In this member-first Q&A on the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, ALLi video content adviser Dale L. Roberts answers questions on how authors can use video to market their books, connect with readers, and build visibility for their author brand. Topics include the best tools for creating video content, when to start using video in the publishing process, and how to measure the impact of video on book sales and reader engagement. Roberts also addresses how to drive traffic to videos, whether book trailers still matter, how Amazon A+ Content works, and practical ways to get comfortable on camera.
Listen to the Podcast: Marketing Your Books Using Video
Show Notes
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Read the Transcript
Matty Dalrymple: Hello everyone. This is Matty Dalrymple. I'm the campaigns manager for ALLi. Welcome to the member Q&A on marketing your books using video, with Dale L. Roberts. Dale, I'm always pleased to welcome you to any ALLi event, and you're joining us today as ALLi's advisor on video marketing. I'm going to ask you to provide a little more detail about your own bio.
Dale L. Roberts: I am Dale L. Roberts. I've been writing and self-publishing books for the past 11 years, full-time, and for most of that time I've also been a video content creator where I teach people how to write and publish books. I've become almost the go-to resource for all things self-publishing and have had many connections with fantastic people within this business — which affords me the privilege and luxury to get insider information and share it with you on a regular basis over on YouTube. So if I seem very pro-YouTube, yes, I am. I'm not anti any of the other platforms — Instagram Reels, for instance, I can get kind of hooked on that sometimes. TikTok I had to delete. It was so addictive. I had to shut it off. I couldn't have it on my phone.
Why Video? Building Windows to Your Brand
Matty Dalrymple: We're going to have a chance to talk about lots of different aspects of video. I'll start with a great pre-submitted question. This is from Robin: why am I better off spending time, effort, and money sending people to my videos rather than my books?
Dale L. Roberts: You don't need to be sending them to your video. Sure, you can — that's one aspect of it. The whole idea is to build another window to your brand, by having numerous assets that lead to you, whether it's your website, your email newsletter, or even your books. This is not something where you have to make video what it is to me. I don't expect everybody to do a 50/50 split on their business. But if you were to just take a little bit of time — say 20 minutes per week, 10 minutes to shoot a video, 10 minutes to upload and optimize it for search engines — then let it work its magic. You don't need to constantly promote your latest video.
For those of you who've been struggling with what to say to your email newsletter, there's your answer: here's my latest video, come check it out. And the cool thing is, when they get to see the whites of your eyes, they develop trust with you so much more readily. That makes them think, Dale's got a lot of books and has given me so much value — I'm going to go buy one. It seems a little backwards — do this to get to this, when you could just go directly to the thing — but you really don't have to invest very much time, and as long as you are consistent about it, you'll see a good return on investment.
Matty Dalrymple: So it sounds as if you're recommending video more as a community building or outreach tool than a sales platform. Am I interpreting that correctly?
Dale L. Roberts: Correct. You could still sell your books — there's no issue with that. In fact, part of the YouTube Partner Program, when you qualify for monetization — which requires 4,000 watch time hours and 1,000 subscribers within one year — you're able to have something called the Merch Shelf. That's where you can actually put in your books and products through things like Shopify or Teespring. More recently, YouTube is also integrating with brands like Books-A-Million, Walmart, and Target. Sometimes they'll provide you a link and you can collect an affiliate on that link if someone buys through your Merch Shelf. So you're selling your book and also getting additional affiliate income. But I believe that if you lead with value first, you build a community that will rally around you — and that community will start to sell your books for you. They'll be excited about your next book because you've been talking about it, sharing insights, giving behind-the-scenes content, maybe even a sample chapter. That creates diehard fans who are ready to go when you launch.
Fiction vs. Nonfiction: What Goes on Video?
Matty Dalrymple: Is the approach you'd recommend different if a person is writing nonfiction versus fiction? With nonfiction it seems sort of obvious — you share information about your topic — but I think it's more difficult for fiction writers to understand what would be compelling video content.
Dale L. Roberts: So true. I think a lot of people might hear me say ‘go to YouTube' and think they have to do videos like mine. You don't. My niche is quite specific and it doesn't have a very wide reach. If you go to broader subjects, you'll definitely see a much better return. Let me give you a heads-up: I'm planning to pivot to fiction in October, and part of that pivot involves scaling back some of my normal YouTube production and focusing on a separate channel for sci-fi horror. I'm coming at it not as a teacher of sci-fi horror, but as an author who is also a fan.
My first video idea, for example, is comparing The Mist — the Stephen King novella that became a movie — with the TV series, which I thought was atrocious. That's going to welcome in Stephen King horror fans who'll think, let me see what this baldheaded guy has to say. It also brings in a potential reader: somebody who read the novella. So when I present that I'm an author with books and a newsletter, it's going to seem logical — this person nerds out just like me, I can't wait to read his stuff. I'm also working on a video about John Carpenter's The Thing, which was based on a 1938 novella called Who Goes There. I'm reading that novella as homework.
There are many other angles you can take with fiction. You don't need to do movie-book comparisons — maybe that's not your style. It could be discussing the ten craziest tropes in romance, or your top-ten favorite reads in your genre, or best were-bear shapeshifter romance books. Think about what your ideal reader would be watching on YouTube, and then figure out how you can fit into that in an authentic way that gets them enticed to read your books or learn more about you as an author. None of my launch plan, by the way, includes book trailers — I don't think they'll move the needle on YouTube. But we'll discuss that.
Matty Dalrymple: I want to come back to trailers because that was one of our submitted questions.
Dale L. Roberts: I totally anticipated there'd be a book trailer question. Book trailers are good — please don't be upset. We'll discuss it in a bit, and it's not as bad as you think.
Engagement, Healthy Debate, and Community
Matty Dalrymple: When you were talking about The Mist — loving the movie, hating the miniseries — I can imagine you'll get far more comments about your dislike of the series than your love of the movie, because people are going to want to debate you on that. There's that fine line of when you step across into something no longer appropriate for your brand, but I think the idea of not only putting content out there but being willing to engage with people who are engaging with you is an important part of the process.
Dale L. Roberts: Absolutely. YouTube is a good space for healthy debates, and yes, there'll be some trolls — that happens on any platform. But healthy debate is fantastic. My style is not to show up and say ‘the TV series was absolute garbage.' I'll come with a more constructive feedback approach, because I don't want to attract people who are just angry all the time. I don't need that noise.
Measuring the Success of a Video Campaign
Matty Dalrymple: Kay asks: how do you measure the success of a video campaign in terms of book sales, reader engagement, or other measures? What should people look for to see if the time and money and energy they're investing in videos is worthwhile?
Dale L. Roberts: This is a loaded question because it varies. There are some people that take to YouTube like fish to water. A good friend of mine and community member, Kathy Mankin — she'd been toying with YouTube for a number of years and now every single video she puts up is gold. She went from fewer than 50 subscribers to over 200 within 24 hours because she just kept building, building, building, then had this massive launch. But there are going to be some people who struggle.
Don't expect one video to bring in a truckload of book sales. You need to be consistent and prolific if you want real results. Don't expect to put up three videos and see a massive return — you just won't. I have to be super real. When can you realistically expect to see good results? It depends on your goal and the value you see in the channel. There are also going to be some people who just aren't good at YouTube. Be self-aware enough to recognize that. The same way someone could tell me I'd build a great brand on Reddit — I tried it, I'm horrible there, it's not for me.
If you've published at least 100 videos and aren't seeing any traction whatsoever, you may want to step back. That is a high ceiling, but by the time you get there you should have a new skill set in video production, a much better understanding of SEO, and an ability to do decent graphic design for thumbnails. There's a lot you'll learn within 100 videos. At one video per week, that takes about two years. It's a long game, but consistency is key. The reason I've had the success I've had is I just keep showing up. People can't get rid of me.
Matty Dalrymple: Can you say again the name of the creator you mentioned who's doing so well on YouTube?
Dale L. Roberts: Kathy Mankin. Her channel is Exploring Literary Landscapes. She's really killing it on YouTube Shorts right now. I'm super proud of her — this is 100% her. She's kept her videos dead simple, and that's the right call. Our job as authors is to write. We shouldn't be spending 20 hours a week on videos if writing is our passion. I like both, but I understand that I am the exception to the rule.
How Long Should Your Videos Be?
Matty Dalrymple: Do you have recommendations about video length? Is there any tie between length and the type of book you're trying to promote, or is it more about the creator?
Dale L. Roberts: There are two ways to approach this. One is to study comparable channels — people within your niche. Look at what the average length is. However, if you're brand new, just show up and put in some effort. Kathy is doing Shorts, typically one to three minutes in vertical format — easy to bang out quickly. I'd say experiment. Play around with different formats. If three to five minutes is your sweet spot, go for it. If it's ten to fifteen, great.
When I first started, I was doing three to five minutes tops. Then I noticed people wanted more, so I expanded to ten minutes, and then fifteen. As soon as I started going twenty to thirty minutes, I noticed a significant decline in viewership and new subscribers. Always pay attention to your YouTube analytics. As a rule of thumb, always roughly double the amount of time a video is when estimating production — if you shoot a five-minute video, figure on ten minutes total to record, maybe edit, upload, and get the metadata ready. That's a minimum.
My mentor in the business, Darrell Eves — who has also served as a consultant for some very big channels — when he first started, he only had 16 minutes a week to spare. He was a full-time dad with a full-time job. He forced himself to stay within that limit. He's now one of the biggest minds behind some of the biggest influencers on YouTube. Further proof that you don't need massive time investment to start.
And I always like to bring up Walter Weyburn — a longtime supporter and good friend of mine, rest in peace. Walter had a webcam that was 360p resolution. No joke, it looked like it came straight out of the early 2000s. Someone had put Vaseline over the top of it. His microphone was questionable. All he ever did was hit record, speak his thoughts, and publish it. And the man was pulling in more from YouTube than his book sales could keep up with. His audience loved the rawness of it. When he passed, the outpouring of love and affection for him from his community was just incredible. One time I saw a DSLR mounted on a tripod in the background of one of his videos and I asked why he wasn't using it. He said, ‘Oh, should I use that?' I told him: don't you listen to me? You've gotten this far without my help. Leave it in the background and don't take my advice.
Equipment: What You Actually Need
Matty Dalrymple: You're giving great examples of how people don't need to be as polished as they might think. But are there certain things people should not compromise on? Any must-do or must-avoid tips?
Dale L. Roberts: There are many do's and don'ts you just have to learn through experience, and also through experience as a viewer. What turns you off? For me, a big turnoff is a bumper or intro at the very beginning — a montage and a fancy logo you got done on Fiverr. Get that in the trash. That's my strong opinion. But you'll need to experiment and find your way.
If you push me up against the wall: focus on your audio quality first. If you need to upgrade anything, upgrade your mic. If all you have is your phone, a lot of onboard mics are pretty sufficient, but you can also find cheap lavaliers — there's one called the Movo lavalier on Amazon for about $15. It's got a cord, it's sturdy, I've used it and highly recommend it. I personally use a Rode lavalier that goes into my phone, but that's around $70 to $80 and not necessary to start.
After audio, lighting. I don't care what your camera is — if it's 360p, that's fine. Get lights on you. Lights will always improve a camera. Start with outdoor light: if you're near a window, position yourself so the window is in front of you. If you want to invest a little, a basic box LED light goes for about $30 on Amazon. I have two Elgato Key Lights here that I can control through a remote and my Elgato Stream Deck — but folks, don't start with those. I've spent thousands over nine years, and I've only ever taken a small percentage of my YouTube earnings and reinvested. You do not need any of that to start.
Matty Dalrymple: You can get a lot of good effects using household lights — dimmers, removing or adding shades, putting something over a shade to dim it further.
Dale L. Roberts: That's exactly what I did at the start. I would take the lampshade off and put it right up in front of my desk. My first videos weren't the greatest, but I learned. If you're worried about the cost, a small box LED light for $30 on Amazon will work perfectly well.
Editing Software: Keep It Simple and Free
Matty Dalrymple: What software would you recommend? To what extent is editing important, and what platforms would a beginner benefit most from using?
Dale L. Roberts: Keep it simple and go free. iMovie is great — I used that for quite a while. Windows Movie Maker used to be around but I don't think it is anymore. CapCut is a hundred percent free and a solid option. And if you have the patience, DaVinci Resolve. DaVinci Resolve is the gold standard of cinematography software — Marvel's MCU has used it. And it's a hundred percent free. There is a paid upgrade, but you are not making Marvel movies. You don't need to spend $300. The free version is more than enough.
If you need to learn DaVinci Resolve, they have a free academy. Also, a good friend of mine in the video creator community, Daniel Batal — B-A-T-A-L — his tutorials on DaVinci Resolve are chef's kiss. Highly recommended.
Getting Your Videos Seen: SEO and Keywords
Matty Dalrymple: Pre-submitted from John and Robin: if I create a video channel or individual videos, how do I get them seen? Are there additional steps beyond uploading?
Dale L. Roberts: The very first thing is search engine optimization for each video. That means finding the proper keywords or keyword phrases that will make your content more discoverable. Initially you'll need some research tools — TubeBuddy, VidIQ, and my preferred one is Morning Fame. TubeBuddy and VidIQ both have free memberships. Morning Fame is invite-only — hit me up if you want an invite, they'll give you a free month.
But keyword research can also be done for free. You already know from Amazon that if you want unbiased search results, you open your browser in incognito mode. YouTube works the same way. Go to YouTube through incognito mode — in Chrome that's Control+Shift+N — then go to the YouTube search bar and start typing a keyword related to your topic. Wait for the autosuggestions to populate. Note each relevant keyword that comes up, build yourself a list, then search each one and browse through the results. Pay attention to when videos were published and how many views they have — a video with 100,000 views published a year ago is much more valuable data than one with those same views from ten years ago.
Look at the specific titles people are using and figure out: how can I adapt my approach based on their success? How can I put my own DNA into a title that attracts the same audience while being authentic to myself? And think of it always from the perspective of someone who doesn't know you: what are you going to do for them? How are you going to deliver value? If you think about that rather than what's in it for you, that's how you build an audience.
On tags: don't sweat them. YouTube's own channels — Creator Insider and YouTube Liaison, hosted by Renee Ritchie — both run by YouTube themselves — have said tags just aren't a priority anymore. I sometimes throw some in using AI, but don't spend any meaningful time on them. Keywords matter most in your title and in your description.
Morning Fame, specifically, was very helpful for me because it studies your channel, looks at what's performing well, and recommends related keywords. It also shows you whether a keyword is discoverable on YouTube only, or on YouTube and Google — one check mark for YouTube, two check marks for YouTube and Google. That's how a lot of my content has shown up in Google search results over the years. Google Trends at trends.google.com is another great free tool for seeing the search value of keywords over time.
One pro tip: before you ever shoot a single video, think about what your thumbnail and title are going to look like. Think of it like your book cover — that cover can make or break your success. Your thumbnail and title need to make somebody stop scrolling and want to watch. Have at least a rough idea of both before you hit record. I personally have three title variations and three design concepts in mind for every video. Getting search right is how you seed your initial audience — once you have viewers, YouTube's algorithm starts to study them and recommend your content to similar audiences. That's where recommendations kick in. But you get there by starting with search first.
Consistency: How Often Should You Post?
Matty Dalrymple: You've mentioned the importance of consistency several times. What does consistent look like — every day, every week, every month?
Dale L. Roberts: If you can do every day, that's awesome — especially if you're doing Shorts, that's a good approach as long as you don't burn out. Early on, in June 2017, I got really motivated and did 114 consecutive daily video uploads. My writing definitely took a backseat, and I don't recommend that. Figure out what's doable for you. I'd say once a week: find one day per week to focus on your video content, upload it, and be done with it. If you stay consistent for a year, you've got 52 videos. That puts you in a much more discoverable position and gives people many more ways to find and connect with you.
How Early in the Publishing Process Should You Start?
Matty Dalrymple: One of the questions we got: how early in the publishing process should an author start creating video content?
Dale L. Roberts: Right away. Start right away. I'm pivoting to fiction in October and I don't have any completed works yet — just a half season of a sci-fi horror Kindle Vella series. I'm loading up 12 weeks of video content to release while I'm still writing. My first goal is to seed the channel and get it fully monetized. My second goal is to bring those viewers over to my email newsletter, so that when I'm ready for my official book launch, I get to take the whole community along for the ride.
The other thing worth noting, and this came up from a good friend and former video producer Dan Norton — he was the mind behind the Book Rescue series on my channel a couple years ago. He got the opportunity to work with Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income, and they created a joint Pokémon trading card channel. They have two channels now with over a million subscribers. You'd think Pat would have leaned on Smart Passive Income to send people over, but no — sending viewers from unrelated content pollutes what you're doing. The audience you speak to needs to align with the content you're putting out. YouTube rewards watch time, and if people bounce out after two minutes, YouTube does not like that. Keep people watching, and YouTube rewards you.
Book Trailers: Are They Worth It?
Matty Dalrymple: We promised to address the trailer question. Do you have different advice for fiction versus nonfiction book trailers?
Dale L. Roberts: I don't have a different opinion based on fiction versus nonfiction — they'll have different tones, but my core thoughts apply to both. The biggest issue I see is authors putting way too much confidence and faith into a book trailer. Put yourself in a realistic position: have you ever watched a book trailer on YouTube and gone out to buy that book? It's a hard truth. Now there are exceptions. Matt Best — M-A-T — did a book called You're Welcome for My Service, and his book trailer was hilarious and perfectly resonated with his audience. It wasn't buy-my-book-buy-my-book. It provided value through entertainment. That made me go look it up at the library.
On TikTok and YouTube Shorts, you can get away with book trailers more easily. But what I'd say is generally more effective than a traditional book trailer is figuring out how you can deliver value to your ideal reader, so that when you present your book, buying it feels like the natural next step. You don't need to sink hundreds of dollars into a beautiful trailer that nobody watches because no one wants someone forcing a book in their face. They want to know that you genuinely care about them. When you start looking at viewers as numbers, they'll treat you like a number too. That said, for Amazon A+ content video, I think a book trailer could actually crush it there — people are already in a buyer's mindset on Amazon.
Will Sharing Your Nonfiction Content Cannibalize Book Sales?
Matty Dalrymple: Something from a podcast perspective: you can potentially share every piece of information in your nonfiction book through YouTube videos, and people will still buy the book. Is there concern about giving away too much?
Dale L. Roberts: Agreed. No argument here.
Matty Dalrymple: You're never really going to share the entire contents of your book in YouTube videos, and people want information in different formats. Some will buy it just as a thank you. If people are concerned about sharing content because they fear it will cannibalize book sales, I'd say don't worry about that.
A+ Content Video on Amazon
Matty Dalrymple: A question about A+ content video — I didn't realize until this morning that you could have video as A+ content. Is this something you're experimenting with?
Dale L. Roberts: I discovered it back in December last year. My problem was that I have the Amazon Self Publisher series and got the green light to use the Amazon name on my publications. But when I tried to push a video through Amazon Ads — sponsored products, sponsored brands, no problem — as soon as I went to video, they flagged that I had ‘Amazon' in my title and wouldn't promote it. So I'm doing a second edition removing that name so I can hopefully start using video marketing through Amazon. I can speak anecdotally, though: April Cox from Self-Publishing Made Simple shared with me that some of her clients were seeing a 500% better return on investment from video ads versus regular ads alone. Anecdotal, but interesting. I think a book trailer would absolutely crush it as A+ content because people are in a buyer's mindset on Amazon already.
Overcoming the Fear of Being on Camera
Matty Dalrymple: Kay asks: any tips for overcoming the fear of being on camera?
Dale L. Roberts: Don't get on camera. Seriously. And I'm very much an introvert — a lot of people don't believe this, but after a session like this I'll probably need about a half hour to decompose and meditate. There are some times when I crash. What I'd say is: if you really want to get on camera but you're camera shy, just record yourself. That's it. Record for yourself. Treat it like a journal. Turn it on, record, if you want to just delete it after. Watch it quickly, skip through it from a viewer perspective, then toss it. That gets you comfortable. One of the ways I was taught in pro wrestling to get better at speaking was to get in front of the mirror and cut a promo with conviction. Take that same model, put yourself in front of a camera, shoot it, and when you start feeling more confident, step a little further out.
There are faceless YouTube channels out there doing pretty well too. You will get more viewership if you're on camera, but don't count yourself out if you don't want to be. Kathy Mankin — the Exploring Literary Landscapes creator we mentioned — hasn't been on camera much yet and is working her way towards it. You don't need to be on camera. Start with your cell phone, shoot it, watch it back, delete it. Eventually you'll feel confident enough to go, I killed it on that one.
Multi-Channel and Audience Alignment
Matty Dalrymple: We have a comment from Lina: she recently started releasing music videos of her original songs on YouTube, and her channel is also ostensibly for her writing. She's thinking about releasing her audiobooks on the same channel. Is this a bad idea? She's also a multi-genre author.
Dale L. Roberts: If that audiobook aligns with your ideal viewing audience, great — run with it. A good friend of mine posted a digitally narrated version of his book onto his YouTube channel and got monetized within a month. I was floored. He did it twice. But that only works when the content aligns. If you have too much cross-pollination, it's going to mess things up. I wrote about this in my book YouTube for Authors — in 2020 I had great success but it was very fleeting because I was trying to serve the wrong audience. The audience you speak to needs to align with the content you're putting out. If that audiobook aligns with your viewers, go for it. If it doesn't, it'll pollute things.
Closing and Resources
Matty Dalrymple: Dale, do you want to let people know where they can find out more about you and everything you do online?
Dale L. Roberts: Just search Dale L. Roberts on YouTube. I've got two channels — one's my podcast and the other is named after me: Dale L. Roberts. I continue to put out weekly content on both. If you want something polished, go to the Dale L. Roberts channel. If you want something more raw and unedited, more like a conversation, that's the podcast channel.
Matty Dalrymple: Perfect. Thank you so much — and thank you to everybody who came, for your great questions. Keep the conversation going on SelfPubConnect. Dale, as always, it's so much fun to talk to you. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise on video marketing.
Dale L. Roberts: Thank you so much. Take care everybody.
Matty Dalrymple: Bye.
