How much does a book trailer cost?
A book trailer's price is driven by three things only: how much original motion it carries, whether a voice is cast for it, and whether the score is licensed and mixed to picture. A still-image slideshow costs almost nothing to make and does almost nothing; a cinematic cut is a production.
Work it out yourself, free
The Trailer Cutter →Free: paste a passage and get a timed cut — the lines that carry, seconds on screen, where the score drops and where the strike lands.
What you are actually paying for
A Living Cover — your cover given motion, depth and firelight, working as trailer, storefront tile and first frame — is a flat $950 here.
A chosen, cut and mixed score is a flat $1,500. That fee buys selection, cutting and mixing of licensed music. This house does not claim original composition.
A full film book — the whole book as cinema, not an advertisement for it — is 12% of word count.
Why quotes range so far
Stock-footage slideshows and cinematic sequences are both sold as 'book trailers'. The word covers a fifty-dollar template and a five-figure shoot. Ask what is original, what is licensed, and who cuts to the score.
Write the cut before you buy the cut
Most wasted trailer money is spent before anyone films anything: on a passage that was never going to carry. A beat sheet — which lines land, how many seconds each holds, where the score drops out — costs nothing and settles it.
Asked and answered
- Is a book trailer worth it?
- It is worth what it converts. A trailer earns its cost when it carries a line a reader repeats; a slideshow of stock imagery rarely does.
- What does a cinematic book trailer include?
- Original motion, a cast voice where the passage needs one, and a score cut to picture rather than laid under it.
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