The Right Kind of Fiction Author Video

Why don’t more authors do video right? I was researching the kinds of things that authors do to get noticed, picking random books off my shelf and picked up one of Lawrence Block’s novels. So I followed him to facebook and found this video on his fan page. As a guy who does video production by day, I couldn’t help but pump my fist for Lawrence.


Every author should have something like this.

What is so cool about this video? First, it’s just plain fun in a noir mystery sort of way. It has a production value that is above and beyond the $$ means of most writers. But throw that out the window. At this moment I just want to tell you that it does the one thing that very few authors even attempt, yet it should be a staple of their facebook/twitter/web page presence. Can you guess?

Lawrence has produced a bazillion books in different genres. He’s best known for crime fiction, though, so this video fits his author image. But that’s only part of what makes it work. You don’t have to have a big budget to do what takes this video to the next level. Authors immediately think video = book trailer. But you see, this is not a book trailer, it’s a profile piece. Time and again the eggheads who study such things, tell us that, as with movie stars, politicians, musicians and anyone else in the public eye, once a reader bonds with a creative culprit like an author, they want to know what makes that person tick. This video answers that for his followers. That’s the key.

Who are you? We want to know
Very few authors post profile pieces. Hell, even I don’t have one, exactly. Though in my video trailers for Live At Five and The Patterer I talked about how and why I chose to write those novels. And that gives you a glimpse into my snarky outlook on life.

If a novel is really good or if a fiction series becomes popular they will sell. Sometimes a lot. But writers should make at least a minimal effort to reach out and connect with their readers face to face (virtually), be that one reader, a dozen or a million. Let your voice be heard (and your face be shown). I swear, it will be more interesting than your typical book trailer.

I’d love to see more of my friends on facebook / Linked In / Twitter use short videos so I can see and hear them, and connect better whether they are a writer or not. If you’d like a couple of tips, simple ways to do that without making your video look like nothing more than a moving selfie, shoot me an email. Advice is free. Lar@larrybrill.com.

Drum roll, please. And now, another really great bad sentence. This is the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winner for 2017. It comes from Kat Russo in Loveland, Colorado:

The elven city of Losstii faced towering sea cliffs and abutted rolling hills that in the summer were covered with blankets of flowers and in the winter were covered with blankets, because the elves wanted to keep the flowers warm and didn’t know much at all about gardening.

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