How to Make an AI Book Trailer for Your Novel

Quick answer: A book trailer has one job: make a reader want to know what happens. SceneMixer gives an author two ways to make one. The story trailer is a short drama project: you write a sixty-to-ninety-second trailer script — a narrator, three or four key moments, a final line — and your characters are cast, kept consistent and filmed like a film. The cover trailer is an ad project: you upload the cover as the product, pick a length and tone, and it ends on an end card with your name, the title, a tagline and a call to action such as Pre-order now. Either way, the title reaches the viewer by voice or on the end card, not as text in the shots, because generated video does not write legible text.

Still from “The Last Envelope”, an AI short drama generated end-to-end by SceneMixer (6 characters, 1 episode) — Sample: “The Last Envelope” — Realistic HD, 1 episode, produced end-to-end by SceneMixer from the script · watch the episodes

Story trailer, first line of your trailer script: NARRATOR (voice-over): In the town of Halloway, nobody has opened the lighthouse door in forty years. Tonight, someone knocked from inside.

Which kind of trailer

	Story trailer	Cover trailer
Starts from	A short trailer script you write	One to four photos: the cover first
Where	Upload Script (or AI Create)	The Ad Video tab
Shows	Your characters and settings, in scenes	Your book as the hero object, in styled scenes
Title and author	Spoken by the narrator; add text later in your editor	Printed on the end card
Length	Whatever your script runs to	15, 30 or 60 seconds
Best for	Fiction with a strong premise and a face on it	A release announcement, a pre-order push, non-fiction

The story trailer, step by step

Write the trailer script, not the book. Pasting a whole novel gives you the whole novel, episode by episode. A trailer is its own short script: a narrator, three or four moments that raise questions, and a last line. One page is plenty. Use a screenplay layout.
In step 1, choose Film for a cinematic pace and 16:9 Landscape for YouTube and your website, or 9:16 Portrait for book communities on TikTok and Instagram. Pick the visual style that matches your cover: Filmic Live-Action for a thriller, Soft-Mist Live Action for a romance, Hand-painted Anime Film or Watercolor Storybook for fantasy or a children’s book.
Cast your characters as you see them. In step 2, rewrite each character’s description to match the book — the scar, the coat, the colour of the eyes — and regenerate. You know them better than any reader. Describe a face so it is not generic.
Make the narrator voice-only. A narrator who is heard and never seen is set to Voice only (off-screen); describe the voice you hear when you read the book aloud.
Generate, fix, composite. Regenerate the shots that miss, then composite the trailer into one file and download the original.

The Filmic Live-Action card under Visual Style in SceneMixer's project setup — The cards as they appear in step 1, *Set Up Your Project*. Pick one in each row before the script is read; the visual style is fixed once you continue.

The Soft-Mist Live Action card under Visual Style in SceneMixer's project setup — The cards as they appear in step 1, *Set Up Your Project*. Pick one in each row before the script is read; the visual style is fixed once you continue.

A trailer script you can adapt

Beat	What to write
The world	A wide shot of the one place the book is about, at the time of day it feels like. Narrator: one sentence of premise.
The lead	A close-up of the main character doing something that shows who they are. No dialogue, or one line.
The disturbance	The moment the story starts: a letter, a knock, a stranger. Narrator: the question.
The stakes	Two or three quick shots of what could be lost. Sound carries them.
The last line	A close-up and one line of dialogue that the reader will meet again in the book.

Keep spoken lines short: about three words a second in English. A sixty-second trailer holds far fewer words than you think. How to write one shot · Lines and voice-over.

A storyboard segment: location, time and weather fields, then numbered shots with durations, asset chips and spoken lines — A storyboard segment: the header fields, then numbered shots with their seconds, @ chips for who is in frame, the lines and the sound.

The cover trailer, step by step

Open the Ad Video tab and add your cover first. Up to four images; the first one is the hero. A photo of the printed book — on a table, in someone’s hands — often works better than the flat cover file. Which photos work.
Say what it is in the one-line box: a hardback psychological thriller, launching in March. Where the sentence and the photo disagree, the sentence wins.
Pick length, tone, shape and resolution. Tone sets the treatment — Twist or Epic for a thriller, Warm for a romance, Minimal for literary fiction. Ad options.
Hand it to the AI, or take the wheel. One click runs the whole chain at one quoted price; expert mode stops after the script so you can rewrite lines first. One-click or expert mode.
Set the end card. Brand = your author name, Product name = the title, a tagline, and a call to action such as Pre-order now. You can edit the card and rebuild the cut without reshooting. The end card.

Text, rights and covers with faces

No readable text in the shots. Generated video does not write legible words, so a title painted across a scene will come out garbled. Let the narrator say the title, use the end card in a cover trailer, or add the title and release date in your own video editor after downloading.
Only your own book. Make trailers for work you hold the rights to. Someone else’s novel, a famous series or its characters are not yours to adapt, and well-known franchises trigger the IP check.
Covers with a real person’s photo. Real people are not put into generated video: in an ad, people in a photo are removed before anything is made, and a reference that is a real photograph of a face is rejected by the face check. A cover built around a photograph of a person may lose the person or not be usable at all. Illustrated covers and object covers work best. Which photos work for an ad.
The AI label. Retailers and festivals may have their own rules for disclosing AI-made trailers; check them before you publish. The AI badge switch.

What it costs

A story trailer is priced like any short project: the script read, the setup images (the first 15 on an account are free), the storyboard, and video by the second — 10 credits a second on the default tier, so a sixty-second trailer is sixty seconds of video. A cover trailer shows one all-in price on each length and resolution option before you start, and that price is a cap. The ad price is a cap.

The SceneMixer episode editor: asset library on the left, the storyboard in the middle, the video preview on the right, and every segment along the bottom timeline — The episode editor: the episode’s assets on the left, the storyboard in the middle, the preview on the right, every segment along the timeline.

Genre	Trailer kind	Visual style or tone
Thriller, crime	Story trailer	Filmic Live-Action
Romance	Story trailer	Soft-Mist Live Action
Fantasy, YA	Story trailer	Hand-painted Anime Film or Painterly Anime
Children’s picture book	Story trailer	Watercolor Storybook
Non-fiction, business	Cover trailer	Minimal or Show how it works
Pre-order or launch push	Cover trailer	Epic or Twist

FAQ

Can AI make a trailer for my book?

Yes. Write a short trailer script and make it as a short film project, or upload your cover on the Ad Video tab and make a product-style trailer that ends on an end card with your title.

Can I paste my whole novel?

You can, but that makes the novel into a series, not a trailer. For a trailer, write a one-page trailer script with a narrator and three or four key moments.

Can the trailer show the book title on screen?

Not inside the generated shots; video models do not write legible text. The narrator can say it, a cover trailer prints it on the end card, or you can add it in your own editor afterwards.

How long should a book trailer be?

Thirty to ninety seconds. Cover trailers come in 15, 30 or 60 seconds; a story trailer runs as long as its script.

Will my characters look like I imagined them?

Rewrite their descriptions in step 2 to match the book and regenerate their images until they do. The same faces are then kept in every shot.

Can I make a trailer for someone else's book?

Only with the rights. Trailers for books you do not own, or for famous series and their characters, are not allowed.

Vertical or horizontal?

Horizontal (16:9) for YouTube, your website and retailer pages; vertical (9:16) for TikTok and Instagram book communities.

Can I use music from my favourite film?

No, only music you have the rights to. Projects can carry their own generated score, and an ad gets music written for it.

Your book, in sixty seconds.

Start with a one-page trailer script, or your cover.

Make a book trailer

Updated October 13, 2026