Promotion You Have to See to Believe

In the book world, YouTube is a popular place for authors and readers to discuss a variety of book topics, such as new releases, reviews, in-depth analyses, writing tips, and more, making it an ideal destination for marketing your audiobooks. After all, YouTube is the #1 video-sharing site in the world and is the second most visited site after Google and the second most used social platform after Facebook. Want to learn more about how you can harness this powerful tool to drive your creative business forward? Read on to learn how you can incorporate YouTube into your marketing strategy! Create a trailer for your audiobook One popular method of promotion for your audiobook is a video trailer. Trailers can be used across channels like social media, email, and your website or blog, and engagement is often higher for video content than for a regular text or image post. Your trailer doesn’t have to be fancy or super long, it can be as simple as a graphic (you can use your cover art or properly-sourced stock imagery that represents your characters) with some creative text (think quotes from your book, advance reviews from reviewers or fans) and either music or a sample of the narration. You can include a brief summary of your audiobook in the video description to give viewers context, as well.

Aleron Kong's trailer for book #2 in his LitRPG series The Land, and Kennedy Ryan's trailer for book #3 in her Bennett series are two very different approaches to effective audiobook trailers, each playing on their specific genres.

Upload a sample to YouTube An audiobook trailer is designed to give viewers an overview of your book and what they’ll get from listening to it, and a sample video gives viewers a small preview of the book itself. An intriguing sample of your audiobook will grab the listeners attention and make them want to hear more. To create a sample video, upload a short (think retail sample—keep it under 5 minutes), particularly compelling sample of your audiobook (no spoilers!) to YouTube with stock imagery that you have permission to use and that represents the chapter, or simply your book cover.

Create content around the topics of your book What issues and themes does your book consist of? Try creating content around the topics that your audiobook covers. This will attract people who are interested in those topics to listen to your audiobook. For example, let’s say you wrote a mystery novel set in 1700s France. Try creating educational, bite-sized videos about 1700s France—for example, things you learned in your research for writing the book that you found particularly compelling, or historical anecdotes you learned that inspired scenes in your book. Go behind the scenes Create behind the scenes videos on the creation and production of your audiobook. Make a short, two-minute video of yourself being interviewed by your narrator or another author you know, discussing how you came up with the idea for the book, why you chose to write on this topic or in this time period or setting, and what the process of writing or creating the audiobook was like. If your narrator is interested in participating, create a short video where you interview your narrator about how they voiced certain characters or what their favorite parts of the book were.

This video Amy Daws made to promote an upcoming title in her Harris Brothers series is a great example of how you can involve your narrators in marketing efforts. Enhance visibility to your YouTube channel

• To be sure your video is easily found, tag it with keywords that describe the content. Don’t forget the author and narrator names, the title of the book, and tags for your genre and sub-genres!

• When speaking about your audiobook project, there are 3 important phrases you can say to drive sales: “Get it on Audible,” “Available at Audible now,” or “listen now on Audible.” Audible listeners tend to be a devoted group – the average Audible member downloads 18 books a year from our site. Let them know your work is available in audio – it may be their preferred format.

• Include the link to your title on Audible (this is a great place to use your Bounty Referral Links!) wherever possible to drive your target audience to make a purchase. Consider adding your link to your video’s description and to the video itself.

  Pro tip: end your video with a still of your audiobook’s cover image, ‘Available Now on Audible,’ and your link leaves viewers with clear directions for how to hear more. Need to shorten your Bounty Link? Check out our article on marketing with URL shorteners!

Ultimately, using YouTube for your audiobook marketing isn’t about making the highest production quality video possible—it’s having a presence and being findable on a platform where your potential listeners are already going to consume and discover new content.