Between $200 and $25,000, depending on which kind you mean — and most of the pages that answer this question won’t tell you that, because they’d rather you filled in a contact form.
Here’s the honest breakdown, and then a way to get a real number for your own book in about ten seconds.
Canva, CapCut and Adobe Express will get you a trailer in an afternoon: your cover, some stock clips, a font animation. Works best for non-fiction and anything with a visually rich subject. The risk is that it looks like everyone else’s, because it’s built from the same library everyone else is using.
A professional editor cuts licensed clips or animated text to a script. This is the most common paid choice for self-published authors and a real step up from DIY. What you don’t get is your characters, your world, or anything that exists only in your book.
Scriptwriting, professional voiceover, royalty-free music, one revision round, delivered in HD. Solid and safe — and the price scales with length, so a 90-second trailer costs considerably more than the headline figure.
Real actors, a crew, real cameras. Across the industry, a cinematic trailer with actors averages $7,500–$12,000. It is genuinely the best-looking option, and if you have the budget and the lead time it’s a lovely thing to own. Most self-published authors have neither.
Across the whole market, the average book trailer costs about $3,805 and the median about $1,748. The gap between those two numbers is the tell: a handful of very expensive productions drag the average well above what most authors actually pay.
A trailer isn’t a video file. It’s scripting, voiceover, visual sourcing, motion design, music licensing, revision rounds, and formatting for every platform. Voice talent alone is often the single largest line item, priced by experience, length and usage rights.
It’s also why the tiers sit so far apart. The jump from stock footage to live action isn’t a better editor — it’s a crew, a location, a cast and a schedule.
C.I.N.E.M.A. reads your manuscript and makes a film from it — your characters, your locations, an original score, shot and assembled. Not assembled from clips someone else already used. No quote, no contact form: you can price it right now without an account.
What you give up against a live-action shoot is real actors and a real camera. What you gain is your own story on screen, this week, for roughly the cost of a paperback proof.
Drop in your manuscript, or just a word count. Nothing is uploaded or stored. Nothing is charged.
Template tools, a day. Stock-footage trailers, one to three weeks. Live action, four to twelve. C.I.N.E.M.A. is same-day for a trailer.
Sixty to ninety seconds, including end titles. Longer loses people.
When readers can act on it — ideally the day your pre-order page opens. A trailer released months before anyone can buy wastes its best feature: it ends with something to click.
With C.I.N.E.M.A., yes — the film, the characters, the score, yours to sell, licence or submit. We never train AI on your manuscript. Worth checking with any provider you consider, because it isn’t universal.
Pricing reviewed August 2026. Market rates drift — treat these as ranges, not quotes.
A word count and about ten seconds. No account, no card, no charge.
Or read more about turning your book into a film.