Around the time I published my first novel, in 2017, I was hearing a lot about the pros and cons of book trailers, brief promotional videos much like movie trailers.

The concept definitely intrigued me. After all, so many of us are hooked on audiovisual storytelling–from various series on streaming services to good old-fashioned theatrical releases. So why not give an audiovisual boost to the promotion of a novel?

It turns out there are several good reasons not to. Perhaps the biggest ones: book trailers can be expensive and time-consuming to produce, and there seems to be little evidence that they sell books. (That said, it can be difficult to connect many other marketing and publicity strategies directly to book sales.)

With these concerns in mind, I left book trailers out of my marketing plans for years. Recently, however, my thinking changed. I found out that the publisher of my forthcoming novel, The Inhabitants, will share trailers with its distributor’s marketing team and also include them in a multimedia catalog of its titles. I also learned about a range of DIY tools that allow you to create a book trailer without breaking the bank.

I ended up creating this trailer for The Inhabitants, which I shared with my publisher and will promote through various online venues. Time will tell whether it will have any impact.