Whenever Beryl Bainbridge finished a novel, she would make a painting inspired by the book. It feels like it might have been a way of getting the novel fully out of her system, enabling her to move on to a new project. Although apparently, the real reason was that when she was writing she missed being able to paint. It was something she had been putting off doing and now she was free to engage in this other creative act that meant so much to her.
Well, with me, it seems to have become a bit of a ritual that whenever I publish a new book I produce an animated trailer for it. Above is the one I made for Death of a Princess. I think my motivation is slightly different from Beryl Bainbridge. I’m just doing whatever I can to encourage people to read my books.
I created the animation using Blender software. It feels necessary these days to say that it’s not created using AI. Blender is a powerful 3-D animation software. What I do with it barely scratches the surface of what it’s capable of. My efforts are relatively crude and simple. Because my skills (stretching the use of the word here) are fairly basic. Every time I try to create an effect, I have to watch about a dozen YouTube tutorials showing me how it’s done.
I’m not convinced book trailers work, in the sense of persuading people to buy books. But I spend a lot of my time as an author wondering what I can do to help increase sales. Making a trailer is one of the things I’ve come up with. Of course, the next conundrum is how do you get people to see your trailer!
Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the trailer and it piques your interest enough to give the book a go. If so, it’s available here.