewer. Although I wish it was intentional, it wasn't. And generally until you get the video done and see how readers respond to it, you'll never know. But the way it all works together swells with a bit of emotion with the combination of the music, graphics, and statement we're making. If only they could all work out that way.

Hopefully this gives an example of how I created a hook with Reason to Believe, and will help you with your overall marketing and promotion. If you'd like to watch Reason to Believe's teaser, you can find it here at YouTube.

The proper hook for your book!

This is just the first of what I suspect will be many articles I'm going to write here that will discuss a proper hook for your promotions. Obviously, no one understands the value of a hook more than an author. But there's often a lack of follow-through on the promotion side of things. I honestly, deeply understand the love-hate relationship most authors have with promoting their books and their own image.

It would be great if you could just be creative, write your stories, and an entire reading audience would automatically know when it's released how wonderful it is. How deeply your characters will root into their minds, and last forever. How strongly the passion grows, how exciting the adventure is - especially when they get to page 163! - but unfortunately this is a misnomer. Not that the book isn't great, but that your audience won't know that unless you can sell them on it. Sigh. So here we are, back at promotion.

What appears, to me, to be the largest mistake in book videos when I watch a bunch of them, is actually not the poor quality, stock photography, bad colors that most people would think. Because even with all those elements - which I'll be talking about in the future - it still presents a promotion. (Well, we'll get to some exceptions to this of course soon).

The biggest problem with current book trailers - incredibly expensive, high quality productions, or simple author-made designs - is the lack of a hook. The very best trailers will develop a theme based on the story to promote, slowly weave that theme throughout the entire video, and wrap it up with a call to action that will entice viewers on an emotional level to follow through and learn more about the author and the amazing story they've written!

Tomorrow I will go over some examples of these hooks, and the difference they can make between a successful promotional video, and a short film that doesn't build audience awareness.

Shelby Reed - Author of Erotic Romance

I knew that I wanted to focus a bit on Author Promotional Videos in addition to just the simple book vids. However, I hadn't really considered the best way to promote an author in a video, incorporating their entire library. It presents a number of challenges.

For example, first you may have a variety of different styles and books, not just simply setting or hero/heroines. Next comes the problem that generally a good book video will tease a reader enough for them to want to buy the book - but with an author promotional, there's not enough time - nor patient viewer - to present a detailed account of each book. So you either shorten the message, which can just make it generic and simple. Or find some other way to tease people to learn more information about the author.

That's what I attempted to do with Shelby Reed's author promotional video here. In addition to showing a little more edgy side than the previous Leslie Ann Dennis video. Hope you enjoy!



You can find out more about Shelby Reed and her amazing books at her web site: http://www.shelbyreed.com/

If you're interested in your own Author Promotional Video, please visit our site at: http://www.wayoutsortie.com/

Promoting Yourself, The Right Way

As it should be for any writing community, irony abounds. Even though the big NY houses are still the big NY houses, they're beginning to lose ground. The future of the large markets may rest in the hand of the small, community-based markets.

I've constantly said that the small and electronic published Romance community is doing everything right. Now, I figure I'd back that up with some specific examples of how small-time authors are making a big splash!

• Community - Aside from taking full advantage of where the everyday reader spends their time online - MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, etc. - Romance writers are creating and culturing online groups and communities. Many of these they've started years ago - as Yahoo groups, or maybe even before (remember eGroups, anyone? Or Themestream?). What's this mean? It means that authors helped build these communities with the readers, which lends ravenous loyalty throughout an entire career.
• Staying In Touch - Even after these Romance authors become successful (and your definition may vary on that, but let's stick with published) - they continue to be easily accessible to their fans, fellow writers, and general population. Sure, there's a few elitists, some eclectics, and drama llama's. But for the most part, the Romance community has developed a passion for hanging out together, and that makes them successful in many more ways.
• Trying New Things - There is no other online community that not only adapts to change, but promotes it than Romance authors. It all began with webrings, moved to e-publishing, rallied with erotic romance, culminated in contests, and now pushes towards promotion with book videos, and the future of high speed Internet. What other group would have thought to make videos to promote reading a book? Awesome.

So, if you are not a Romance author, and not involved in their community (which isn't as cliquish as you would think), then it's a good time to watch what they're doing and mimic it! Personally, I'm a bit more of a Sci-Fi fan, but the Sci-Fi author community has been less quick to adapt to the Internet community (aha, more irony), and has seen a significant decline in reader interest, even while science fiction and fantasy movies are blockbuster hits.

The moral of this story? Get involved in a community, stay in touch with your readers, and take risks. The rewards will be more than just monetary success. Over time, I think that the smallest self-published author that develops a community will be the person that ends up buying the big publishers if they don't start paying attention.