This summer my hero Wes Griffin from TEXAS TWO-STEP took second place in ARe’s Summer’s Hottest Hero Contest. My prize was a book trailer video made for me by Circle of Seven. Since I’d always made my own videos for my books before, I was interested to see the process and the results of working with a professional company. I chose my newest full length novel release for the video–HOOKED. Here’s how things went…

The owner of All Romance eBooks (ARe) introduced me by email to a rep from Circle of Seven (COS). From there I was contacted by about 3 other COS people who led me through the information gathering and forms required for the video production. I basically provided them with the blurb, the book cover JPG and a synopsis. Once the script writer contacted me, I also provided her with a bit more, mainly my personal feelings that video text should be kept to a minimum because I don’t think viewers want to read too much, and I gave her info about the other titles in the series so she got a feel for it, and also the tone of Hooked. I also gave her the text that I’d planned on using in the video I would have made myself for Hooked had I not won this one.

The script writer came back with a proposed script which was actually pretty on target. It incorporated and improved on the text I’d given her to use. All I really had to do was make a few changes to a few words. (IE one such change was the removal of the term ‘rodeo’ since the Studs in Spurs series really focuses on only professional bull riding and not a true rodeo with all the events.) The writer accepted my changes and the script was approved.

Next I got to choose the music for the video. They gave me a bunch of music selections to listen to and I chose the one which I thought fit the script and the book best. There were no images to decide on since this particular video is a “cover” trailer, which means the only image they use is the book cover, but they creatively zoom in, highlighting and focusing on different parts of the picture. That was another reason I chose Hooked–the Studs in Spurs covers have a lot going on compared to the covers in the Red, Hot & Blue series.

Then came a few more forms and a contract… What I’ve learned is there is a lot of paperwork, but nothing too time consuming so that was fine. Finally, I was presented with the video to approve, then the final version to download and keep. The most exciting part, and what I’m looking forward to, is seeing COS’s distribution, which comes with the video. I’m very interested to see where they can place this, and get exposure, where I as an author may not be able to. We will see. I think the video looks very professional. You can judge for yourself below. I thank COS for my providing my contest prize and for doing a great job.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81aZtxE3_7E]