I love designing book trailers. Putting visuals and music to the story I have written really brings alive the emotions I felt while writing.

In the past, I have used a variety of video editors to produce my book trailers including iMovie, Adobe Premier, Cyberlink Director, and Corel Video Studio. These are all fine video-editing software offerings. But all have a steep learning curve.

A long while back, when I published my first romantic suspense, I blogged about creating a book trailer using Windows Live Movie Maker as an alternative. This was a free Windows download with a simple interface that made video production much easier. However, it has become dated.

What is Canva?

For my newest two videos, I have turned to Canva’s video producer. Canva is an online graphic designer. I have used the site extensively to produce graphics for social media and advertising as well as designing bookmarks, flyers, and business cards. They have a changing collection of visuals – photos, graphics, geometric elements, backgrounds, short audio files and short videos. For a yearly fee, you can have access to even more. There is no worry about rights or copyright. Canva takes care of that.

You can upload your own photos, graphics, fonts, and audio, too. This makes it perfect for designing a book trailer.

Using Canva

Canva’s interface is very simple. The slide you are working on appears above the full video being designed. Space is limited so this works best for short videos in the 1 to 1 ½ minute range like book trailers. You can creatively combine video, photos, and text into one slide. The photos and text can be animated and transitions added for more movement.

In Canva, the audio is best added last. You can choose from their collection of sound files or upload your own. A huge assortment of short sound tracks is available in the YouTube Audio Library. Canva has just added a tool that will sync the music with your slides. Again there is no worry about rights or copyright.

Building the Trailer on Canva

A book trailer requires the following components.

• A short emotion-filled script
• A color scheme
• A background video
• One or two evocative fonts
• One or more images of your book cover
• Images of the main character(s) and setting
• Genre and trope images

Each video editor has its own quirks and a best way to create your trailer design. Here are the steps I use on Canva.

Choose a color scheme and a background video

Search out a not-too-detailed background video in colors that reflect your mood and setting. Sky, water, smoke, clouds, and lines are ones I have used. This video will run behind all the other images as a design unifier so keep it nebulous. Shorten it to about 6 seconds.

Choose your fonts

Canva offers almost too many fonts. For a book trailer you need no more than two.

1. You will need a main font. This can be a font similar to the one on your book cover or something eye-catching and mood setting. It will be used for the caption text that tells your story.
2. The second font should be easy to read. It will be used to add details to the book featured slides.

Write your script

A book trailer is basically a very short book blurb of no more than 4 or 5 sentences, illustrated with images. In the script, emphasize the emotional elements. Don’t be afraid to split sentences between slides. Be brief. The pictures will do most of the talking.

Sentence 1 should present the setting and mood and establish the genre.

Sentence 2 introduces the main character and shows them living their life.

Sentence 3 describes the villain, or in a romance, the love interest.

Sentence 4 shows the inciting incident.

Sentence 5 states the stakes in a strong dramatic way.

If necessary, this order can be rearranged to better tell your story.

Choose your images

You will need about ten to twelve images to illustrate your script. One or two must be your book cover. Each other image or two should match a sentence or half sentence in your script.

Build Your Trailer using a Story Board

While you can download fancy templates, it is easy to make your own story board. Fold a sheet of paper into 12 sections or make a table with 12 boxes. Number each section.

1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12

Each section, except 1 and 12, represents an approximately four-second working slide in your video. Slides 1 and 12 will be closer to 6-7 seconds. This will give a finished video of near a minute. If needed, an extra slide or two can be added if a sentence needs breaking up.

Next, fill in with the text of the script and possible visuals in the following order.

1 Fade in: Opening Video	2 Setting – (Opt) the book title/image	3   Protagonist	4   Protagonist
5   Villain/Love Interest	6   Inciting Incident	7   Stakes	8 Eye-catching visual/text
9    Review(s) quote(s)	10 Author name/where to buy	11 Publisher/credits/ more info/website	12   Fade out

Create the Video on Canva

Here are more technical directions, specifically for Canva, with illustrations. First, upload the cover of your book and any special photos to be used. Second, open to a new video on Canva.

Slide 1 Search out a not too detailed background video that reflects your mood and setting. Sky, water, smoke, clouds, and lines are ones I have used. This video will run behind all the other images as a design unifier so keep it nebulous. Shorten it to about 6 seconds. Duplicate it to create Slide 2. See Canva image above.

Slide 2 In this slide, you will be placing your first text – either the book title or a setting image atop the background video. Choose the font style and color then position your text. You will use this position and size text for the whole trailer. This makes the video flow and prevents the viewer from getting dizzy. Place any images and put behind the text. If desired, use the transparency tool to let a little of the background video to show through your images. Shorten to 4 seconds.

Slide 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7 Duplicate the previous slide, update text and add visuals. Use transparency to allow the underlying video to peak through on each slide.

Slide 8 Duplicate the previous slide. Insert image, book cover and selling text. Use something like “Read it today!” or “Just released!”

Slide 9 Duplicate the previous slide. Insert book cover and review snippets.

Slide 10 Duplicate the previous slide, insert title author, book cover, and icons for where to buy.

Slide 11 Duplicate the previous slide. Provide needed information. Publisher, credits, website, book links, etc.

Slide 12 Duplicate the previous slide. Fade out.

Slide 13 Optional, insert a Black Slide afor a soft close.

Insert Transitions 

Choose the transition by clicking between two slides. Use the same transition between all slides. This maintains unity and flow in such a short video. The transitions will take a little time from each slide. But that is fine. The best slide length is 3 seconds.

Insert Audio

If you haven’t already, select the audio track that best fits your trailer. Note: This can be very time consuming so set aside sufficient time. In Canva, you can search by mood such as dark, mystery or happy, running.

The audio track will appear below the video track. If it is too long, you can clip it. If it is too short, grab the end and drag to the end of your slides. Fade in at the beginning and fade out at the end.

Canva has a Beat Sync that will cause your slides to change on the beat in the music. You may or may not want to use this. Give it a try and decide.

More to Add

You can add movement to the text and to the images by choosing Animate.

Finalizing Your Canva Book Trailer

Click on the little arrow in the upper right of the screen and to the left of the Share Button. The video will open in a full screen viewing window. This is what it will look like on YouTube.

Need fixing? Go back and do it. Love it? Go to share. You can download it as an MP4 file 1080 HD suitable for uploading to YouTube, or you can get a link you can share with anyone. Next choose Share Link to Watch. This will generate a link you can send to friends or post on social media. The cool thing is that if you go back and edit the video at any time, the link will direct to the updated version.

Here is my link to the sample video which features the story I have in an upcoming anthology.

A Solstice Promise Book Trailer

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Another example

Here is the book trailer for my newest release, Censored Angel, a biographical historical fiction novel, and one for my Fast Draft Your Manuscript and Get It Done Now. Both were created with Canva.

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Have you ever made a book trailer? I’d love to hear what video editor you used and what you learned.

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