What free will actually get you

A trailer: sixty to ninety seconds, one voice, one piece of music, motion built from your existing cover art. That is achievable at home and it is enough for a social feed.

What free will not get you is a full edition — a whole book performed, scored and cut to picture. That is hours of finished runtime, and hours cannot be donated.

The order of work

Words first. A trailer fails on script, not on effects. Cut to a hook, a turn and a door — under 140 spoken words.

Sound second. A phone in a closet full of coats beats a good microphone in a bare room. Record three takes; keep the calm one.

Picture last, and keep it still. Slow motion on your own cover and a few plain title cards reads as confident. Fast, busy motion reads as an ad.

Where free stops

Music you did not license. Using a song you like is the fastest way to have your video muted, pulled, or claimed.

Stolen or generic stock imagery that belongs to no book at all — readers notice, and it makes your book look interchangeable.

When you want the whole book on screen instead of a teaser, the arithmetic is published: 12% of the word count, so $7,200 for 60,000 words, about 6h 27m finished.

The order of the work

1. 01Cut the scriptWrite under 140 spoken words: a hook, a turn, and one line that sends the viewer to the book.
2. 02Time itRead it aloud against a clock. 155 words is one finished minute — if it runs long, cut lines, never speed up.
3. 03Record the narrationPhone, soft room, three takes, no music playing. Keep the take that sounds calm rather than the one that sounds excited.
4. 04Choose lawful scoreUse music explicitly licensed for video use, and keep the licence file. Never use a commercial song.
5. 05Build the pictureSlow moves on your own cover, plain title cards, one closing frame with the title and where to get it.
6. 06Cut and postExport vertical for feeds and horizontal for your site, add captions, and put the buying link in the first line of the description.

Asked and answered

How long should a free book video be?

Sixty seconds, ninety at the outside. Almost every book trailer that fails, fails by being long.

Can I use AI narration to save money?

You can, and listeners can tell. For a trailer it may pass; for an edition it attaches a synthetic voice to your name permanently.

Do the Workshop instruments cost anything?

No. They run in your own browser, nothing is stored, and no account is asked for.