Low-Key Marketing: Sara on the Creative Penn Podcast

320 / Jami and I are on a summer break, so we’re sharing guest episodes we did on other podcasts. This week, it’s my discussion with Joanna on The Creative Penn Podcast about low-key marketing. 

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• The Creative Penn Podcast: https://www.thecreativepenn.com/the-creative-penn-podcast-for-authors/

Transcript

0:06

Hey everybody, Jamie and I are on our summer break, and while we're taking some time off, we're re-airing some podcasts where we were guests. This episode is with Joanna from the Creative Pen. She had me on earlier this year to talk about sort of the low-key marketing that we both tend to do and also how we both seem to work in phases. We'll do a writing phase and then we'll do a marketing phase and then sort of alternate back and forth. It was really interesting to talk with her and fun to explore some of these things that are not as top of mind when it comes to marketing, like podcasts and pitching to libraries. And we also talked about some of the creative things I've done, the Kickstarters with the Sprite Edges and the letters and things like that. So I hope you enjoy it and we'll be back soon. Sarah Rosette is the USA Today best-selling author of over 30 books across 1920s mysteries, cozy 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. So welcome back to the show, Sarah. Hi Joanna, thanks for having me. It's great to be back. It is great to have you back. And you were last on the show five years ago in 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? Well, it's changed a lot. I sat down to think about this and I thought, yes, I have gotten 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 though with Jamie, the Wish I'd Know Then podcast. We're still doing that. And I also have kept up Mystery Books Podcast, which is sort of an episodic podcast that comes out in seasons. It's I do a short season and do about one a year. So I keep doing that. Writing some nonfiction, not much. Did the trope book with Jennifer Hilt for Mystery and Thriller. And yeah, writing-wise, I've created a spin-off, a short spin-off in the 1920s series. I'm still loving the 1920s timeline, but slowed down a little bit on the releases. So yeah, it's, you know, busy, busy but good. Yeah, busy but good. Right. Well, 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 mean, I also had my second podcast, Books and Travel, which is also now on a kind of hiatus, but going to a seasonal approach is actually really interesting. Do you find that that listeners come back to that podcast? 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 I when I set out, I started out with maybe seven to ten episodes and I did them each each year has had a season. And I do five to ten episodes, and readers find it. And I have, you know, highlighted specific books. I think maybe they're searching for a podcast about the Thursday Murder Club or something like that. And so they find it that way. And I get downloads, just steady downloads, you know, throughout the year. And I don't do much. I do some Pinterest pins for that. And that's about all I do. I mean, this is like one of those things we're talking about. It's like the kind of low-key marketing that's kind of low threshold, but it does work. And I think it's just if you can find if your readers are looking for stuff to listen to about your about the topic you write about, it could be a good way to do some low-cost kind of long tail marketing. But yeah, I love it. I keep doing it because I love it. Yeah, well, that's great. And as you mentioned, I really wanted to talk to you about this sort of low-key, non-hypey marketing, as we've met in person a number of times. And I think we're quite similar, we're quite quiet, we're quite reserved, and we're quite low-key. I mean, I just put content out and I 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 in kind of intuitive marketing. So I wonder if you could maybe talk about that. Like, how does your low-key marketing fit with your personality? Well, I did try some of the more, I don't know what you call it, more like sort of promotional marketing. I don't know how you to describe it, but like 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 and my genre, or that's just not a thing that happens a lot there. So I kind of backed off of that. And I've tried ads, not really interested in those. I'm not really good at them. I don't, and I don't really want to get good at them. So I've searched for the ways that I can find readers, but that doesn't rely on ads. So I just try to do things, 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. And that's just curation. I'm just saying, hey, these are the new books that are out. So 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. And I just try and do things like that. I do newsletters, the promo sites that are the smaller promotional paid ads. I do those occasionally. I kind of have a rotation that I go through and try and try and get a book bub, you know, and if I can, that's great. But I've just done things like that that are just leaning into these things that I feel comfortable doing. And a lot of it is just finding small sites that, oh, I haven't run an ad here. Let me see if there's anybody who wants to sign up or get a free book through me here. I've done some book funnel 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. That's an easy way to reach people. And so, or each it's attractive to libraries. So I send them, I had a list of libraries in my state, and I have a assistant who helps me out, and she messaged, 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's some books you might enjoy from her. And I have, because of you, I have large print because I got into that when you started talking about large print a couple of years ago. And so I have large print case laminate books that libraries like. So, you know, I just do things like that that are not the norm. Hardly anybody is talking about marketing to libraries, but I try and do that. And sometimes I'll just think of something like I was at the library and I thought, wow, look at all these hardcover case laminate books that they have in this large print section. Maybe I should try that so that I search out and try and figure out if I can do it. Yeah, and just for if people don't know, case laminate is a hardback. Yes. Yeah. So that's really interesting. I think that there's a few things there. Just so you mentioned there the libraries, you got a list. Was that a list that you were able to buy? I know I remember years ago I had someone on the show who was doing that kind of thing. Was it that you your assistant or you had to go through and find all the libraries, find an email address, that kind of thing? I think that I found it through. I'm a member of Sisters in Crime, which is a mystery writers organization. And I think they had a contact list of you could get libraries and bookstores in your area. And so 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. Yeah, absolutely. And then when the assistant is emailing, is it just information about you and then saying, Would you like to buy a this kind of thing? Because you have a big backlist, and we don't want to be sending loads of expensive hardbacks to libraries unless they're actually gonna buy. So what's the process to actually sell to them? I wrote up an email and I introduced myself and I leaned into the I'm local, I live in the the same city or state that you're in. And then I described my most popular series, and I said, the first book is this, and I put a link to a PDF that they can go look at that I think it's on my website, that they can go see the books, and then I have a they can print that out, of course, and it has the ISBNs, and I point, I make sure they know they can order them from Ingram, and that's all I do. And then when I had a new release, we switched it up and we're like, hey, a new release is coming out, and we put that at the top, but then I have all the books in the series so that they know it's a series. Yeah, that's fantastic. I love that. And I think a lot of what you were talking about was newsletter, email marketing, some ads, but nothing aggressive, like as in not monitoring it every single day. I think the the email pushes, like even a book bob or a you know, free booksy or bargain booksy, like you can book it and then it's almost like a set and forget, isn't it? Like you don't, yeah, you don't have to, I mean, sure, you should really monitor your results, but unlike Amazon ads or meta ads or whatever, you're not logging in every day to check the results. That that's what you mean. Yes. And I like those because they are set it and forget it. 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. And 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. And it's a more full-time type job. I feel like if you're doing a lot of ads, it's a couple of hours, I guess, 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. And and and I mean, to be fair, both of us have had many years when we could have become experts of this. But the fact is, it doesn't suit our personalities. And right, so 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. So I'm not doing the sort of daily stuff, and I may eventually get back into doing it for Meta. But just in terms of, I guess this is what I mean by the sort of low-key marketing, because 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 sort of things, is that what you're doing? It's like putting aside time for marketing occasionally and doing it then. Yes, and that's what I do. It's like I'll think, oh, I haven't checked Kobo promos, so let me go check that because I do use those two. I use the I'm in, I'm wide, so I'm trying to find things that bring my book to readers everywhere. So like I use the Kobo promos, I use Kobo Plus, I use draft to digital to get digital books into libraries. And so I'm always running if they have a library sale anywhere, I sign up for it and I just do these occasional things. I don't, it's not every day. And I kind of 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. So I don't mind doing promo for a little bit, but then I want to, I don't want to do it every day. Yeah, this is we are similar in so many ways. I also have this sort of project approach to life uh and life and our business. And if I'm writing a first draft of a new book, pretty much everything else goes out the window. And then we do. Yeah, exactly. And then because I just don't have the bandwidth. I'm not in that headspace. And then as we record this, I've got an a Kickstarter coming up. And yesterday I did the book trailer and I'll do the push-push thing for the Kickstarter, and then I'm just gonna stop. Well, the positive way to look at that is it's focus, right? You 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. Yeah. And that just seems more sustainable to me. I don't like doing everything every day or every single week. Yeah, 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, you know, do whatever I'm gonna like a special edition or whatever, I enjoy that part, like finding whatever what I'm gonna use for the interior photos and stuff. Just things like that. I enjoy each phase and I like switching it out. Yeah, well, I think that that's really good. And so you some people think this writer's life is you write new words every single day and you manage your ads every single day. Like that seems to be what some people do, but that's certainly not us, is it? No, 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 we can each person can do this as they want, and hopefully people don't feel the pressure to meet these self-imposed deadlines or parameters that you know that they don't exist. There's no rules for writing or publishing. You can do whatever you want. Well, let's just mention social media then. What are you doing for that? Not much. No, I'm I'm 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've really considered just leaving it all together. I don't know that I really will do that, but I just am never on Facebook. I'm not, I have we were talking earlier about saying no, and I don't want to join any more Facebook groups. I don't care what the information they have. I figure I'll hear about it on podcast if it's great, you know? So yeah, I don't do much. And I think that the market is the social media has changed so much. In the beginning, it was great. You could find readers, and now it's just much harder to connect with readers there. And I mean, I want to have a presence there so people, if they go look for me, they'll find my book and hopefully find a link to download a free book and read it or an audiobook and listen to it. And then they can get on my newsletter and connect with me there. That's kind of my philosophy. Yeah, I think so too. And I mean, like I am on Instagram and that I do post like pictures there. And even very recently, I've discovered how to do a real, which is just hilarious. I'm only like seven years late or something, but I don't check my DMs. So if anyone messaged me on Instagram or Facebook, I'm just not getting them. Yeah, I know, I know. And I feel like there's so many places that people can connect with you. I'm trying to say, I I put up a post on Facebook and I said I'm not gonna 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. Yeah, and I think that's what we have to do. But I think our idea of this project-based approach to the author life and the author business, it doesn't suit social media because the people who are really good on social media are on it multiple times a day and creating content multiple times a day. And yeah, it just suits some people and not others, I guess. Yeah, and I do things and I think I take pictures and I think, oh, I'll put this on Instagram, and then I don't ever do it. Like one time we went on a road trip and I took a bunch of paperbacks and dropped them off in the free little libraries that they have. And I took a picture at each one, and I never posted those ever. And I thought I've ran across them years later. I was like, oh yeah, that that didn't that I did it, but I didn't post it on social media, so that's just not my thing. Yeah. 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 book. So talk a bit about that and why you're doing that and why is that fun, and I guess pros and cons as well, because it can be a time suck and a money suck. Yeah, yeah. I think you have to figure out where your gauge is for that, because you can go all in and you can do everything for the special editions. And I've come to the conclusion, I'm gonna survey my readers before I do another one and say, what do you really like about them? Is it just that, because I do mine and I release them on my Shopify store first. And is it just that you're getting it first, or do you like all the bells and whistles, you know? Because I enjoy doing the in pages and the ribbon. And then 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, like in deposit photos. You can go in and search for those. And so the last book I did, I think the last two books, I did photos that I thought captured what the characters would look like. And that was a lot of fun to find those and just include photos instead of character art. And it was a lot faster than waiting for character art too. So yeah, I figured the pros are that it's fun and you get to do these things that you don't normally get to do, like finding the beautiful illustrations for the end pages and doing the sprayed edges and just making it really special. I enjoy that. And I enjoy doing things that like you can't do letters on Amazon, you just can't do that. So I did with both Kickstarters, I did you could get three physical letters in the mail, and they were a story told through letters, and they had art, and they the first one was black and white, and then the second set was color. And so since then I've done color, and uh it's a challenge to write those because it's a totally different type of writing because it's more you know, 1000, 1500-word little snippet, and you know, where you end it is important so that readers will be looking for the next one, and then including art with it was just a new interesting thing that I was like, oh, I could put a map in this one, I could do illustrations of what the view looks like here or what the house looks like. Not that I illustrated it, I had somebody else help me do that, but yeah, so those things are just interesting, and I think it's fun to think about how stories can be told in different ways. And I love novels, but 70,000 words, that's a lot of words. That's a big project, and sometimes it's nicer to have a shorter project. So the letters were shorter and easier to like a shorter time investment, I guess. So I enjoyed them for that. But yeah, and for the cons, it's it's just a longer up ramp, I think, for that to get it going. Because I would say 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 just multiply by like three or five because it's gonna take so much longer than you think. Would you agree with that with your special editions? Yeah, although I think now I've got a process for it. Although, like I said, I did my book trailer for Bones of the Deep yesterday, and it reminded me, uh, you know, the book trailer is 30 seconds. And I kid you not, it took me nearly 10 hours. Oh my gosh. I do believe that though. I completely believe it. Yeah, because I'm I think I'm a bit of a control freak. Like I love working with mid-journey. I say I think I'm a control freak. Of course I am. We all are as indie authors, but I'm I'm a very visual author, and you sound like you are as well, in that I see the book. And so 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 will end up generating and generating and generating, and then and then I did music and then so yeah, it's very creative, but it takes a heck of a long time. So just coming back to your letters there and your Kickstarters. So I did go check. It's been a while, hasn't it, since you've done those. So are you have you why have you now changed to using your Shopify store? Will you do another Kickstarter anytime? I may do another Kickstarter. I do feel like I found new readers on Kickstarter. So I think that there's a that's a pro definitely to doing special editions and doing stuff on Kickstarter is people will see your work that maybe would never see it on Amazon. And it's a much smaller pool of to stand out in, whereas the Amazon. There's thousands and millions of books. Whereas on Kickstarter, there might be five historical mysteries or two at that moment. So it's easier to stand out. So yes, 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 that 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, I think, with the first one, but it is a lot to prepare. And I do feel some pressure that, oh my goodness, I want this one to do well. And then the fulfillment. Like I was saying, I like to do things kind of in phases. So I felt like I, it was hard for me to move on to do anything else while I was waiting for the books to arrive. Because I didn't feel like I was done with that until I had sent out the books. So it just seemed like it took quite a bit of time. And so I thought with the next one, my next release, I did the two Kickstarters. And then with my next book, I thought I'm going to launch this on my Shopify store and see how it does. And so I still did the special edition. And I still did a lot of the things that I learned to do with Kickstarter, like emailing my list a little more often and highlighting these special things that are in it, 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 whenever their book comes out. So I did all those things. And then the first one I did, I had the book sent to me. I signed them, packed them, and sent them out. But then the second one, I said, to save us time and to save you and me money, we were just going to do a digital signature. And so I had them ship directly from Book Vault to the reader. And that just helped simplify things so much. And launching it on my store, I didn't see quite as many sales or bringing quite as much money as I did on Kickstarter, but it took a lot less time. And so I feel that was a good trade-off. And it simplified the time that it took to do it. So I was able to get back to writing a little bit more quickly. So the second one I launched on my store as well. And I'll probably do the third, this I've done the spin-off series on my store. So it has it's a three-book series, and I'll probably do the third book on my store as well. And then maybe for when I go back to my original 1920s series, which is like the one that does the best and is my most popular, I may go back to Kickstarter with that one. But yeah, I think it's nice to have the choice to launch it on my store or Kickstarter if I want. You know, I can choose do I have enough time to do it the way I want to on Kickstarter? Yeah, I I feel like launching on my store, I feel like there's less of a time pressure, though. You know, we don't have scarcity in our business, really. Right. And the only way in my mind 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 Book Vault. So I go up there and I sign physically sign the books. And that I like doing that occasionally. And but I hear you with the direct store. And also I presume it trains people, it trains people to buy from your store. So, how has your revenue shifted then from the big uh stores like Amazon, Kobo, as you say, to Shopify, Kickstarter, direct sales? Yeah, it's shifted a lot. So, yes, I do the Shopify store, and 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, or I also launched a third set of letters last year, around I think it was November or October leading into November. I was like, you can get this series of letters that will be two a month all year in 2026. Go to my store, sign up for it, buy it there. They'll be launching in December. So I do that, I push it, I talk about it, I do a podcast about letters or the special edition on Mystery Books Podcast. And then I do, I ran a couple of ads and got the word out, saw some sales, got everything done, and then I it just kind of tapers off. And what I need to do, I think, is continue to market it, especially to my list and say, 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? So I need to work that into my newsletter strategy. So it's kind of like I use it in phases, and I still have books on all the retailers and I still promote those and link to them, but that's not my focus now. I feel like if I'm going to send traffic anywhere, I'm gonna send it to my store. And yeah, so things have shifted. My mindset is more on direct sales and you know, the special things that I can do, the special editions, the unique things that they can only get from me. And then I'll still do if I can get a book bug, I would push that to the retailers and 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. Yeah, and I think a lot of people, new authors particularly, obviously, are thinking about ebook, audiobook, paperback. That is, and all of those you can get anywhere. Like for both of us, for both of our books, you can get them in those formats anywhere. And in fact, large print as well. I have large print paperback, and I do 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. So you can't do everything. You can't do everything, yeah. You can't, you can't, but I actually I think you probably can do a large print hardback on Amazon now with KDP print. You can do hardbacks, but none of them are as good quality as the printing that we get elsewhere. But also, as you say, all those special things that you actually can't sell them. I mean, people can sell them secondhand or whatever, can't they? But you just can't do that. So I think that's the creative fun of having your own store or doing kickstars of selling direct is just all the other fun things that that satisfy us creatively too, because it's not all about the readers, is it? Right, because we want to be enjoying what we're doing, we don't want it to be a slog. What's the fun in that? Yeah. And I guess we'll just remind us how long you've been doing this now. Well, my first book came out in 2006. It was traditionally published, and I had a series of 10 books with a traditional publisher. And then as that one was getting near the end, I was experimenting with indie, was a hybrid for a while. Yeah, and then I went all indie pretty much. In what year? That was probably, I think my first indie book came out in 2012. So for a while there, I was trying to do, I was doing indie in a traditionally published book, and that was very, I felt like I was torn in all kinds of different directions. And so I thought it was gonna be so much simpler just to do this all myself, which maybe not, but pros and cons, as we said. Well, okay, so one of the things you've also done recently is you've co-written a mystery and thriller Trope Thesaurus with Jennifer Hilt, who's been on this show as as well as your show, talking about this stuff. So tell us about co-writing because I don't think you've done much co-writing. 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, and she has several books in this trope thesaurus series, and so she had a format, and we just used her format, and we took the the tropes and we divided them up, and 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, and it was really easy. And 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 like a plan and a contract, and we had to decide who was going to coordinate everything for the cover and copy editing and all that. And then when we got done, we used draft to digital and did the payment splitting, which made that part easy. So 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. So I highly recommend code writing if you can find somebody like Jennifer Hilton who's already done it and can take you through the system. It's it was great. Yeah, I think that's the point there is if if you have someone like Jennifer who has layout, it's a bit like there's a for dummies series. And I 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 kind of filling it in. And clearly Jennifer's managing that really well, whereas the co-writing I've done with various people, again, has been pros and cons, but it's not been in an established series, I guess. So I love that you say that, but just to warn people, that might not be your experience. Yes, and I think it's so much about personality and how you work together and how you each write and like your deadlines. If you try and set a really close deadline, we pushed our deadline out and 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, and we were like, you know what? That's fine. We won't do a Kickstarter, and it was okay, you know. You just kind of 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. Yeah. And adjusting is that's the reality of life, isn't it? And also I feel like the trope thesaurus is not gonna necessarily have a spike sale and then disappear. It is an evergreen book, right? Yes. And it's it and people will find it when they find the series, and it's not something that it has to be pushed during this certain time period, and then we're done. It's a long-term evergreen type book. Yeah, I mean, talking of series, you've obviously got multiple series. People should definitely go. You've got great branding, and I feel like your series are so clear. So, what part does series and bundles play in, I guess, marketing in general, but also your direct sales? Well, I do 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. Because it, like you said, they can get the books on Amazon and Audible and Spotify and all these places. So why would they go to my store? So I've really leaned into bundles for the store so they can get like a three-book audiobook bundle or the whole series in all my series, pretty much. And they can do the paperback bundling. I've done a paperback starter series bundle where they can get each book in my first three series bundled together through Book Vault. And I thought I really need to do that with the audiobooks. I don't know why I haven't done that. That's on my list to do is to create a starter audiobook bundle, you know. So yeah, I feel like those do well on Kobo. They draw readers in over there. And for the rare times that I can get a book bub, I think bundles seem to appeal to book bub if I'm going to pitch something. It seems like they like bundles. So yeah, and I think readers like them because part of it, I think, 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 and everything. So I think readers like them too. They do. And I love offering bundles in the Kickstarter as add-ons, and as you say, on my Shopify stores as well, the same because I'm always surprised. I'm like, somebody's just found me, and then they order the 13 arcane thriller paperback bundle. And I'm like, okay, wow, that just feels like a win. Yes, yes. I love to see those come in, and you're like, oh, I wonder how they found me, and you know, yeah, why they would dive in with the seven book series. That's fantastic, but you know, it is interesting. The paperbacks and then the shipping, you drop some money for a complete print series, and then obviously, usually it's a bit less on things like audio and ebook bundles, but it's still a real commitment. So, yeah, everybody, we love bundles. We do in so many ways. Okay, so I wanted to come back to the podcast Wish I'd known N, which is brilliant. I often refer to it on this show. So hopefully we I think we share quite a few listeners. And you and Jamie talk about industry changes, you talk about personal things. So, given all the stuff that's going on, what are you excited about? What are you experimenting with? What sort of changes are you seeing that you are enjoying? Oh, we I we appreciate the shout-out every time you give us a shout-out. And I do think that we do share a readership. And I think you are our most frequently mentioned other podcasts that we are always referring to on Wish I Know Then. But yeah, so 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 in books. And that's how I came up with the letter idea. I saw some people doing that, and I didn't, I found out later there were some mystery-related mystery letter subscriptions, but I didn't know about them and they weren't real 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 fulfillment to do. I think merch could be fun. I haven't ever delved into that. Translations, I I didn't even mention translations earlier. I've done a couple of languages in my historical series. And so I think it's really interesting the options that we have now in translation, that the books could go into so many more languages so much easier. So I'm looking into that. And yeah, just kind of 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. Well, that's interesting you say that. So, how are you finding out that information about what other industries are doing? Because I feel like the curation of the information stream is hard for all of us. I don't know. I seem to run across things that I just I don't know where I find them. 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 the special edges. They were doing limited edition special edges. And when I saw that, I thought, oh, I wonder if I could do that. And I hand stamped snowflakes on a Christmas book. Oh, I remember that. And yeah, that was like the first I actually bought a stamp. I got a stamp made. Oh, awesome. I never used it. Well, it's a lot of work. I mean, it takes time. And so, but I mean, they're very special. Each one is unique, just like a snowflake. Each book has all these different types of snowflakes and ink colors on it. So that, so like I I'll see something and think, oh, I wonder if I could do that. And then I'm always consuming all this really quirky media. I'm into Asian dramas, Korean dramas, Japanese dramas, and the I'm seeing trends over there for storytelling and the vertical dramas that 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 that there could be short little videos that we could make of our books. And 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. I mean, there are lots of AI apps that are already kind of helping that. I mean, that I do love making book trailers. So I love and I have also thought about my short stories, particularly, I've thought about turning into short videos. Because I've written a few screenplays and so I'm also thinking about that kind of visual side. Uh I also watch a lot of Korean shows. Oh, do you? I love Korean shows. Oh, we have to talk later. Yeah, they're very, they're very good at I I also like their the Korean sport stuff and the cooking stuff, and they're just so good at uh hooking you in. Yes, they are. They are so good, yeah. Yeah, they're really good at like blending genres. And then I've noticed with their storytelling, they're doing a lot of these stories that are they call them isekai stories, where the main character falls into a story, and the and and I heard somebody talking about saying that 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. Like if your character falls into a real life 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. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, in a way, I guess the sort of lit RPG where the character goes into a game, that 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. I mean, it's clearly it coming to the to more Western audiences. Yes, it's becoming much more mainstream than it used to be, I think. Well, that's really interesting given that you're mainly a historical now. Are we gonna get 1920s Korean? Oh, maybe they do have some really cool that's a cool, interesting time period. Maybe my character needs to travel there. Yeah, you have a travel series, don't you? Yes, I do have I have a modern, cozy kind of travel series. And then in my 1920s series, it takes place mostly in England, but then I have a spin-off with a character who's gone to Egypt. And so I have three books set in Egypt. Well, you never know. I know. Maybe they need to travel. I love it. Okay, where can people find you and your books and your podcasts online? So thanks for having me. This has just been so much fun. You can find me at SarahRosette.com. That's my website. My store is sararosettebooks.com. You can find the podcast with Jamie and I. Wish I'd know then it's everywhere. Apple, Spotify. We're even on Substack now. Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Sarah. That was great. Thank you.