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.