Who Knew You Could Do This With PowerPoint

During my promo for my latest prehistoric fiction, Laws of Nature. one of my wonderful hosts posted this article  I wrote about how I use a venerable favorite PowerPoint in my book marketing. In case you missed it, here’s a revisit:

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As an Indie author, I not only write my own books but do all the marketing. For most of you, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. I’m always looking for ways to make it easier and faster. The old standby PowerPoint has come to my rescue more often than I expected. I’ve used PowerPoint for a score of years so am entirely comfortable with it and appreciate not having to learn new buttons and widgets. As a result, if PowerPoint can make me look like a pro, I’m using it.

Here are a few ideas on how PowerPoint can spiff up your marketing:

Trailer

Time required: Many Hours if you need to find the public domain images; a few hours if you have the images

Create a slideshow. Make sure to include images, text, and transitions. Add a public domain song to slide one that extends over all slides. These are easy to find with websites like Pixabay. When done, save the slideshow as an MP4. Upload to YouTube and share on a myriad of platforms (including Amazon and most blogs).

Here’s mine:

You can also do this in Canva where they offer a multitude of templates, free music (for pro customers), moving backgrounds, and more.

Gif

Time required: Less than 30 minutes

Sometimes called Stop Motion Animation, a GIF is a very short moving image that grabs the viewers attention. It could be someone reading your book or leaping for joy over how good your book is. Here’s a video on how to create one of these:

Bookshelf of your books

Time required: Less than 30 minutes

Create a bookshelf with all of your books linked to where to purchase. This is a colorful display that will invite users to visit your books. My favorite tech guy, Richard Byrne over at FreeTech4Teachers, created this video to show you how to make one:

Here’s my digital bookshelf (hover over the book and you’ll see how it links to the purchase location):

An E-book

Time required:  varies depending upon book length but it’s quick if you’re simply copy-pasting and saving as a PDF

Turn a PowerPoint presentation into an ebook. Watch this video to see how:

Four great projects using PowerPoint to energize your next marketing blitz! Do you have other clever ways you use PowerPoint to share your books?

Here’s the sign-up link if the image above doesn’t work:

https://forms.aweber.com/form/87/838503387.htm.

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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Man vs. Nature saga, the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers, and the acclaimed Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is also the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, blog webmaster, an Amazon Vine Voice,  a columnist for NEA Today, and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. Look for her next prehistoric fiction, Natural Selection, Winter 2022 

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