Have you joined TikTok yet? It seems like everyone has. And if you’re newer to the scene, it can feel overwhelming. You’ve heard of authors going viral and having their books rocket up the bestseller charts, but where does someone start?
I say you should start with page flip videos. (Or its cousin, holding-up-a-book-vertically-and-dropping-it-to-reveal-the-cover. Or one of these four other ideas for TikToks.) They are easy to create, and once you have the raw video of you flipping through your book’s pages, you can recycle that footage and add new text. That’s multiple videos for the price of one, basically!
But, hey, creating a video for the first time can be intimidating. That’s why I made a tutorial. And not a flashy one with lots of jumping around that you have to rewatch. I recorded my entire video-editing process. It’s messy. There are long sections of me playing around with text and
You can watch the video below to follow along in real time as I create a TikTok/Reel/Short on my smartphone.
Step One: Start with a blank vertical video template.
It might seem like a good idea to begin with one of the many eye-catching templates Canva curates for you, but starting from scratch ensures you won’t have to mess around with changing and deleting elements or animations.
That being said, I wouldn’t necessarily skip scrolling through the Canva video editor‘s templates altogether. There are hundreds available—you might stumble upon one that’s absolutely perfect for your purposes.
Step Two: Upload your own page flip video to Canva.
In the video, I search through Canva’s library of videos to find something, but as you might’ve seen, I struggled quite a bit with this. That’s why I recommend filming yourself flipping through the pages of your paperback book. Record the page flipping process a few times—trying different speeds of flipping each time—so that you have some options for video length.
And, hey, if you don’t have your latest release in stock yet, you can use an older book of yours as a stand-in—just don’t zoom in or show the cover!
Step Three: Write your text somewhere else.
This isn’t really Step Three—ideally, you’d have tons of onscreen text ideas ready to go in a document somewhere before you start actually editing a video in exactly the same way you’d have the raw video of you flipping through every book you’ve written saved in a folder—but it can be. I’d actually recommend that you write a few variations on this reliable formula:
- A hooky beginning that establishes the situation at hand. Starting with “my office nemesis and I,” for example, tells us this is a workplace romance with an enemies-to-lovers twist. Say as much as possible with as few words as possible because attention spans are short on these apps!
- Give us a bit of back and forth between characters, or describe more of the situation in a way that heightens the tension.
- End on something that would make a reader gasp.
You might also try listing all the tropes in your book instead, or extracting an exciting excerpt.
Keep this text handy because you’ll be adding it in the next step.
Step Four: Trim and split your video, adding text as you go.
This is the most “involved” part of the whole process. Start with your hooky beginning—just type it right on in there. Then watch your video and read aloud the text. Once you’ve finished reading aloud, pause the video, then split it to create a new “page” or “slide.”
Now you’ll be able to change and add text to this new “slide” without affecting your first text. (The more advanced users among you may want to add animations, but for the purposes of this tutorial, we’re going to move right along.)
Rinse and repeat the above process until you have all the “slides” of the video completed. Then split the video one more time and delete excess footage. If you find that you are just shy of the footage you need, you could consider fading to black and adding your book cover or pulling off some other tricks you can find in our other Canva tutorial.
Step Five: Watch it back.
This is the most important part, second to actually posting. Download your video—this is important, because playback in Canva will be more rough than the downloaded version—and watch it a few times. Ask yourself these questions:
- Can I more-or-less read the text as it goes by? (It’s okay if it’s a smidge too fast—this will encourage people to rewatch it!)
- Is the text as engaging as you thought it would be?
- Is the text readable—as in, is there enough contrast between the words and the background and/or the video?
And if any answers to those questions are unsatisfactory, then ask, “Can I live with it?” Because it doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to be done. Then you can post, and then you can post more, and that’s the only way you’re going to improve.
Step Six: Post!
The only thing you really have left to do is select the music. (And yes, you should absolutely include music.) You want something that’s trending upward but that also fits your book’s “vibes.”
After that, your caption can be as simple as a book emoji and then the title of your book, or you can do something a little more cheeky. Either way, get your handful of hashtags ready!
Here are a few tutorials if you’ve never uploaded a TikTok, Reel, or Short before.
No time to go through these steps? We have a solution!
We’re proud to offer the Vertical Videos package as part of our service, Graphics by Writer’s Atelier. For an investment of $45, you’ll receive three vertical videos to add to your timelines.
