Monday, January 29, 2007

Spotlight Video: NOON by Katherine Warwick






Hi, I'm Katherine Warwick and I write Women's Romance with the sizzle and glitter of ballroom dance. This booktrailer is for NOON, the first book in my dance series. My challenge here was to "show" that this couple's relationship spans from the feistiness of youth into the hot fire of adulthood, without the viewer thinking the story was a YA book. I mixed two different songs and had the characters "age" as the video progresses.
BLURB:
Someday you’ll find your way back to me...

For Nicole Dubois, dance – her life – has never been the same since her only love and dance partner, Breck Noon, suddenly and mysteriously left her, disappearing at the height of their promising career and budding romance. Years later he returns. He wants her back in his life, back as his partner. Pride keeps Nicole from asking why he left and where he’s been. In his absence, she’s aligned herself with a dangerous partner whose secret obsession is to destroy Breck.
In the dance world, competition is cutthroat, deception knows no boundaries. Breck and Nicole find themselves competitors, and life on the dance floor sizzles with passion and ignites with danger. Can their love survive an adversary whose drive to win is as powerful as his to will to keep Breck and Nicole apart?

Katherine Warwick
www.ballroomdancenovels.com

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Interactive Video From COS Productions

Speak No Evil Book Trailer

Allison Brennan's Web Site
Read an Excerpt
Order from Amazon

Greetings Everyone! Circle of Seven (COS) Productions has released an "interactive" video. Allison Brennan is one of my favorite authors and her new series starts releasing next Tuesday. Yea!

Quote from COS's MySpace Blog on the video.

"This is one of the first interactive book videos we've done. It's not just a challenge. It helps you to realize just how terrifying it would be to be a victim of this murderer. So often we read thrillers and our heart races as some sinister someone does dastardly things in the shadows. And this book is definitely something you want to read with the lights on. The video wants to put you inside the book, inside the character, inside the body of the victim for just over one minute. Can YOU do it? Can you hold your breath for the entire time the video plays?"

Monday, January 22, 2007

Music & Games of Command by Linnea Sinclair

Music can make and break a video. The right music blends the images into a story for the viewer to experience. Finding the right music can give the creator a migraine. {g} What I wouldn’t give to have the phone numbers for James Horner (Titanic, Brave Heart), and John Williams (Star Wars, Jaws). We have had a couple of videos where soundtracks would have been perfect, but we couldn’t use them. However, for the Games of Command Video by Linnea Sinclair ,DJ Tiësto did gives us permission to use one of his tracks. Don’t be shy. If you can find the contact information for an artist, contact them. ASK. All they can do is say no.

If you do not have permission for the artist to use their music, use royalty free music. A Google search on Royalty Free Music will give a large list. Now the down side, some tracks can cost up to $100 for one song. There are sites where music is cheaper be persistent, and keep searching.

For one of our videos it took us 3 days to find the right music. The funny thing is all of us, client included, didn’t think the song we picked was perfect. Yet now, I can’t imagine it with anything else. No, I will not tell you which one {lol}.

My insider tip: Have fun with it. Have a couple of tracks that will work and see which one fits the piece the best.

I am featuring Linnea Sinclair’s Games of Command video today, because DJ Tiësto said YES.

Games of Command will release Feb 27.
Read an excerpt
Order here




Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Spotlight Video: DANCE HEAT



Hi, I'm Katherine Warwick and I write Women's Romance with the sizzle and glitter of ballroom dance. This video, DANCE HEAT was my first attempt at a book trailer and it was so fun, I quickly became addicted, like Tawny.


DANCE HEAT doesn't focus on any one of my four books in the dance series, rather I wanted to stir excitement for the hot dynamics that happen on the dance floor between a man and a woman.


This is a first effort, no-budget production, using istock photos and photos from dancers gracous enough to share their pictures with me. The music is courtesy of Kevin Macleod and has a nice Latin beat.


Katherine Warwick

Friday, January 12, 2007

Sex and the Single Ghost Book Trailer and YouTube Views

Hello all!

First, I'll give you a quick introduction. I'm Tawny Taylor, erotic romance author and self-taught book trailer producer. I am an Adobe Photoshop junkie and enjoy anything to do with graphics. Today, I thought I'd post a little about my (so far) most popular book trailer, Sex and the Single Ghost, and describe one aspect of the video that (I believe) has led to its relative popularity. To date, this trailer has had over 8, 400 views on YouTube alone. That's not bad for a book trailer.

First, the video:



Now, let's talk about the number of "hits" or views a trailer gets. (Speaking strictly about YouTube, here)

I have yet to figure out a way to verify what keywords or phrases a viewer types in to find my videos, but I find it not surprising that my most popular video has the word "sex" in the title.

Note: I'm no professional when it comes to film creation or marketing. I'm an author. So, I'm here to tell you that if I can figure this stuff out, anyone can. And I'm happy to share what I've learned so far.

I have videos that have garnered very few views, and others that are fairly successful (defined by the relative number of views). The one thing that seems to have a direct effect on a video's popularity is the still image that appears as the video's icon. The sexier the image, the sexier the title, the more views a video tends to get.

How does one change or select the icon that displays on YouTube? I haven't found a way to do that once a video is uploaded onto YouTube's server, however, there are ways to work around that. As a general rule, YouTube's system selects an image from roughly the middle of the video as the display icon. Therefore, selecting a compelling, powerful (and yes, sexy) image to display at that time will make it more likely you'll end up with something more interesting than a white or black screen with blurry text.

Something I've done--Try creating several versions of the same video, intentionally selecting different images for the middle-ish parts of your trailer, and give them a test run. Make sure to use identical titles and keywords to keep everything else constant. Is one getting more views than the others?

Hope this hint helps a few folks! Please, feel free to post questions in the comments. Comments, feedback, opinions are also welcome.

Tawny Taylor
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Erotic Romance with Sassitude
Sassy, Sexy Romance Books

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Book Videos: How long should they be?

Hi, this is Eliza Gayle author and co owner of ScrapFairy Designs. This is my first official post and i'd like to discuss Book Videos and their length.

How long are they?
How long should they be?
Why should I care?

Book videos range in lengths depending on the author and producer. I have seen 30 second spots up to several minutes, with an average of somewhere between 1 and 2 minutes in length.

How long they should be is a debatable question but from the experience of our business as well as input from readers and authors there is a lot of agreement that one minute or less is the ideal length. That said, sometimes it's really hard for the author or producer to condense a novel or series into one minute. Trust me it can be done. In today's world of immediate gratification and growing lack of free time many readers don't have the patience or desire to sit through a long preview. (and I must sadly admit I am one of them)

In a typical book video the important facts that you want to leave the reader with such as book title, place of purchase and how to contact the author is at the end of the video. If your video is longer than a minute do you want to chance that the reader clicks it off before they get to the most important information? So, next time your creating a video for yourself or another author consider keeping it as close to one minute as possible. If you can't seem to reduce it down, give the script to a friend or colleague and i'll bet they can find a way. (insider tip: analyze your transitions between frames, not much time is really needed there and that is where you can shave off quite a bit)

Take advantage of every opportunity you can to get the most out of your marketing efforts with book videos by keeping them to a minimum length that readers are likely to enjoy as well as watch all the way through.

About Me:

After penning several sequels to her favorite movies in her youth, with a more romantic slant of course, Eliza temporarily put away her dream of writing for service in the Marine Corps. After the service she was waylaid with college, marriage, the corporate world and having babies.

From the moment she read her first erotic romance novel about a year ago, she knew she had found her niche and realized that her dream was passing her by. So after years of thinking about writing she finally grabbed her laptop and wrote. Eliza lives in beautiful North Carolina and spends her days dividing her time between writing erotic romance, her book video business and raising her two daughters with her husband of fifteen years.

She likes her stories hot and spicy whether they be contemporary, fantasy or paranormal and will write in whatever genre her imagination has conjured that day. You can learn more about her and her writing by visiting her website at: www.elizagayle.com

Now comes the part where I shamelessly promote myself and my own book video. lol

Taken by Tarot is an erotic fantasy romance that is available February 25, 2007 with Phaze

You can also visit me and read my blog at MySpace

Monday, January 8, 2007

Spotlight Video: Leading her to Heaven


Welcome to the launch post for A Peek at Romance our blog devoted to book videos for the Romance genre.

My name is Kendra and I’m owner of ScrapFairy Designs. My partner Julie and I started SFD in the summer of last year. We are having a blast. My love of images and romance now live side by side. I have the coolest job! I started out making video slideshows of my families old photos, so my grandmother would stop taping them to copy paper and dragging them across country. (These photos are over 80 years old.)

I have been reading romance since I was in high school. I cut my teeth on Virginia Henley’s Hawk and the Dove. Rosanne Bittner’s Savage Destiny Series helped me explore the American west. There are other authors but these stand out in my mind the most, as my first experience in romance. My best friend and I would trade historical romance and dream of really hot guys on horseback to come take us away from our small town in Southern Arizona. Well now I am couple of years older {g}, and I still read romance. I don’t dream of being rescued, but I fall in love with men and sometimes wish I was the heroine. I won’t list who I read now because I have several walls lined with bookshelves which are all filled, luckily I have a husband who can build me more!

To launch the site we have chosen to spotlight a brand new video from author Kayleigh Jamison. Leading Her To Heaven, is a Scottish historical romance available now at Aphrodite’s Apples Publishing, Inc.

A writer and musician at an early age, Kayleigh Jamison wrote her first novella at the age of seven, and first picked up a violin at eight.

With a Bachelors degree in English and Philosophy and a Certification in Legal Studies, Ms. Jamison spends her days attending law school and her nights immersed in the rich fantasy worlds of her imagination. An amateur linguist, Ms. Jamison speaks five languages, including Spanish, Russian, and Arabic.

Her latest novel, Svetkavista, combines Ms. Jamison's knowledge of music with her love of history, and examines the secretive, fluid culture of the Romany people.





Click here for an excerpt and to purchase
Be advised Adult Material

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Official Launch on Monday 1/8/07

Welcome to A Peek at Romance. It seems romantic fiction gets overlooked or not included in several areas. So we decided to continue to educate readers, writers and anyone else with an interest in romance novels by launching this blog devoted to book videos for our beloved genre.

Our official launch date is Monday, 1/8/07. Join us Monday as we celebrate here at A Peek at Romance with Kayleigh Jamison’s premiere of her brand new video Leading Her To Heaven, a spicy historical romance now available from Aphrodite’s Apples.

Our mission here is to spotlight romance book videos created by authors, readers and production companies. We hope to include many contributors to our ranks very soon and will also welcome guest bloggers interested in videos for romance books. Upcoming topics will include such things as:

· The making of book videos

· Reader favorites

· Authors viewpoint

· Marketing of videos

· Videos about town

· Contests