Transcripts
1. Introduction : Hi, I'm Amy Stewart. I 'm the author of 12 books, including some New York Times bestsellers. I've written both fiction and non-fiction over different genres. Over the years, I've found that book videos can be useful in a whole variety of ways, some of which you might expect, and some of it actually really surprised me. Of course, a book video can be useful for reaching readers and book clubs. I put mine on YouTube, I embed them on my website, upload them to Facebook, and I post them to Good-reads. You can share them on social media and in your newsletter. Your publisher might also be able to put them on your Amazon page, or place them with book club websites. My lecture agent also uses these videos, to help me get speaking engagements. Sometimes, event hosts want to see how you talk about your book, before they invite you to speak. But they've also been really helpful for me with the Media, I've had TV and radio producers tell me that they watch my videos, before they decided whether to have me on their show. They wanted to know if I could talk on camera, or just how I sounded. I've also walked into interviews where the host clearly hadn't had time to read the book, but thanks me for the video, because it gave them a quick overview of the book, and let them come up with better interview questions. But what surprised me the most, is how these videos can help the publisher in-house. I remember when my third book, Flower Confidential, was getting ready to come out. The publisher had a different title, a different cover, and to be honest, the way they were describing the book, didn't sound quite right to me. This is a behind the scenes look at the global flower industry. But they made it sound like it was more like a poetic musing about the importance of flowers in our lives. It wasn't that. My brother and I filmed a video about the book, and they showed it at a sales conference. I found out later that the sales reps in the room said, "Wait a minute, is that with this book is about. Because, you need a different cover and a different title, and we need to be talking about this book at a whole different way, if this is what it is." It actually changed how they marketed and positioned the book, and that book went on to become my first New York Times bestseller. There's a lot of good reasons for authors to make their own book videos, long before the book comes out. But you can also go back, like I've done, and make videos for your entire backlist. It's a good way to give a book another little push, once it's been out there for awhile. Unfortunately, the technology is finally at a point where you really can do this yourself. I'm going to teach you exactly how I make and edit my own videos, using equipment like an iPad, that you might already have. I'll show you how I add images and video clips, to liven them up. I'll give you all my ideas about what you can do with these videos once they're done. This class will also work for anybody who wants to make any talking head style video, interspersed with photos and video clips, on any subject at all. But my examples are going to be specific to book videos. All right, let's get started.
2. Equipment & Setup: Let's talk about supplies. I'm going to show you the equipment that I use to make videos and I'll suggest a few alternatives of your gear is a little different from mine. First of all, I film everything on my iPad mini. Any tablet or smartphone is also great for this. Some people use the webcam that's built into their laptop or DSL type of camera, that's fine too. I really recommend that you get a better quality microphone than what comes built in. I bought this lavalier microphone. It's specifically made for iPads and iPhones. It costs about a $100. But I also teach online, so I thought this would be a worthwhile investment. Some people who record using their laptop or any device that has a USB connection like to use this blue snowball USB microphone which sells for around 70 bucks. But even if you don't buy a microphone, try using your ear buds as a lavalier mic. Just plugged them into your device and hang the microphone part into your shirt like this. That really can make a difference. You're also going to need a tripod or some way to hold your camera in position. I have a thing. It's like this gorilla pod tabletop tripod for my iPad. It costs about $70. You might also be able to use a selfie stick that's just clamped onto a table, duck taped to something or stuck inside a heavy pot and you can even use a stack of books. I'll show you how and I know you have books around. Other than that you're going to need a nice-looking backdrop in a room with good lighting. I'm going to show you how to set that up. For the technology, I will do a demo of how I use iMovie for everything. iMovie is a free Apple app that comes with your iPhone or your iPad and it is ridiculously easy to use, I promise. But if you don't use Apple products, I will put links to some other options and these resources. I still think that everything in this class, even the iMovie part will be useful to you because it will give you a general sense of how it works. If you need to make any graphics or dropping pictures, I'm going to show you how I use free resources on Canva to do that. I also use some free online teleprompter software called teleprompter mirror, which you can have running on a desktop computer or a laptop while you're filming with your iPad or another device. That's all the equipment you need and I'm going to give you links to all of this in the notes. As we go through each step, I'm going to show you how I use it and you'll be able to decide how to adapt that to the equipment you have on hand. One disclaimer I want to give you about all the gear and technology that I'm going to demonstrate, any of this could be upgraded or changed by the time you watch this video. I think the general concepts will still hold and I encourage you to explore Skillshare and find more in-depth tutorials on how to use any of this ever changing technology in the months and years to come. I will link to a few of my favorite classes that have been helpful to me in the project resources.
3. Write Your Script: The first step is to write a script. The reason I suggest that you do this first is that for a writer, this is the least intimidating part. You already know how to write. Now your video needs to be about one to three minutes long. Depending on how fast you talk, that might be 300-600 words, you're going to find that one to three minutes goes by really fast. Here are my ideas about what to include and what not to include. But this is your video, make it however you like. Here's some suggestions though. Don't spend any time on a long introduction of yourself. People can read your bio somewhere else. Just say your name and the title of your book. Don't get into a long plot synopsis like the copy might be on the back of the book because that's something that people can read elsewhere. Instead, think about what you can tell readers that nobody else can. Might be where you got the idea for the book. The most interesting thing or the most surprising or unusual thing that happened when you're doing research. A little background on the true story behind your novel, or just the historical backdrop that it's set against. Maybe it's a tour of the location where you placed your novel or just anything else that feels more behind the scenes. In fact, you might get several ideas for short videos. Why not make more than one? Let's say you've written a mother-daughter story, you could make another short video that really digs into that piece of it. If your book is set in Miami, you could do a tour of the locations you chose for the book using photos that you can drop into the video. Also, it's not a bad idea to let readers know what kind of book it is and who would really love it. Is this a beach read? Is it heartwarming mother-daughter story? Is it a lighthearted romance? Don't be afraid to come right out and say, who's going to love your book and why? That's absolutely a great purpose for a video. Listen, when you're writing this, there's one major pitfall I think you ought to watch out for. Most of us don't write how we talk. In fact, that sentence is one that I would never write. Most of us don't write how we talk. I don't even think that's grammatically correct. If I was writing an essay, I might write something like written and spoken language are often wildly different. But that's not how I talk. So be on the lookout for language that's too writerly because it'll make you sound like you're reading a script, which of course you are, but you don't want it to sound that way. It might be. Let's see, hang on. With apologies to Kate Atkinson, I'll use this. It might be that in the text on the back of your book, there's a sentence like sent to an obscure department of the MI-5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British fastest sympathizers. She discovers the work to be by turns tedious and terrifying. Tedious and terrifying, did I get that right? Yes, by turns, tedious and terrifying. None of us would ever say that out loud. We might say something like, she got sent to work for this spy agency and they were mostly keeping tabs on fascist sympathizers. It was a weird job. It was incredibly boring one minute and totally terrifying the next. I don't know if that's exactly how Kate Atkinson would put it, but you get the idea, read your script out loud, keep changing it until it sounds like how you actually talk, like how you talk to your friends, how you talk in everyday conversation. Now there's a couple of formatting hints about the script. First of all, put every sentence on a different line, like each sentences its own paragraph. I'll show you why in a minute. Also, if you have any images that you're going to want to drop into your video, be sure you say something in your script that cues those images, if your book is about your grandmother and you have a picture of her at her 80th birthday party, maybe you need to actually mention the birthday party in order for the photo to be relevant. If you have a video of your grandmother and you're just going to have the video play what you keep talking. Same deal. You want to say something that cues the video and you want to make sure you're talking about your grandmother for roughly the same length as the little video clip that you're going to drop in. However, if you want to actually drop a video clip in where we're going to stop listening to you and start watching and listening to what's on the video, be sure to put a big pause in your script so you can stop what you're saying, let the video play and start again. It doesn't matter exactly how long the pauses, because we're going to fix that and editing, but you just need that moment of silence to cut. So here's what I mean. If I'm going to talk to you about some goats, that I saw in the French countryside, and I just want to talk about the goats while the clip plays, that's fine. But if you want to hear the goats, crazy French accent, I'm going to say something like I even interviewed some goats. Now I'm going to pause. But of course they spoke French, so I didn't understand what they said. Got it. You just need a definite ending and a definite beginning, so you can drop that in. Now, go to work on your script. If you want some ideas, I'll put a link to my YouTube channel. You can see what I've done, but take those ideas, make it your own and we'll move on to the next step.
4. Set Up Your Space: Next, let's figure out where you're going to film. You need to be in a room with bright indirect light and a really simple background. I looked all over my house before I settled on this spot, right here in my office. I'm going to give you a 360 degree view so you can see why I like it and why I chose this space. I have a nice wallpaper in the background, a blank wall a totally blank wall would be better than having too much stuff behind you. Now, as you can see, I'm sitting at the end of my desk not in front of it. I just happen to have an adjustable standing desk, so I was able to move the desk to the right height for the tripod I have, but if you don't have that, a stack of books can help get your camera to the right height as well. I have a bright LED light that I'm bouncing off the wall right next to me. I'm not shining that directly in my face, but it's bouncing out the light. I also have a big window and a skylight. You don't want a window behind you because it'll be too bright, it's much better for you to be facing the window. Ideally you can film on a bright day as long as the sun is not right in your face, the more natural light the better. Finally, there's a few other small lights in this room and I turn on every single light when I'm filming, it makes more of a difference than you might think. One other thing, I tried a lot of different cameras and the reason I settled on my iPad was that the cameras built-in software made adjustments to my skin tone so it wasn't too blotchy and there weren't any bright glaring spots. If you're not happy with the color balancing on your skin tone, you can try to adjust the lighting, but it might actually be the camera. Try out different options even if you just have to borrow a few things from friends and see what works best. When you're picking a location, be sure that you also have room for your equipment, you're going to need a monitor for the teleprompter, so a laptop, or another tablet, or I use my desktop computer. You're going to need the camera you're filming with, and you're going to need a chair that's positioned close enough so your microphone can reach. I recommend that you sit when you're filming, sit up a lot straighter than what feels natural to you and tuck your shirt down to make sure it's not bunched up anywhere. I recommend wearing a structured shirt with a collar because it'll hold your microphone better. Especially for women, if you have a really soft clingy top, it can look weirdly wrinkled on camera. If you do want to stand up, I want to give you a trick that local newscasters have taught me, which is stand with your feet extra far apart, it forces you to stand up straight and stops you from swaying, are leaning or moving around too much. All right, once you have your location, let's get set up to film.
5. Film Your Video: I'm going to show you how to film on an iPad using the regular Camera app. But this applies to any kind of phone or tablet. Depending on what model you have, your rear-facing camera might have a higher resolution in the front-facing camera. I film with my rear-facing camera, which means I'm not watching myself while I'm filming. The screen is on the other side. It takes a little experimenting to get all this set up right. But when you think you have it in the right position, look all the way around the edges of the frame to be sure nothing weird is sticking into the camera's view. Be sure you do this when you're already in video mode, not photo mode, because the size is a little different. You might decide you want to make a few takes, or you might be making a lot of videos for a lot of books. Be sure and make sure of some landmarks so that you can set your camera backup easily next time you do it. For instance, take a picture of where your camera is positioned on your desk or table or floor, and just make sure you've identified some landmarks or put down some little pieces of tape so you could put it all back in place. Another way I use landmarks is I look through the viewfinder and make sure that certain things in the background are in the same place every time. Now, I have my desktop computer set up behind my iPad, and I'm running teleprompter mirror. This is the free online software. It's always available on their website. You just copy and paste your script right into the teleprompter. Remember how I told you to put every sentence on a different line, this is why. It turns out that this just makes reading a teleprompter a little easier. I'm only talking about line breaks here. You don't have to use actual blank lines except if you want to put in a pause, like maybe if there's a shift in tone. There's also a setting on teleprompter mirror that let you adjust the speed. I figured out that my speed is 23. You're just going to have to experiment and figure out what yours is. Then I always put a bunch of line breaks at the very beginning of my script so that once I hit "Go", I have time to go sit down before the text starts scrolling up the screen. Once you have all that set up, plug in your microphone, attach it to your shirt, hit "Record" on the camera, and hit "Play" on the teleprompter, and go sit down. Now, here's a few hints about actually being on camera. First of all, look at the camera. I keep the teleprompter right behind the actual camera so I can glance between the two of them, but I really try to look directly into the camera as much as I possibly can. Also, I tend to do this thing where I take a breath right before I start talking. It's like this. Hi, I'm Amy Stewart. But it's a little weird to start your video with that big breathy sound. If you do that too, then the thing to do is to take a breath, hold it, smile, and then talk like this. Hi, I'm Amy Stewart. Now if you mess up and you need to start over again, you can, of course, jump up and delete that video and start again. But if you'd rather just cut it out in editing, the thing to do when you make a mistake is to stop talking. Just close your mouth. Don't say something like, oh, hey, I need to cut this out. I'm going to start again. The silence is actually much more useful in the editing process. Just stop, take a breath, and do it again. Also, remember to smile. Once I started watching myself on camera, I realized that I actually have to be way more animated and cheerful than I probably am in normal life. I'm not saying to overdo it, but you do need to be lively. Now, at the beginning and end of your video, your going to need just a second of you looking at the camera and smiling. This is for editing purposes. When you finish, bring your script to a definite ending, look at the camera, smile, and hold it for just a second like this. I hope you love the Kopp Sisters as much as I do. Thanks for reading. That's plenty. You just need a few seconds of that at the beginning and at the end. What else? I know you're probably going to want to watch your video, and decide you want to do it again. You might film it a few times before you get it right, and make adjustments to your script as you go, and that's fine. But don't worry about it being too perfect. You want to come across as a real person. We live in an age where everybody is making videos all the time, and nobody expects it to be flawless. Now, once you're done, you're a writer. I hope you know what to do next, make a backup. Whether you use a backup service like iCloud or Google Photos or you upload it to Dropbox or you just plug it into your desktop computer and copy the file over, do that right away. Once you have your video and you've made a backup of it, it's time to work on some images.
6. Create Images in Canva: Now, it's time to gather up whatever pictures or video clips you want to add to your video and get those ready to go. For pictures, we're going to use Canva, which is free as long as you're using your own images. If you want to buy a stock photo or some kind of graphic from them, they only cost a $1 each, so it's really affordable. I do this part on my desktop computer rather than my iPad, to transfer the finished images to my iPad for video editing, what I do is I upload them to a special album in Google Photos, and then I open the Google Photos app on my iPad and download that image to my device. You might have another way of moving files back and forth, and that's fine, but this is free and easy and it works for me. The first thing you're going to need is what's called a title card or an opening image for your video. That way when your video is posted, the thumbnail image isn't some weird shot of your mouth half open and your eyes half-closed while you're in the middle of talking. Now, you're going to need that title card, not just to drop into the beginning of your video but also to upload to sites like YouTube and Facebook that give you a choice about what thumbnail goes with your video. So be sure and hang onto that. You might also want to card near the end that either shows all your books are displays your website or link or more information. The process is exactly the same for that. Just upload your images, add some text to whatever design work you want to do, and then download it. Now, I tend to think of new ideas for images during the editing process. You might come back to Canva later, when I'm editing, I usually have the iPad on my lap to edit, but I've also got my laptop or my desktop computer nearby because I'm always want to go grab more images and make changes. I'm going to walk you step by step through everything I do on Canva to make graphics for my videos. With the caveat that, of course, Canva could change their website at any time, but I still think this will give you a good general idea. When I log in, the first thing I see is a default design for a YouTube thumbnail, which is perfect for video. It's 1,280 by 720. But just in case you don't see that when you log in, all you got to do is to Create design. I'm going to pick Custom dimensions, and I'm just going to type it in, 1280, 720. That gives me the size I need. Here's my template. Let's say you're going to make a title card for your video and you just need an author photo and a book cover. I can go here under uploads and I've already uploaded lots of images. So I know I have what I need here. You can rearrange these images however you like. If you want to add some text, that's easy to do. You could just pick a text box and just move around, put it wherever it needs to be. Obviously, change the font, change the size, change the colors, all the normal text editing options, they're all right here if you need to do that. If you needed to add some graphic elements, like you'll see that there's a few slides where I use some just arrows and circles to point things out to you guys. You can grab those things. They have a lot of stock photos that are either free or they cost a $1. I also wanted to mention that there are templates that are already made. If you want a fancier design, you can just, I mean, these go on and on forever and ever. You can dig into all of these and find what you need. Again, Everything is either free or at cost of $1. It's a really good value. Once you have your images, we're ready to start adding them to your video.
7. A Quick Word About Editing: I edit my videos in iMovie, which comes free on the iPad or the iPhone. This is ridiculously easy to use, I promise. If you're using different software, it might still be helpful for you to watch this step because, honestly, a lot of these programs work the same. Now, it's a little beyond the scope of this class for me to give you a complete iMovie tutorial. I'm going to give you links to more detailed classes, so check the resources for that. But what I'm going to do is just to demo the most common editing tricks that you're likely to use. The goal here is just to show you how incredibly simple this is. Remember that in iMovie, you're never editing the original clip, so you can't mess it up. You're creating a project that uses the clips, but doesn't actually change the originals. So it's totally safe for you to get in there and experiment.
8. Edit Your Video with iMovie: So I'm filming this using my iPhone, looking down on my iPad because I want you to see in real time how easy it is to just physically do this. So I'm opening iMovie and I hit "Plus". The first thing I'm going to do is pick a video that I want to edit. So let's say this is my video that I'm working on and I just hit "Create Movie". The first thing I'm going to do once I'm in here is clip off little beginning and ending part so you can see me stop talking here. Let's get started. That's why I suggest that you stop and smile at the camera for just a second so you have a good moment to cut. Once I've figured out where that's going to be, I just tap it and hits "Split". It splits that ending part off, you see how this is highlighted in yellow and I hit "Delete". Now I go to the beginning and I'm going to do the same thing. This is me just sitting down, getting adjusted, getting ready for the teleprompter to start. Hi. I'm Amie. There I am taking that little breath before I start. Right there's going to have to do it. I should be looking at the camera right there. I didn't do a very good job of it, but I'm not going to rerecord it. I hit "Split", I tap on the part I want to delete, and I hit "Delete". Now the beginning and ending is gone. So let's say I want to drop in a picture somewhere, maybe right here. So maybe that's it. If I want to drop in a picture right here then what I do is I go to Photos and I've made a special folder for photos for this video, it helps so you're not spinning forever searching forum. Maybe I want to drop in this picture of a cocktail because I wrote a book about booze, so it's not entirely out of the question that I'd have a cocktail picture I want to drop in. I want to add it as cutaway so that we cut away from me and we look at that picture instead. So there's our photo. Now, where do we want this photo to end? I can see that I come to a stopping point in the audio right here. I'm guessing that's maybe where I want to wind up that whatever it is I'm talking about. [inaudible] expect and some of this actually really surprised me. Maybe it's that I want to get all the way to surprise me and then I come back. Actually really surprised me. Of course I booked [inaudible]. That looks was cool. So if that was the image you wanted, then that's how you do it. If you change your mind and you don't want that picture, all you do is tap and delete and it's gone. Now I mentioned title cards so you want to add a title card at the beginning. So here's my title card and I'm going to just hit the plus and it's going to put it before the video, so it'll actually play before the video. Now there's a weird thing with iMovie that you have to do, which is tap it and hit "Ken Burns Enabled" and turn it to Ken Burns disabled. iPad has this annoying feature that it defaults to, which is what it calls the Ken Burns effect of the camera panning all over the photo. But I just want the photo to be still. It's funny that Ken burn is so famous, that he has an iMovie effect named after him. I just want this to be really short. I don't want people to sit through a long intro, so I just shortened it up with my finger and I'm going to hit play and see how I like it. There's a lot of different options for transitions right here. If you just click on it, it'll give you different ways of dissolving or wiping or fading. I could change this to this wipe. Let's see what that looks like. You can play around with those if you want. So I've shown you how to add a picture at the beginning, you could do the very same thing at the end. Let's say that at the end of the video, you wanted just to drop in a link to your website or a picture with all of your books on it. Again, I hit the plus sign because I want it to be the full image and there's not going to be any audio, and I have that annoying Ken Burns thing that I have to turn off, please stop that. I hate that thing. Then I can also cut this and make it shorter. I don't need it to be anywhere near this long, I just wanted to be super, super short so that let's say it just goes like this. Remember also you're not affecting the original video clip here. The original video clip is safe. You're just playing around in a project, it never alters your original. So I've shown you how to drop a photo in on top of what you're talking about. Let me also make it clear that that can be useful if you mess up. Remember how I told you to just have a moment of silence if you mess up. Do you see it on this audio thing? I was quiet for a minute. It helps because I may need to cut and if I have a little bit of extra room here, it just gives me room to position it. So let's say that I coughed or did something I don't like, I don't have an example of that on this video, so it's going to be a little weird whatever I pick, but let me try to just pick a spot where maybe I want to cut a little bit. Another good way to give a book another little push once it's been out there for a while. Maybe I want to stop right then you can see at least I close my mouth for a second. If there's a little tiny thing I want to cut out like a cough or just a stumble, I make sure I stop right before it happens, and then I'm going to hit "Split" and I'm going to move it forward. I might be able to actually see where the stumbled happens on the audio. In this case, I don't have an actual stumble to show you, so I'm just going to skip ahead to another little place where I'm quiet. I'm I my quiet for second? Let's listen. This yourself. I was quiet for a second there. This is much longer than a cough, but let's just pretend that this is my cough. This will just give you a general sense of how this works. I hit "Split" again. So let's say this area is my cough and again, I know a cough would be much shorter than this, but I'm just trying to demonstrate it for you, I click the part I want to delete and I hit "Delete". So now it's gone. But you can see that it's going to be a little awkward right here. Watch this. Out there for a while. I'm going to teach you exactly- So you saw how it did that little skip. It's fine to leave a little skip like that in especially if the audio works and it does here, let's listen to the audio again. For a while, I'm going to teach you exactly how- So that sounds fine. Visually you can see it. But if you would like to cover that little skip with a picture, maybe you have an image that relates to what you're saying right there. There's no reason why you can't just drop it in. Now I said I would show you how to insert a video. Again, when you're adding a video, there's a couple ways to do it. One is, I got to go back here and I got to pick video, and then I go back into my same Skillshare photo. For some reason you got to get out a photo and back into video. So video Skillshare. Now I have this video of some goats that I was talking about when I was explaining how this works. So let's go ahead and use this. So I'm going to grab this video. Now let's say I want to cut away, I don't want to listen to the goats. We're going to listen to me talking, but we're just going to cut away to the visual of the goats. Now this is only a two second clip. I better hope that the part of the time when I was talking about the goats was also only about two seconds. In this case, I'm not talking about goats at all, so just bear with me, it's only an example. I'll show you how I add images and video clips to kind of [inaudible]. So there are was dropping in the video of the goat, but you're still listening to me talk. But maybe that's not what you want to do, maybe you want us to be able to hear the goats at this point. I'm going to just delete this. Instead of dropping it in as a cutaway, I just want to insert it in the middle of my video. I'm going to click here, I'm going to hit "Split", and this creates a little opening where the video clip can go. So now I've got that opening, I'm going to tap it again. I'm just going to hit the "Plus" this time which is going to drop it in. So now you're not going to be listening to me and for a second you're going to be listening to the goats. These goats are hilarious by the way. I'll show you how I add images in the video. That's funny. You can also see how if you're going to drop in a video clip like this, you want to make sure that you've brought what you were saying to a natural sounding conclusion and then you can drop this clip in, and then you start up again. The equipment like an iPad that you might already have, and I'll show you how I add images. That's very funny. If you happen to leave a moment of silence in here and it's longer than this little two second clip, that's okay. I've already shown you how you can cut bits and pieces out. So you can actually just cut out your whole moment of silence and drop this in. Maybe I've changed my mind, I don't want the goats after all, I just click it and I delete it and I'm back to where I was. I'll show you how I add images. If you have some of these little splits in here that you put in because you thought you were going to do something and you didn't end up doing it, it's no problem. You can leave that little split. Your video is totally not affected by that. The only final thing I'll mention, actually let's just do it with the goats. So you might have a video clip that you want to add different narration on top of. So I'm going to put this back, the goats, and there's the audio of the goat speaking you can see it right there. But maybe for some reason you don't want people to hear the goat, you want to say something over it, something that you did not say in your video but now you realize, "I want to drop this in and I want to talk about it for a minute." So I'm going to tap the audio, I'm going to hit "Detach Audio". It pulled the audio away from the goats. I'm going to delete it again, I'm not changing my original clip. I'm in a project here, so my original clip is unaltered, but within the context of this project, I've just taken the audio out and I'm going to record some new audio. So I'm going to press the record button. It says ready to record. I'm only going to talk for the length of this clip and it's only two seconds long. So here we go. I'm going to hit record. These are some goats. I didn't hit stop in time. Let's just review and see if that's okay. These are some goats, and I'll show you how I add it. That's all right. I mean, I should have stopped talking as the clip reach the end, but it went by so fast that I didn't but I'm not going to change it right now. That's fine. I'm going to hit "Accept", which is going to add this video and so here's what that's like now. Add that you might already have. These are some goats and I'll show you how I add images in a video. Well, obviously you're not going to put these goats in the middle of your video, but I hope you can see how easy it is. I'm really just trying to show you how easy it is to just click and do this stuff. It's so simple. I realize this is only a demo and there's a lot more that you might be curious about, might want to know. So I am going to put some links to more full-fledged classes that you can take. Also, if you are using a different software, probably it works more or less like this, so I hope this demo was still helpful to you. Once I'm finished, I'm going to name it. So let's just say I want to call this Demo and then I'm going to export it. I'm going to hit "Save" video, and I'm going to export it. I do HD 1080, which is good high-quality, that's plenty for most format. That's going to save it as a video, if you need to go back in and edit, you can go back into this project and edit and re-save it out as a different version of that video. I hope this has been helpful.
9. It's Your Moment of Glory!: Okay, it's your moment of glory. The first thing you're going to need to do is to upload your video to YouTube. If you haven't already, create a YouTube account so you can upload a photo and a bio and put in links to your website and all that basic stuff. Now, I have the YouTube app on my iPad, so I upload directly from my iPad when my video is done. I'm just going to show you real quick how I upload to YouTube. I open up YouTube, there's a camera icon up in the corner. Now I need to find my video. I need that finished video clip. Let's just pretend it's this one. Hello Pierce County, I am Amy Stewart, the author of Girls. That's actually a video I uploaded to YouTube yesterday. I can type in a title right here. It's tedious to type, the description on the iPad's keyboard. I tend to just skip that and go do it on my desktop machine. But then I hit this Upload button and it's just going to start uploading. I'll go ahead and let it upload, the upload is usually quite fast. It'll be there very soon, probably by the time I open up my laptop or my desktop computer, I'll be able to find it there. I'll hit ''Edit'' and I'll go in and add more information like the text of the description and the keywords and all that kind of stuff. Sure to give it an accurate title description to some keywords and upload that title card as your thumbnail. Once it's on YouTube, you can grab the embed code and paste that into your website. You might need to add a video box that accepts embed code or ask your web person to do that for you. But even if that's not possible right now, you can create a blog post and put the embed code there. So at least there's a place on your website where it's viewable. On my website, I also have a page for book clubs, so I link to it from that page. I have a page for the media, and I also put the links there. If you have an actual Facebook page as an author, you can also upload your video directly to Facebook. It's fine to just make a post and share the YouTube link, but by uploading it directly, it'll hang around longer on Facebook. Of course, feel free to share it out on all your social media and in your newsletter. You can also add it to Goodreads. Now, this screen is probably going to change as soon as I make this video. But right now you go to your Author Dashboard. Click ''Edit My Author Profile'', click the ''Video'' link and be sure you pick the right book so it'll just play on your book's page. What else? You can also send it to your publisher and copy your agent. Some of the things you might specifically want to mention to them, could you use this at sales conference or with your sales reps? Would you like to include this video in your marketing to bookstores? Could your library rep use it, doing promotion to libraries? Does your publisher work with any book club websites where you can upload a link to the video or can you post it to your book's page on Amazon? Now that might cost them money. So they might say no to that. Other things for your publicist, can you include this in your press kits and pitches to the media because it does give a good overview of the book. Finally, in your personal communication about your book, let's say you have an event set up at a bookstore, send them the link so that they can use it in their publicity. But I say this with a caveat, please don't send too many e-mails to bookstores. They're very busy. If you have a Facebook events created for your events, you can post the video in the event listing on Facebook. If you're going to go talk to a book club, you can send them the video ahead of time or, even if somebody tweets about how they're reading your book, at book club, you can always tweet back and say thanks and maybe give them a link to the video. Also, if you're confirming an interview somebody set up for you, you can include that link to give them more background information about the book before you walk into the interview. Finally, if you have a lecture agent or if anyone is considering booking you for a talk, these videos can be useful for that. I'm sure over time you'll come up with lots of other ways to use these.
10. Update: Record a very short video, plus more software ideas: I get a lot of questions
from people who are really struggling to write a script. In particular, I think boiling it down to a really
short statement, that's like an elevator
pitch for the book. What I'm going to do
here is walk you through some ideas for a really
short 60 to 92nd video. Why such a short video? Well, there's a few reasons. Of course, it's good
for things like Instagram or Tiktok reels. It can be useful for the
publisher sales team because sometimes they only
have a few minutes to get up at a meeting
and make a pitch. Also, your publisher
can put it on delis, which is the online
platform bookstores used to order books. It's like all the publishers
catalogs are there. And that's where they go to make decisions about what books
they're going to carry. Of course, you'd also
want to put it on Youtube or on your own
website or wherever. But anyway, that's the idea
behind this very short type of video and it can be
really hard to boil it down. That's what we're
going to try to do. We're talking about
only around 200 words. I definitely write it out and do it run a word count
in your word processor, but this is about what
we're aiming for. Okay, I've put together a
little structure and we're going to definitely just
use this jumping off point. But you want this to be in your own natural speaking voice. Read it out loud, make sure
it sounds like how you normally talk and not like marketing copy that
you're reading off a script. If these are words that you feel like you don't
normally use words like that or even ways of
structuring a sentence that don't really
feel like how you normally talk. Keep
working on it. You want it to really
sound conversational, Sound like you're
talking to your friends. All right, so we start
out really simple. Hi, I'm Amy Stewart and this is the name of the
book for your video. This might be where
it's just a head shot of you and you
hold the book up. That's all you got to do. And then you might
say something like, the idea for this book came
to me when this happened. Or I was inspired to write about this subject because
of this other thing. I wrote this book after
I had this experience. When I went and did this thing, I realized that this
other thing happened. Maybe it's even something
like, you know, I've been a teacher for 20 years and I never knew that
something or other. Just jump right into kind of like a moment of inspiration. What's your jumping off point? And hopefully this little bit also gives people a little
hint of who you are. So it might be like
I wrote this book after my annual trek
through the Himalayas. Well, now we know something
about you, right? So think about it like that. Then you might transition
and say something like I started either
doing some research, I talked to people, or I went to visit the place and
here's what I found out. Or I knew I wanted
to tell the story, but I wasn't sure
how to go about it because I didn't
have this or that. Maybe it's something
like, I've always been fascinated by this
thing and I know that, like all these other
people are too. I decided to go find
out more about it. Or maybe it's more
like something about this situation didn't
seem right to me. I decided to investigate, decided to look into it. This is like, you're starting to dig into it a little bit, then you have this
turning point. Possibly. That's when
I discovered this. But I hadn't considered
this other thing. I was amazed to learn
something or other. But then this thing happened
and that changed everything. Then one day I got a call, I couldn't figure it out,
and I almost gave up. But then I stumbled
across this other thing. Was there an obstacle to
you figuring out this book? But something happened
and it opened up for you, you might say. Now I know that. And a whole world
opened up to me. And I was able to see this. I realized that I'd stumbled upon this thing that no
one knew anything about. Maybe there's so much
more to this story, including blah, blah, blah. And this might be
more for a novelist, it might be like
now I had a victim, a villain and a motive. I had the history of the thing, but I knew where it was going
after that or whatever. You know, something
that's like, okay, the pieces are starting
to fall into place here. Then you're stepping back in a more broad way
and you might say, from this thing to that
thing to the other thing. This book is full of
whatever it might be, from chocolate to
cinnamon to cloves. This book covers the range
of dessert ingredients. I don't know, It might be
something like this book title. This book is a journey into the hidden world
of something or other populated by these
people and these things, maybe it's for the
first time ever the story of my book subject
can finally be told. Maybe it's some type
of reference guide. And it's like with
over 300 easy hikes, this is the definitive guide
to exploring our region. Something like that.
That brings it all together and lets people know the scope of the
thing and why it. Then we're getting close
to wrapping up here. Maybe the camera comes
back to you at this point. Maybe you've been showing
pictures or videos all along and now we're
going to come back to you and you might say, this book is perfect for whoever this book is going
to take you on a journey. You're trying to explain what this does for the reader,
not what it did for you. Because maybe you feel better now that you've
written the book, but what's the reader's
experience going to be? This book belongs on the shelf
of every passionate cook. I wrote this book for all of the people out there who need, or want, or love this thing. People tell me that
this book inspires them to take this
action something good. Or maybe it's even just, I can't wait to share this book with fans of Agatha
Christie or whatever. Something that's more about the reader than about
you necessarily. You could have another
line in here to sum it up. It's been an incredible journey
because of this or that. I hope you love this thing or this topic or this
character as much as I do. If this book helps even a
few of the students who are struggling out there
with their test anxiety, then I'll feel like I've
accomplished whatever. You don't have something
like that or maybe you do. But in any case, the last thing you get to might
just be something. Title of the book
is published by this publisher and it's
available everywhere. Books are sold. Just
simply thank you. You don't have to get too crazy about how you wrap it up short. Sweet people have heard your message,
they're ready to go, so you don't need to really
elaborate on final words. I will suggest, don't
make it anything too timely if the
book isn't out yet. Don't say something like the
book comes out next week because the video is going to live on the Internet
for a long time. You don't want to
have something that you got to go back
and change later. Now I have a few more tips for you before we wrap this up. I have a few software things that have changed over time and I thought I would
just add them in here. Something you might
want to explore. One of them is Powerpoint. As you can see, it's
probably obvious to you that I'm talking to you over
some slides in Powerpoint. And the reason I did
it this way is I have a lot of text that I
wanted to show you. It makes sense in
that situation. Powerpoint has some new
features are not terribly new, they've been around
for a little while. But anyway, new ish features
under the Record tab on the main menu up top that
let you record audio, even record some screen sharing that you can add in and do a recorded Powerpoint and
upload that as a video. You can do all of this
inside Powerpoint. You don't need any
other video editing software for anyone who's just incredibly
reluctant to be on camera or you really don't have the
wherewithal to do that, but you do have
interesting photographs, then certainly a narrated
Powerpoint could work. I would not recommend using a standard template like
the one I used here, because we really want to see pictures and feel like
we're taking on a journey. You can use interesting
transitions to have one slide
melt into the other. You can really use a
lot of these features. I'm not going to walk
through them step by step because the software
is always changing. But there's plenty of online
tutorials and resources in the help to help you figure
out how to put that together. If it's something you're
not familiar with. Same thing with Canva. Canva is doing a lot
more with video. Now, this is a feature
that you have to pay for, but within their video options, they have lots of little animated slides where you can just change
the text or of course, upload your own
photos or whatever. But they have lots of
predesigned things where these different
visual elements fly across the screen
and settle down. It's just visually nice, I would definitely
explore those. If not for your entire
60 to 90 minute video, it might be helpful to just have at the
very beginning and the end what we sometimes
call little bumper videos. That's just a little animation, your book cover,
whatever, really short. Then you can download that is a very short video and add it to your other videos in
your editing software. Which gets me to my last
thing I wanted to mention, which is about video
editing software. In this class, I talked a lot about movie because I think it's very easy to use and a lot
of us have iphones or ipads, or Max, it makes a lot of sense. But I also did want to give a shout out to Adobe
Premiere Rush, which works very much
like how movie works. If you're familiar with that extremely simple
video editing, you'll feel pretty at home here. And the menu options are
all these little icons over on the far right or far
left of the screen here. Again, I'm not
going to go through how every feature works because they'll
change it the minute I finish recording it. But there's plenty of
help available online, and the features are also
simple and intuitive to use. This is a subscription
based product. You pay for it a
month at a time. But you can get a very
inexpensive subscription to just Adobe Premiere Rush. Dig around, look for that. Give that a try. All right, well, thanks for listening. And definitely, please
get in touch with me. Post a comment if you've
got any questions. Comments, I would love
to hear from you.
11. Final Thoughts: Okay, that's it. These are project area here and I hope that you'll post in the project area what you've accomplished, whether it's a title card, a script, maybe you can even link it to your finished video. I would love to see it and see any of these milestones as you work through them. If you have any questions, post them in the discussion and I'll pop into answer them, and please check the resources area. I'll continue to post links to anything I have that might be of use, including other Skillshare classes that you might want to check out. I teach other classes here on Skillshare as well, both writing and art, so come find me and let's stay in touch. Good luck with your video and remember when you're finished with it, send it out into the world and go start your next book.
Amy Stewart, Writer & artist
