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If you’re in the camp that believes book trailers are useful for promotion, this post is for you.  If you just enjoy watching trailers, keep going, there’s one coming up….

There are plenty of other tips on the interweb about how to put a trailer together, so I won’t repeat advice about keeping it short or suggest different formats to consider.  Other pages will also recommend sites you can go to for purchasing royalty-free images/video and music.  But when you add all those ingredients up, the total can get a bit pricey, so our focus here is on how to cut costs.

I’ll keep this simple and just prattle about how the trailer for Tossing Dice came together.  Since the e-book is available for free, I decided to keep this on the cheap.

Images and Video:  Yes, you can make your own pictures and video, but for a sci-fi story involving futuristic warfare and cyborgs, I found such elements difficult to capture on camera.  Regular readers of this blog have probably noticed I rely on Pixabay quite a bit for images, and they also have free video.  Unlike with Creative Commons you don’t have to be as scrupulous about attributing licensing, but they do appreciate any credit.

If you do seek out other sources for free material, just verify they’re safe – watch out for the psychos out there who get their jollies sneaking malware onto people by enticing them with free offers.

Music:  There’s something universal about a melody.  Many of you might be familiar with Free Music Archive.  Watch out for the licensing agreements because they vary with each selection, but there’s definite gold to be found.  YouTube also offers free music for video creations.  Give credit to the musician by listing the song title and artist.

Editing:  It’s up to you if you want to use free software or buy something more advanced, but if you’re lucky (and as technologically inept as I am) you’ll have at least one offspring you can bribe/threaten into crafting all the elements together.

That’s it in a nutshell.  The following trailer cost nothing to assemble except for the bribing part.  I hope it offers some inspiration….

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