How to Efficiently Create Short Vids for Book Promotion on Social Media

1. Create text content in Excel
2. Export the content to individual CSV files
3. Convert the CSV files into SRT files
4. Import the SRT files into Premiere Pro
5. Edit the captions so they show in the manner we wish them to show.
6. Create vids

1. Create Text Content in Excel

1.1 Format for Each Excel Sheet

1. Start time (00:00:00:00) – where we want the text to start in the timeline
2. End time (00:00:00:00) – where we want the text to end in the timeline
3. Text content

1.2 Create a Sheet for Each Set of Text

1. Create the first sheet.
2. Make a copy of the first sheet.
3. Change the name of the new sheet to something sensible.
4. Edit the text in the new sheet.
5. Rinse and repeat until we have as many sets of text as we need.

2. Export the content to individual CSV files

1. Open the workbook
2. Go to the sheet to export
3. Go to File > Export > Change File Type
4. Choose CSV and save

1. Save the workbook as a macro enabled workbook (xlsm)
2. Go to View > Macros > View Macros
3. Type in “ExportAllSheetstoCSV” in the Macro name field, then hit the Create Button
   
   
   
   
   
4. The MS Visual Basic screen with open with your new empty macro as shown.
   
   
   
   
   
5. Copy the following code and paste it into your macro:
   

   Dim ws As Worksheet
   Dim path As String
   path = ActiveWorkbook.path & "\" & Left(ActiveWorkbook.Name, InStr(ActiveWorkbook.Name, ".") - 1)
   For Each ws In Worksheets
   

   ws.Copy
   ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs Filename:=path & "_" & ws.Name & ".csv", FileFormat:=xlCSV, CreateBackup:=False
   ActiveWorkbook.Close False
   

   Next

   
6. Click the save icon and close the VBA editor.
7. Go to View > Macros > View Macros
8. Choose “ExportAllSheetstoCSV” (if you only have one macro is will already be selected)
9. Click Run – and all your sheets will be saved into the same director as you Excel sheet as CSV files. The filenames will be: FilenameoftheExcelSheet_Nameofthesheet.csv – so name the sheets something sensible.

3. Convert the CSV files to SRT

1. Go to this website: https://gotranscript.com/subtitle-converter
2. Click Upload and choose all the CSV files
3. Choose “SubRip (.srt)” from the Select Format menu
4. Click convert and save the zip files it gives you to you harddrive.
5. Unzip the zip file and there are all your srt files – one for each set of text.

4. Import the SRT files into Premiere Pro

5. Edit the captions so they show in the manner we wish them to show.

1. Select all the captions
2. Go to “Graphics and Captions” in the main top menu
3. Select “Upgrade Captions to Graphics”

6. Creating the Vid

1. Make sure the text is on the top most layer.
2. Drag and drop our vid background into a layer under the text.
3. Make sure the vid is the right length.
4. Add in a music track if required (Incompetech has some great royalty free music) – if posting to TikTok, use their music, but YouTube, Insta etc having music already on there stops the hassle.
5. Export the vid.

7. Summary

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Choose the Backgrounds

• Unsplash - just make sure to select the free licence option
• Pexels - has stills and vids
• Pixabay - just watch out for the AI created content which is usually tagged

N.B. Kate mentions to avoid having people in the pictures because sometimes the TikTok algo can misconstrue what it is seeing, especially with romance titles and shadow ban the slideshow.

Having all my background chosen before I begin putting the slides together makes it a much faster process.

Choose the Music

TikTok Unlimited Sounds Library

#1 Note: There is also a plugin for Gimp that can be used to get a similar output: Batcher. And I am sure there must be a way of doing it in Canva, but I'm afraid I do not know what it is.

Change Create and Modified Dates of Slides

This is optional, but it saves me a lot of time when creating the slideshows on TikTok, so I am sharing it. TikTok does not allow sorting by name, only but created/modified date when adding files to a slideshow, so I use this method to make sure I can do it inside TikTok if I need to for any reason (I don't often - you'll see why later, but I still do this on the off chance since it takes seconds).

What I have found when copying files from Windows to my phone to upload to TikTok is that getting them in the right order is a headache, and flipping around to add them in the correct order for a slideshow takes forever if they are out of sequence. Hence why I take this step.

This code sorts files by name and then edits the files' created and modified dates to be 1min apart from the starting time specified, so they will definitely appear in order when sorted by date.

Using Windows Powershell (right click on the windows icon and it's in the list), copy and paste in the following code:

# --------------------------  CONFIGURE  --------------------------
$folder      = 'C:\DIR-OF-SLIDES' # your directory of JPGs
$startDate   = Get-Date '2025-05-25 12:00:00'   # first file’s “Date Created”
#              ? EDIT THIS to pick any starting moment you like
# ----------------------------------------------------------------

# 1.  Collect and order the files once (static array keeps order stable)

$files = Get-ChildItem -Path $folder -Filter *.jpg -File | Sort-Object Name

# 2.  Loop through the list, adding one second per iteration

for ($i = 0; $i -lt $files.Count; $i++) {
    $newStamp = $startDate.AddMinutes($i)   # +0 min, +1 min, +2 min, ...
    $files[$i].CreationTime = $newStamp     # write Date Created
    # Optional: keep LastWriteTime in sync
    $files[$i].LastWriteTime = $newStamp
    Write-Host "[$($i+1)/$($files.Count)] $($files[$i].Name) ? $newStamp"
}     

Make sure to edit the folder and startDate (bits in bold) at the top of the code so it can find your files and sets them to a sensible date. You can edit before you copy and paste the code, or in Powershell, if you paste then hit the up arrow and then left and right arrows you can navigate to the right place in the code to edit it in situ.

Upload the Files to the Phone

• 🎤Micro stories/ jokes as YouTube Shorts Monday - Sunday- for fun quick viewing
• 🕮A longer story every now and then for story time, over coffee or before going to bed

1. Go to the above link and download the zip file.
   
2. Extract the zip file into its own directory.
3. Copy the following 2 files from the directory:
   

   Export Layers To Files (Fast).jsx
   Export Layers To Files (Fast)-progress_bar.json

4. Navigate to the Photoshop Scripts directory, probably something like this:
   

   \Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2025\Presets\Scripts

5. Paste the files into the scripts directory.
6. Start Photoshop
7. The script can be found in the following menu:
   

   Files > Scripts

When we run the script we get this screen:

As you can see there are lots of options.

• We can have a background and/or a foreground
• We can export all layers (except the background and/or foreground if we have selected them)
• or a Group of layers
• or just the visible layers
• and we can pick what format to export to
• plus much more.

Check Out My Fiction YouTube Channel

Each week we have a theme and so there will be something for all tastes.

Tasha's Social Media

@tashaddrake.bsky.social FacebookInstagramLinkedInAmazon

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