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If you’re an avid movie-goer, you’re probably a fan of the previews shown before each new release. It helps you decide the future movies you’ll see, sparks your interest, and makes you look forward to that release.

By now, everyone has heard about book trailers/book peeks/or whatever you want to call a teaser about your book. They’re supposed to act much like a movie trailer and entice readers to try your book. But do they work? And is there a quantifiable way to measure whether or not you’ll get a good return on your investment if you purchase one of these snazzy videos?

You could ask different people and get different answers to those questions. Some swear by the book videos, and others say they just don’t work. Having spent much time researching the subject, I can tell you the jury is still out. Some readers love them; others hate them. So deciding whether or not to use one is really up to you; however, you can do a short test-run to determine whether or not this is a viable marketing tool for you.

In this test-run, you’re going to create or have created a book video that you’re going to use for your newest book, and you’re going to utilize this video creatively. But first, there is one thing you must know: If you intend to make use of your book video to, hopefully, enhance your sales, you must make sure it is a high-quality, streamlined video. It can be cute, funny, whimsical, serious, dark, or whatever tone you choose, but you cannot skimp on quality and still attract readers. Does this mean you’re going to have to spend a lot of money? Not necessarily, especially since you’re going to first do a test run to see if these videos help your sales.

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Amazon’s Kindle is the leading frontier for digital books.  The initial release of Kindle One on November 19, 2007 was an outstanding success and the device was sold out within six hours of release. What this meant for the early authors was quicker profits and more access to consumers because of the quick deployment of their creative writings to their readers. The first Kindle remained in the United States but the demand for the digital reader was beyond imagination.
 

Amazon’s ability to coordinate with authors and a blazing marketing strategy, they ensured the success of the Kindle’s future generations.

Why is the Kindle a popular publishing format? Amazon has built a reputation of trust between sellers and buyers. Kindle provides instant gratification to book lovers and the technology that supports Kindle is the driving force for authors to publish with Amazon. “Amazon has decided to make it easy for authors to upload their work to the kindle store and keep up to 70% of the purchase price” (Kindle Kash page 5). 

How can Kindle be favorable to me as a writer?  Kindle offers apps for various smart phones, tablet pc’s and for the regular device. The range of audience is greatly increased by the languages you can publish on Kindle. “While the financial returns can be excellent” (Kindle Kash page 7) beside money being a sizeable motivator, the ease of Kindle’s publishing platform to submit “creative works” has been a smart move for Amazon. Kindle accepts seven formats in which to publish your work and they include Word, ePub, Mobipocket, HTML, Adobe PDF and Rich Text Format.  

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