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.