Attention is short and video travels further than text. A trailer is not a substitute for the book: it is the thing a reader can watch before deciding whether to give the book their evening.
A book trailer does the job a cover does, in motion and with sound. Given how little time anyone gives an unfamiliar title, a concise and well-made video is often the most effective way to convey what a book actually feels like, which is the thing a blurb is worst at.
It is also the only asset in a book's marketing that travels natively on the platforms where readers now spend their attention. A trailer can be posted, shared, embedded and cut down; a paragraph of description cannot.
These differ enormously in cost and in what they suit. The first conversation is usually about which one your book and your budget actually call for.
- 01
Cinematic trailer
A short film: footage, action, sound design, effects and dialogue. The most expensive option and the most striking, suited to books whose appeal is atmospheric.
- 02
Bare-bones trailer
The budget option, and an honest one. Simple animation or static imagery with text and music, informative and engaging without pretending to be a film.
- 03
Blurb trailer
Built around the synopsis: text, imagery and music assembled into something short and visually clean that conveys plot and character quickly.
- 04
Animated trailer
2D and 3D animation with original graphics and typography. The natural choice for children's books and young-adult titles, and for anything where live footage would look thin.
- 05
Author profile
You, talking about the book, the writing and where it came from. It sells the author rather than the title, which is what builds a readership across more than one book.
Four things worth knowing before commissioning a video about your book.
- 01
Made to travel
Delivered in the aspect ratios and lengths the platforms actually want, not as one landscape file you then have to crop. A trailer that has to be reformatted to post is a trailer that does not get posted.
- 02
Cut to the genre
A thriller trailer and a children's book trailer share almost no conventions. The concept is built from what your readers already respond to rather than from a house style.
- 03
Approved before release
You see the finished trailer and request changes before anything is published. Nothing goes out with your name on it that you have not signed off.
- 04
Honest about what it does
A trailer raises visibility and gives readers something to share. It does not guarantee sales, and anyone telling you a video will move your numbers by a specific amount is guessing.
Eight steps from a two-minute call to a finished film.
Order details
You send the book's details and a short consultation follows, genuinely short, because at this stage what is needed is the material rather than a meeting.
Conceptualisation
Genre specialists read what you have sent and design a concept for the trailer: what it will show, what it will withhold, and how long it should run.
Script
The concept written as a shooting script, so everything that follows is executing a decision rather than making one.
Animation and footage
The visual work built to the genre, 2D and 3D animation for children's and illustrated books, footage and effects for live-action concepts.
Music and effects
Score, sound design, colour and typography. This is the stage that separates a trailer from a slideshow, and it is the one authors most often underestimate.
Editing
The cut reviewed repeatedly for errors, glitches and typos. A typo in a trailer is permanent in a way a typo in a draft is not.
Approval
The finished trailer comes to you, and changes you request are made before anything is released.
Release
Delivered in the formats you need for each platform, ready to publish on your own schedule.
A few of the people the house has worked with, in their own words.
I had eleven years of notes and no book. What I got back read like me on a good day, my turns of phrase, my arguments, and none of the padding I would have added myself. The first chapter arrived and I stopped worrying.
Marianne ElleryIndependent author The structural edit was not comfortable reading. It told me the second half started in the wrong place, which I had suspected for a year and nobody had said out loud. Moving three chapters fixed a problem I had been trying to solve with better sentences.
Devon AlukoIndependent author What sold me was being told I did not need half of what I had asked for. I came in wanting the full package and left with a cover, a proofread and an honest explanation of why the rest would not have helped yet.
Priya RaghunathanIndependent author Three cover directions, all of them plausible, none of them the thing I had described. The one I picked worked at the size that actually matters, I could recognise it in a list of forty other books, which is more than I can say for my first attempt.
Tobias HearnIndependent author I own the book outright and that was written down before I paid anything. After two years of being quoted percentages by people who would not put them in writing, that was the whole reason I stayed.
Cecile MarchandIndependent author The audiobook took longer than I expected and they told me why each time rather than going quiet. The narrator they cast got my grandmother's accent right, which I had assumed would be the thing I had to let go of.
Nathan BoakyeIndependent author
What authors ask about putting a book on film.
A short video that promotes a book, in much the way a film trailer promotes a film. It gives a potential reader a glimpse of the contents and the storyline, enough to make them curious, and not enough to stand in for reading it.
Send the book's details and answer a short brief. That is used to build the concept, and from there a screenwriter and producer craft the trailer with music and effects. You approve the result before it goes anywhere.
It ranges very widely, because the five formats are genuinely different undertakings, a bare-bones trailer and a cinematic one are not the same job at different prices. Tell us the book, the format you have in mind and the budget you have, and you will get a straight answer about what is achievable.
Sometimes. They give you an asset that travels on platforms where text does not, and for visual and genre fiction they can do real work. For some books the same budget spent on the cover or on listing optimisation would do more, and we will say so if that is what we think.
Genre specialists and screenwriters who read the book's material first. The concept is proposed to you and agreed before production starts, so nothing is built on an interpretation you do not share.
You do, completely. The author holds 100% of the rights to their work, in every format, for its whole life. The house is paid for the work it does, not with a share of the book. That is the arrangement the house reopened in 2008 to offer, and it does not change with the tier, the price or the point at which you come to us.
Yes. Your name is on the cover and in the record. Everyone who works on the book (writer, editor, designer) works on your book, and none of them is credited on it unless you ask for them to be.
Yes. Your story is yours, and nothing about the project leaves the house. We will sign your NDA before you send anything, or supply ours if you would rather use one.
No. Six disciplines are available and you take the ones you need. Authors arrive here at every stage (with an idea, a half-draft, or a finished manuscript that only needs a cover and a shelf) and the work starts where you actually are.
It depends on the work: length, how much research is involved, how much of the book already exists, and which disciplines you need. There is no list price for a book, and any firm who gives you one before reading your material is quoting something other than your book. Tell us where you are and we will price the actual job.
Move the marker. You do not need to know what to call it: you only need to know where you are.
Tell us where your manuscript is, where you want it to go, and we'll show you what's possible.