Time and effort costs of special projects

Are you tired of the hustle-harder approach to book marketing? What if a quieter, more creative strategy could work just as well — and feel a whole lot better? How can special editions, physical letters, and library outreach bring readers to your books without the daily grind of ads and social media? Sara Rosett shares her low-key approach to marketing, direct sales, and the creative business of being an indie author.

In the intro, dealing with uncertainty, and Becca Syme's Quit books; The Successful Author Mindset; Building resilience and the creative lies that writers tell themselves [Wish I'd Known Then]; On Writing – Stephen King; Big Magic – Elizabeth Gilbert;

This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Sara Rosett is the USA Today bestselling author of over 30 books across 1920s mysteries, cosy mysteries, and travel mysteries, as well as nonfiction for authors. She's also the co-host of the fantastic Wish I'd Known Then podcast.

In this episode:

• Why low-key, personality-driven marketing can be more sustainable than aggressive advertising
• How to pitch your books to libraries using a simple email strategy
• The pros and cons of special editions, physical letters, and Kickstarter campaigns
• Shifting from retailer-first releases to direct sales through a Shopify store
• Co-writing nonfiction and the power of series bundles for reader discovery
• Drawing creative inspiration from other industries and international storytelling trends

You can find Sara at SaraRosett.com and at WishIdKnownForWriters.com

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Transcript of the interview

Jo: Sara Rosett is the USA Today bestselling author of over 30 books across 1920s mysteries, cosy mysteries, and travel mysteries, as well as nonfiction for authors. She's also the co-host of the fantastic Wish I'd Known Then podcast. Welcome back to the show, Sara.

Sara: Hi, Jo. Thanks for having me. It's great to be back.

Jo: It is great to have you back. You were last on the show five years ago, around February 2021, and we talked about writing a series — and you have a great book on that. But first up, give us an update. What does your author business look like right now, and what are you up to with your writing?

How Sara's author business has evolved

Sara: Well, it's changed a lot.

I sat down to think about this and I thought, yes, I have got into direct sales. I've done Kickstarters. I have a Shopify store now. I've really shifted from releasing first on the retailers. I don't really do that anymore. I've done some special editions, some physical things — I'm sure we'll talk about those later.

Still doing the podcast with Jamie, the Wish I'd Known Then podcast, we're still doing that. I also have a Mystery Books podcast, which is an episodic podcast that comes out in seasons. I do a short season, about one a year, so I keep doing that. Writing some nonfiction.

I did the trope book with Jennifer Hilt for mystery and thriller. And writing-wise, I've created a spinoff, a short spinoff in the 1920s series. I'm still loving the 1920s timeline. But I've slowed down a little bit on the releases. Busy, but good.

Jo: Busy, but good.

All right, we're going to get into all of those things. Although I must say I had forgotten about your Mystery Books podcast and going to seasonal. I also had my second podcast, Books and Travel, which is now on a kind of hiatus, but going to a seasonal approach is actually really interesting.

Do you find that listeners come back to that podcast?

The power of a seasonal podcast

Sara: Yes, and it surprises me because I've always thought you have to be weekly with a podcast to gain any traction at all, which I think is the best way to do it. You can build an audience quickly then, but I just knew I couldn't sustain that.

So when I set out, I started with maybe seven to ten episodes and I did them each year — each year has had a season — and I do five to ten episodes. Readers find it, and I have highlighted specific books. I think maybe they're searching for a podcast about the Thursday Murder Club or something like that.

They find it that way, and I get downloads, just steady downloads throughout the year, and I don't do much. I do some Pinterest pins for that, and that's about all I do. This is one of those things — it's the kind of low-key marketing that's low threshold, but it does work.

I think if your readers are looking for stuff to listen to about the topic you write about, it could be a good way to do some low-cost, long-tail marketing. I love it. I keep doing it because I love it.

Jo: That's great.

Low-key marketing that fits your personality

Jo: As you mentioned, I really wanted to talk to you about this low-key, non-hype marketing. We've met in person a number of times, and I think we're quite similar — we're quiet, reserved.

We are quite low key. I just put content out, and yes, I do some paid ads or whatever, but I just don't find the hype marketing something I want to do. I like the attraction marketing, and I feel like I do intuitive marketing.

So how does your low-key marketing fit with your personality?

Sara: Well, I did try some of the more promotional marketing. I tried to have a street team back when I heard authors talking about that.

I thought, oh, I'll do a Street Team, and that doesn't really match with my readers. My genre — that's just not a thing that happens a lot there. So I backed off of that, and I've tried ads. Not really interested in those. I'm not really good at them, and I don't really want to get good at them.

So I've searched for ways that I can find readers that don't rely on ads. I've really focused on my newsletter, and I have two of those. I have a main one that goes out to my readers who sign up in the back of the book. And then I have a New Release in Historical Mysteries newsletter that goes out about twice a month most of the time.

That's just curation. I'm saying, hey, these are the new books that are out. I feel like those are easy to do. They fit with my personality, which is like, here, let me give you some information about what's going on in this genre. I do newsletters, the promo sites, the smaller promotional paid ads — I do those occasionally. I have a rotation that I go through, and I try to get a BookBub. If I can, that's great.

I've just done things that are leaning into what I feel comfortable doing.

Pitching books to libraries

Sara: A lot of it is finding small sites where I haven't run an ad. Let me see if there's anybody who wants to sign up or get a free book through me here. I've done some BookFunnel marketing, where you can join the group promos. I like those.

And I've reached out to libraries because I feel like my books appeal to libraries. They like the 1920s historicals. It's an easy way to reach people — it's attractive to libraries.

So I had a list of libraries in my state, and I have an assistant who helps me out. She emailed down the list. She picked a few every week and messaged them and said, hey, this is a local author. She lives in this state. Here are some books you might enjoy from her.

And I have, because of you, large print — I got into that when you started talking about large print a couple of years ago. So I have large print case laminate books that libraries like. I just do things like that, things that are not the norm.

Hardly anybody is talking about marketing to libraries. But I try to do that. Sometimes I'll just think of something. I was at the library and I thought, wow, look at all these hardcover case laminate books they have in this large print section. Maybe I should try that. And then I search out and try to figure out if I can do it.

Jo: And just for people who don't know, case laminate is a hardback.

Sara: Yes.

Jo: That's really interesting. You mentioned the libraries and the list. Was that a list you were able to buy? I remember years ago I had someone on the show who was doing that kind of thing. Or was it that your assistant had to go through and find all the libraries, find an email address, that kind of thing?

Sara: I think I found it through Sisters in Crime, which is a mystery writers' organisation, and I think they had a contact list — you could get libraries and bookstores in your area.

I think I started with that and then just research. And I'm sure now with AI, you could put in where you are and say, in a radius of 250 miles, what is near me? And you could probably get a great list.

Jo: Absolutely. And when the assistant is emailing, is it just information about you and then saying, would you like to buy? Because you have a big backlist, and we don't want to be sending loads of expensive hardbacks to libraries unless they're actually going to buy. What's the process to actually sell to them?

The library email approach

Sara: I wrote up an email and introduced myself. I leaned into the “I'm local — I live in the same city or state that you're in.”

Then I described my most popular series and said the first book is this. I put a link to a PDF that they can go look at. I think it's on my website, and they can go see the books. They can print that out, of course, and it has the ISBNs. I make sure they know they can order them from Ingram, and that's all I do.

Then when I had a new release, we switched it up and put that at the top. But I have all the books in the series so they know it's a series.

Jo: That's fantastic. I love that.

Set-and-forget promotional marketing

Jo: A lot of what you were talking about was newsletter, email marketing, some ads, but nothing aggressive — as in you're not monitoring it every single day. The email pushes, like a BookBub or free books, bargain books — you can book it and then it's almost set and forget, isn't it? You don't have to log in every day to check the results. Is that what you mean?

Sara: Yes. And I like those because they are set and forget. You just have to remember to drop the price and then reset it on Amazon, and then they send it out to their list and hopefully you get some traffic from that.

I like that much better than Facebook ads, because with ads I feel like you have to go in and monitor the comments and check on how they're doing. It's a more full-time type job. If you're doing a lot of ads, it's a couple of hours — for me anyway, because I'm not very savvy with it and I'm not as experienced. So it would take a long time to increase my knowledge there.

Jo: To be fair, both of us have had many years when we could have become experts, but the fact is it doesn't suit our personalities.

I am now working with Claude Code a bit more to do Amazon ads, but even then we go in once a week and Claude does a few things and then we log out again. I'm not doing this daily stuff, and I may eventually get back into doing it for Meta. But in terms of what I mean by low-key marketing — it's lower stress when you don't have to do stuff every day.

And I guess what you're doing with the Mystery Books podcast, with the library pitches, with the batching — is that what you're doing? Putting aside time for marketing occasionally?

Sara: Yes. And that's what I do. I'll think, oh, I haven't checked Kobo promos, so let me go check that, because I do use those too.

I'm wide, so I'm trying to find things that bring my books to readers everywhere. I use the Kobo promos, I use Kobo Plus, I use Draft2Digital to get digital books into libraries. I'm always running — if they have a library sale anywhere, I sign up for it and I just do these occasional things.

It's not every day, and I like doing things in phases. I like doing a special edition and working on that and then being done with that and putting that away and going back to writing or whatever. I don't mind doing promo for a little bit, but then I don't want to do it every day.

A project-based approach to the author business

Jo: We are similar in so many ways. I also have this project approach to life and business. If I'm writing a first draft of a new book, pretty much everything else goes out the window.

Sara: Yes.

Jo: Exactly. I just don't have the bandwidth. I'm not in that head space.

And then, as we record this, I've got a Kickstarter coming up for Bones of the Deep and yesterday I did the book trailer, and I'll do the push for the Kickstarter and then I'm just going to stop.

Sara: Well, the positive way to look at that is it's focus, right? We can focus for two weeks or a month or whatever — two months doing a Kickstarter or whatever — and then we're done with it, and then we move on.

Jo: That just seems more sustainable to me. I didn't like doing everything every day or every single week.

Sara: Me either. I like switching it up, and I do enjoy the different phases of writing.

I like the research and then I like doing the — well, I don't like the drafting that much, but once I get a draft done, I like the editing. And then when it comes time to promote it or do a special edition or whatever, I enjoy that part. Finding whatever I'm going to use for the interior photos and stuff — just things like that. I enjoy each phase and I like switching it out.

Jo: I think that's really good. Some people think this writer's life is you write new words every single day and you manage your ads every single day. That seems to be what some people do, but that's certainly not us, is it?

Sara: No. And that's great if you want to do that. I just don't want to. And I think we've come to the point now where each person can do this as they want. Hopefully people don't feel the pressure to meet these self-imposed deadlines or parameters that don't exist. There's no rules for writing or publishing. You can do whatever you want.

Social media — or not

Jo: Let's just mention social media then. What are you doing for that?

Sara: Not much!

Jo: Nor me!

Sara: I'm dabbling in Pinterest because I think that could have the longer tail. I do a little Instagram, but that is about it. And I really considered just leaving it altogether.

I'm never on Facebook. We were talking earlier about saying no, and I don't want to join any more Facebook groups. I don't care what information they have. I figure I'll hear about it on a podcast if it's great.

I think social media has changed so much. In the beginning, it was great — you could find readers. Now it's just much harder to connect with readers there. I want to have a presence so that if people go look for me, they'll find my books and hopefully find a link to download a free book and read it or an audiobook and listen to it. Then they can get on my newsletter and connect with me there. That's my philosophy.

Jo: I think so too. I am on Instagram @jfpennauthor in that I do post pictures there, and even very recently I've discovered how to do a reel, which is just hilarious — I'm only about seven years late.

But I don't check my DMs, so if anyone messaged me on Instagram or Facebook, I'm just not getting them.

Sara: I know. And I feel like there's so many places people can connect with you. I put up a post on Facebook and said, I'm not going to be here much anymore. If you're looking for me, you can find me on Instagram maybe, or sign up for my newsletter to really stay in touch.

Jo: I think that's what we have to do. But our idea of this project-based approach to the author life and the author business doesn't suit social media, because the people who are really good on social media are on it multiple times a day, creating content multiple times a day. It just suits some people and not others.

Sara: I do things and I take pictures and think, oh, I'll put this on Instagram. And then I don't ever do it. One time we went on a road trip and I took a bunch of paperbacks and dropped them off in the free little libraries. I took a picture at each one and I never posted those ever. I ran across them years later and thought, oh yeah, I did it but I didn't post it on social media. That's just not my thing.

Special editions and physical design

Jo: Although you did just say that you like doing the art and the photos, and you've done some beautiful special editions. You've done letters, you do a lot of physical design for your books. So talk about that — why you're doing that, why it's fun, and the pros and cons, because it can be a time suck and a money suck.

Sara: Yeah. I think you have to figure out where your gauge is for that, because you can go all in and do everything for the special editions.

I've come to the conclusion I'm going to survey my readers before I do another one and say, what do you really like about them? Because I do mine and release them on my Shopify store first — is it just that you're getting it first, or do you like all the bells and whistles?

I enjoy doing the endpages and the ribbon, and I've done character art for them. But since my books are set in the 1920s, there's a lot of photos from that time period that are available. In Deposit Photos, you can go in and search for those.

The last two books I did, I used photos that I thought captured what the characters would look like. That was a lot of fun to find and just include photos instead of character art. And it was a lot faster than waiting for character art too.

The pros are that it's fun and you get to do things you don't normally get to do — finding beautiful illustrations for the endpages, doing the sprayed edges, just making it really special.

Storytelling through letters

Sara: I enjoy doing things that you can't do on Amazon. You just can't do letters on Amazon.

With both Kickstarters, you could get three physical letters in the mail. They were a story told through letters, and they had art. The first one was black and white, and then the second set was colour.

Since then, I've done colour, and it's a challenge to write those because it's a totally different type of writing. It's a 1,000 to 1,500 word little snippet, and where you end is important so that readers will be looking for the next one.

Including art — whether it was a map, illustrations of what the view looks like, what the house looks like. Not that I illustrated it — I had somebody else help me do that.

It's fun to think about how stories can be told in different ways. I love novels, but 70,000 words is a lot of words. That's a big project. Sometimes it's nicer to have a shorter project. The letters were shorter and a shorter time investment. I enjoyed them for that.

For the cons — it's just a longer ramp up to get it going. If you want to do a special edition or letters or book boxes or anything like that, just estimate how much time you think you need and then multiply by three or five, because it's going to take so much longer than you think. Would you agree with that, with your special editions?

Jo: Yeah. Although I think now I've got a process for it.

Although, I did my book trailer for Bones of the Deep yesterday, and it reminded me — the book trailer is 30 seconds, and it took me nearly ten hours!

Sara: I do believe that though. I completely believe it.

Jo: Because I'm a bit of a control freak. I love working with Midjourney. I say I think I'm a control freak — of course I am. We all are as indie authors.

But I'm a very visual author, and you sound like you are as well. I see the book, and if I'm generating pictures of the characters or the ship or what happens in the storm or whatever, then it needs to look like what's in my head. So I end up generating and generating, and then I did music and then — yeah, it's very creative, but it takes a heck of a long time.

From Kickstarter to Shopify store

Jo: Coming back to your letters and your Kickstarters — I did go check. It's been a while since you've done those. Have you changed to using your Shopify store, and will you do another Kickstarter?

Sara: I may do another Kickstarter. I do feel like I found new readers on Kickstarter. That's a pro definitely — people will see your work that maybe would never see it on Amazon.

It's a much smaller pool to stand out in. Whereas on Amazon there are thousands and millions of books, on Kickstarter there might be five historical mysteries or two at that moment. So it's easier to stand out.

I'll probably do another Kickstarter, but to me it was difficult with the prep that went into it. Then the launch, and the launch kind of stressed me out. I know we talked to you on our podcast before your first Kickstarter and you were a little stressed, so I'm not as stressed as I would be with the first one.

But it is a lot to prepare, and I do feel some pressure that I want this one to do well. And then the fulfilment — I like to do things in phases, so I felt like it was hard for me to move on to anything else while I was waiting for the books to arrive, because I didn't feel done with that until I had sent out the books. It just seemed like it took quite a bit of time.

So with my next release, I thought, I'm going to launch this on my Shopify store and see how it does.

I still did the special edition and I still did a lot of the things I learned to do with Kickstarter, like emailing my list a little more often and highlighting these special things. And coordinating with a couple of other authors in my genre to say, hey, I have a book out and it's a special edition — you might be interested. And then share their stuff when their book comes out.

The first one I did, I had the book sent to me. I signed them, packed them, and sent them out. But the second one, I said, to save time and money, we were just going to do a digital signature. I had them shipped directly from Book Vault to the reader, and that just helped simplify things so much.

Launching on my store, I didn't see quite as many sales or bring in quite as much money as I did on Kickstarter, but it took a lot less time. I feel that was a good trade-off. It simplified the time it took to do it, so I was able to get back to writing more quickly.

The second one I launched on my store as well. I've done the spinoff series on my store — it's a three-book series — and I'll probably do the third book on my store too.

Then maybe when I go back to my original 1920s series, which is the one that does the best and is my most popular, I may go back to Kickstarter with that one. I think it's nice to have the choice to launch on my store or Kickstarter. I can choose — do I have enough time to do it the way I want to on Kickstarter?

Scarcity, direct sales, and training readers

Jo: I feel like launching on my store, there's less of a time pressure. We don't really have scarcity in our business, and the only way to make it scarce is to have a limited-time offer. Which to me, Kickstarter by its very nature is a limited-time offer.

Obviously it's easier for me because I'm near BookVault, so I go up there and physically sign the books, and I like doing that occasionally. But I hear you with the direct store, and I also presume it trains people to buy from your store.

So how has your revenue shifted from the big stores like Amazon, Kobo, to Shopify, Kickstarter, direct sales?

Sara: It's shifted a lot. I do the Shopify store just like I do everything else — in phases. I'm like, hey, I have a new release. Go buy it at my store. And I have a lot of sales.

I also launched a third set of letters last year around October, leading into November. I said, you can get this series of letters — two a month all year in 2026. Go to my store, sign up for it, buy it there. They'll be launching in December.

I push it, I talk about it. I do a podcast about the letters or the special edition on Mystery Books podcast. I ran a couple of ads, got the word out, saw some sales, got everything done, and then it just kind of tapers off.

What I need to do is continue to market it, especially to my list — hey, did you know I've got these bundles? Did you know you can get bundles of paperbacks or audiobooks over here from me at a discount? I need to work that into my newsletter strategy.

It's kind of like I use it in phases. I still have books on all the retailers and still promote those and link to them. But that's not my focus now. If I'm going to send traffic anywhere, I'm going to send it to my store.

My mindset is more on direct sales and the special things I can do — the special editions, the unique things they can only get from me. I'll still do a BookBub if I can get one, and push that to the retailers. The smaller newsletter sites — I use those to reach readers there. But my focus is definitely on the special editions and doing things on my store that you can't get anywhere else.

Beyond ebook, audiobook, and paperback

Jo: A lot of people, new authors particularly, are thinking about ebook, audiobook, paperback. And all of those you can get anywhere — for both our books, you can get them in those formats anywhere. And large print as well.

I have large print paperback, and I actually remember, it was probably five years ago when you were here and you mentioned large print hardback. And I was like, oh yeah, I should do that. Of course, I never did. You can't do everything.

Sara: You can't do everything.

Jo: You can't. But I think you probably can do a large print hardback on Amazon now with KDP Print — you can do hardback — but none of them are as good quality as the printing we get elsewhere.

Also, as you say, all those special things — you actually can't sell them on Amazon. People can sell them secondhand or whatever, but you just can't do that. So I think that's the creative fun of having your own store or doing Kickstarters or selling direct — just all the other fun things that satisfy us creatively too. Because it's not all about the readers, is it?

Sara: Right, because we want to be enjoying what we're doing. We don't want it to be a slog.

Jo: What's the fun in that?!

How long Sara has been an indie author

Jo: Just remind us how long you've been doing this now.

Sara: My first book came out in 2006. It was traditionally published, and I had a series of ten books with a traditional publisher.

Then as that one was getting near the end, I was experimenting with indie — was a hybrid for a while. Then I went all indie pretty much.

Jo: In what year?

Sara: That was probably — I think my first indie book came out in 2012. So for a while I was trying to do indie and a traditionally published book, and that was very — I felt like I was torn in all kinds of different directions. I thought it was going to be so much simpler just to do this all myself. Maybe not, but —

Jo: Pros and cons, as we said.

Co-writing the Mystery and Thriller Trope Thesaurus

Jo: One of the things you've done recently is co-written a Mystery and Thriller Trope Thesaurus with Jennifer Hilt, who's been on this show as well as your show. Tell us about co-writing, because I don't think you've done much co-writing.

Sara: No, I hadn't. That was the first co-written book I'd ever done. And it was a great experience. Jennifer Hilt made it so easy. She has several books in this Trope Thesaurus series, so she had a format and we just used her format.

We took the tropes and divided them up. She took half and I took half, and we went off and wrote on our own and came back together and then we would trade.

It was really easy. I don't know that this is the way co-writing usually goes, but we did have a contract and we started out with all the normal things — a plan and a contract. We had to decide who was going to coordinate everything for the cover and the copy editing and all that.

When we got done, we used Draft2Digital and did the payment splitting, which made that part easy. It's been a great experience, and I think it's just because Jennifer has done this before and she's really easy to work with. I highly recommend co-writing if you can find somebody like Jennifer who's already done it and can take you through the system.

Jo: I think that's the point — if you have someone like Jennifer who has a layout, it's a bit like the For Dummies series. I had an opportunity to do something with them at one point, and it's so formulaic in terms of doing it, and then you're filling it in. Clearly Jennifer's managing that really well.

The co-writing I've done with various people has been pros and cons, but it's not been in an established series. I love that you say that, but just to warn people — that might not be your experience.

Sara: Yes. And I think it's so much about personality and how you work together, how you each write, and your deadlines. If you try to set a really close deadline — we pushed our deadline out. We had planned to do a Kickstarter with the launch of the trope book, and then she ended up moving and I had a bunch of stuff going on. We were like, you know what, that's fine. We won't do a Kickstarter. And it was okay.

You just have to figure out how it's going to go. And if you have someone that's flexible when you need to be flexible, that's so important.

Jo: Adjusting is the reality of life, isn't it? And I feel like the Trope Thesaurus — it's not going to necessarily have a spike sale and then disappear. It is an evergreen book, right?

Sara: Yes. People will find it when they find the series. It's not something that has to be pushed during a certain time period and then we're done. It's a long-term, evergreen type book.

The role of series and bundles

Jo: Talking of series, you've obviously got multiple series. People should definitely go look — you've got great branding and your series are so clear. What part do series and bundles play in marketing in general, and in your direct sales?

Sara: I like to bundle them for my direct store because I figure I need something special about my store — a reason for people to go there. They can get the books on Amazon and Audible and Spotify and all these places, so why would they go to my store?

I've really leaned into bundles for the store, so they can get a three-book audiobook bundle or the whole series in pretty much all my series. They can do the paperback bundling.

I've done a paperback starter series bundle where they can get each book one in my first three series bundled together through Book Vault. I thought I really need to do that with the audiobooks. That's on my list — to create a starter audiobook bundle.

Bundles do well on Kobo. They draw readers in over there. And for the rare times I can get a BookBub, I think bundles seem to appeal to BookBub. If I'm going to pitch something, it seems like they like bundles.

Readers like them too. Part of it is the convenience. You've got the whole series together and you can just read one after another. You don't have to go find it and figure out what order they're in.

Jo: They do. And I love offering bundles in the Kickstarter as add-ons and on my Shopify stores as well.

Because I'm always surprised — somebody's just found me and then they order the 13 ARKANE thriller paperback bundle, and I'm like, okay, wow. That just feels like a win.

Sara: Yes. I love to see those come in and you think, oh, I wonder how they found me. Why they would dive in with the seven-book series. That's fantastic.

Jo: It is interesting. With the paperbacks and the shipping, you drop some money for a complete print series. And then obviously it's usually a bit less on things like audio and ebook bundles, but it's still a real commitment.

So yeah, everybody, we love bundles.

Sara: We do.

What Sara is excited about next

Jo: I wanted to come back to the podcast, Wish I'd Known Then, which is brilliant. I often refer to it on this show. Hopefully we share quite a few listeners, and you and Jamie talk about industry changes, personal things. Given all the stuff that's going on, what are you excited about? What are you experimenting with? What changes are you seeing that you're enjoying?

Sara: We appreciate the shout-out. Every time you give us a shout-out — and I do think we share a readership. I think you are our most frequently mentioned other podcast. We are always referring to you on Wish I'd Known Then.

What I'm looking forward to is — I like seeing what other businesses or industries are doing and seeing if I can apply that to writing and books. That's how I came up with the letter idea. I saw some people doing that. I found out later there were some mystery-related mystery letter subscriptions, but I didn't know about them and they weren't well known.

I thought, oh, I could try that. So I'm looking forward to doing more creative things that we haven't had the opportunity to do, but now we are going to have the tech and the fulfilment to do.

Merch could be fun. I haven't ever delved into that. Translations — I didn't even mention translations earlier. I've done a couple of languages in my historical series, and I think it's really interesting the options we have now in translation. The books could go into so many more languages, so much easier. So I'm looking into that.

Just reaching out and trying some of these new things that are on the horizon. You're much more futurist than I am. I'm much more about looking back at the past and going, oh, that was cool. Maybe we can do something similar, but different now.

Finding creative inspiration from other industries

Jo: That's interesting. How are you finding out that information about what other industries are doing? Because the curation of the information stream is hard for all of us.

Sara: I don't know. I seem to run across things. I'm always reading and browsing online and seeing what people are talking about.

I did see a post years ago about a company that was doing special edges — limited-edition special edges. When I saw that, I thought, oh, I wonder if I could do that. And I hand-stamped snowflakes on a Christmas book.

Jo: Oh, I remember that. I actually bought a stamp. I got a (skull) stamp made.

Sara: Oh, awesome.

Jo: I never used it!

Sara: Well, it's a lot of work. It takes time. But they're very special. Each one is unique, just like a snowflake. Each book has all these different types of snowflakes and ink colours on it.

I'll see something and think, oh, I wonder if I could do that. And then I'm always consuming really quirky media. I'm into Asian dramas — Korean dramas, Japanese dramas — and I'm seeing trends over there for storytelling. The vertical dramas they're putting out, super short.

I just wonder what that's going to turn into in the future. I'm not a video person, but in the future I think there could be short little videos that we could make of our books. That would be just crazy. I don't know that I would have the skills to do that, but we might be able to hire somebody to do that for us.

Korean dramas and new storytelling trends

Jo: There are lots of AI apps that are already helping with that. I do love making book trailers.

And I have also thought about my short stories particularly — turning them into short videos. I've written a few screenplays, so I'm also thinking about that kind of visual-sized content. I also watch a lot of Korean shows.

Sara: Oh, do you?

Jo: I love Korean shows.

Sara: Oh, we have to talk later.

Jo: They're very good. I also like the Korean sports stuff and the cooking stuff, and they're just so good at hooking you in.

Sara: Yes, they are.

Jo: They are so good.

Sara: They're really good at blending genres. And I've noticed with their storytelling, they're doing a lot of these stories they call isekai stories, where the main character falls into a story. I heard somebody talking about it, saying they think that's popular because we're so familiar with media entertainment — we kind of know where the story's going. So that's a new way.

If your character falls into a fictional mystery and knows who the bad guy is and is trying to prevent a death or something, that's a completely different story than just a straight mystery.

Jo: That's interesting. In a way, the LitRPG genre where the character goes into a game, or the character is in a game — I suppose it's got some relationship to that. But I think K-Pop Demon Hunters is like the most successful film and music and all of this kind of thing. It's clearly coming to more Western audiences.

Sara: Yes. It's becoming much more mainstream than it used to be, I think.

Jo: That's really interesting given that you're mainly a historical author. Are we going to get 1920s Korea?

Sara: Oh, maybe. That's an interesting time period. Maybe my character needs to travel there.

Jo: You have a travel series, don't you?

Sara: Yes. I have a modern, cosy kind of travel series, and then in my 1920s series, it takes place mostly in England, but I have a spinoff with a character who's gone to Egypt, and I have three books set in Egypt.

Jo: Well, you never know.

Sara: I know. Maybe they need to travel.

Jo: I love it. Okay, where can people find you and your books and your podcasts online?

Sara: Thanks for having me. This has been so much fun. You can find me at SaraRosett.com. My store is SaraRosettBooks.com. You can find the podcast with Jamie and me, Wish I'd Known Then — it's everywhere, Apple, Spotify. We're even on Substack now. Yeah, that's where everything is.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Sara. That was great.

Sara: Thank you.

The post Special Editions, Seasonal Podcasts, and the Art of Low-Key Book Marketing with Sara Rosett first appeared on The Creative Penn.