In the first two installments of WRITING A MURDERER OR HOW I SUGGESTED THAT YOU “BUY MY BOOK,” I referenced two groups of follow-up promotional tasks that every novelist must undertake, the boring stuff and the creative fun stuff. The eight free episodes of my Writing a Murderer video series, is Exhibit A of what I call the creative fun stuff. Each episode was around 2 to 3 minutes long and aired every Tuesday and Friday evening throughout March on my YouTube Channel, which you can access and subscribe to right here. You can binge watch it now, but you could only watch the latest episode (and earlier ones) when you logged onto my YouTube Channel. And to discover the twist at the end, you had to stick with the series until the final episode when all was revealed! There were no spoilers.

Why did I put Writing a Murderer together? First and foremost because it was different and fun, especially getting to be a ham in front of the camera and mixing it up with Charlie, the serial killer. Second, because I was looking for a creative way to promote the release of my latest novel, Payback.

Did it work? I will tell you this much. As of the writing of this article, Writing a Murderer has been watched more than a quarter of a million times in less than two months, and its views were still growing at the rate of about 125 per hour, 24 hours per day at last glance. For those who weren’t math majors and don’t have their smartphones handy, that’s about two additional views every minute, or about one every 30 seconds, around the clock, seven days a week. That doesn’t exactly make me a rock star, but it’s not bad for a novelist, and it certainly hasn’t been bad for Payback.

Earlier, I promised you three examples. Not to disappoint, below are two less circumspect and more traditional videos I developed to promote the earlier novels in my Brooks/Lotello thriller series, The Amendment Killer and The Puppet Master (now on sale along with Payback for only $.99 each on Kindle, through June 30th). And to wrap up this blog series with even more video marketing insights, I sat down with two of my Writing a Murderer creative cohorts in a Zoom panel for Virtual Thrillerfest 2020. See below for the sit-down panel, as well as both traditional book videos!

Can you craft your Writing a Murderer too? You won’t know until you try.

Read Part 1 | Read Part 2