You’ll find video of my conversation with Sara Rosett here; subscribe to the From Expertise to Authority podcast on your favorite podcast app.
Sara Rosett is the USA Today bestselling author of over 30 mysteries — but she didn't stop at writing them. In this conversation, Sara talks about the second jump in her career: from writing cozy mysteries to writing nonfiction books and hosting podcasts that help other authors do the same. We explore what it took to trust herself as a teacher after years as a practitioner, how she thinks about building a nonfiction side of her business without letting it overshadow her fiction, and the moment she realized she had genuinely achieved authority in the author-education space. Sara also shares what she wishes she'd known about the indie publishing revolution — and why she now takes comfort in knowing that whatever comes next, she's navigated change before.
If you’d like support developing a personalized pathway from expertise to authority for yourself, please check out my consulting service at https://www.theindyauthor.com/authority.
And if you’re an event organizer, I’d love to share with your community a framework they can use to develop their own path. If you’d like to get in touch, just drop me a note at matty@mattydalrymple.com.
Sara’s Links
http://www.SaraRosett.com
http://www.SaraRosettBooks.com
https://www.instagram.com/sararosett
]https://www.x.com/sararosett
https://www.pinterest.com/srosett/
https://www.bookbub.com/authors/sara-rosett
Transcript
This transcript was created by Descript and cleaned up by Claude; I don’t review these transcripts in detail, so consider the actual interview to be the authoritative source for this information.
Matty: Hello, I’m Matty Dalrymple, and welcome to From Expertise to Authority, where I talk with people who have succeeded in building their professional presence for a sideline or second act. You can find out more about my perspective on moving from expertise to authority at TheIndyAuthor.com—and that’s Indy with a Y—where you’ll also find links to all the episodes of the From Expertise to Authority podcast, my Substack, my YouTube channel, and a downloadable worksheet you can use to track your own journey.
MEET SARA ROSETT
Matty: Today my guest is Sara Rosett. Hey Sara, how are you doing?
Sara: Good. Good to see you. Thank you for having me on.
Matty: It’s a pleasure. We’ve been seeing a lot of each other lately—we’ve been on each other’s podcasts. So, just to give a little background: Sara Rosett is the USA Today bestselling author of over 30 mysteries for readers who enjoy atmospheric settings and puzzling whodunits. She also writes nonfiction for authors, including How to Write a Series, How to Outline a Cozy Mystery, and Trope Thesaurus: Mystery and Thriller with Jennifer Hilt. Sara also hosts two podcasts—the Mystery Books podcast for readers, and the Wish I’d Known Then podcast for writers with Jamie Albright. I am enjoying so much talking to all these people who have made this jump from expertise to authority. And I guess it’s not that unusual, but it’s the first time it’s struck me quite this clearly that you’ve made two jumps—because I’m assuming you started out doing something other than writing cozy mysteries. So you made the jump to being an author, and then you made a further jump to being someone who offers that expertise to other authors. I’m curious: what did you do before that eventually led to you becoming an author?
FROM ENGLISH DEGREE TO WRITING JOBS
Sara: I had always loved reading and loved mysteries in particular, and my dream was to become an author—but that wasn’t seen as very stable, and it wasn’t what you were supposed to go into. I was good at English in school and that was my major in college. I graduated with a degree in English language and literature—not a teaching degree. To my parents’ chagrin. They were like, well, okay, you’re going to do English language and literature—how are you going to use that? So I did a bunch of different jobs that involved writing, though they were all very nonfiction oriented. To get started and get some credits, I did some volunteer work at a base newspaper—my husband was in the military and we were stationed at a new base—and I worked there for free to get bylines. I found that very interesting because most of the time, even if I wasn’t interested in the story when it started, by the time I finished it and turned it in I had found something pretty interesting about it. I also contributed to some nonfiction anthologies. Then I went to work at a company that coordinated travel exchanges between professionals—a group of dentists in the US would go visit a group of dentists in China, or professors from Canada would go to Europe. I was researching both the travel and the professional development aspects of those trips. I loved it. It fed my desire to see the world, and I had my mental list of places I wanted to travel. But in the back of my mind was always the goal of writing a book. I knew it was such a long shot, especially back then, because indie publishing wasn’t really a thing. So I put that on the back burner.
STARTING THE FIRST NOVEL
Sara: Then I had kids and decided to stay home with them when they were young. That was when I started working on my first novel, because I thought: my life is not going to get less busy—it’s just going to get busier. So I’m going to snatch this little time during nap time, 20 or 30 minutes, and see what I can do. That was how I transitioned. I felt like if I never tried it, I could always have the dream of doing it. But if I tried and didn’t achieve it, I’d have to face that. I decided I wanted to try and just see if I could do it.
Matty: That’s interesting—the idea that when you make the commitment to pursuing something like that, you’re really putting it on the line. There is a certain attraction to always having something be a dream and thinking casually about it. But it’s the person who’s willing to put it on the line who is the only person who’s going to make progress on something like that.
Sara: Yeah. And it was a hurdle for me to get over—thinking, okay, if I actually do this, I could succeed, but I might not. And then what would my dream be if I couldn’t achieve this? That was a big hurdle.
Matty: It’s interesting too that a number of the people I’ve spoken to have talked about a particular life event—like having children—being a kind of marker that made them finally make the decision to give it a try. Did you feel like there were other things pushing you in that direction in addition to that major change of circumstances?
Sara: Well, I knew it was going to be difficult to coordinate going back to work. My husband’s job required us to move a lot, and I just knew it was going to be hard to make progress in a traditional career while moving frequently. I thought: if I can get the writing thing to work, that’s a perfect thing to do while we move around. That was part of it. Writing is not known for being reliably profitable, so income was actually part of the dream too—that I would be able to contribute to the household income.
TURNING EXPERTISE INTO TEACHING
Matty: I don’t want to gloss over the fact that you’ve written many very successful books. But I’m also interested in this transition of going from writing novels to making the jump to saying, I know enough to instruct other authors in how to write novels, how to create series, and the other things you’ve written books about. What was that process like? When you had achieved this goal that you had—which could very validly be your arrival point, where you just keep doing that and it’s great—what prompted you to take this further step and become a mentor, instructor, or advisor?
IMPOSTER SYNDROME AND AUDIENCE FIT
Sara: I think there’s a point where most people, before they decide to tell somebody how to do something, think: do I know enough to teach this? I feel like I’m a lifelong learner and there are so many things I still don’t know. But if you’re familiar with Clifton Strengths, some of my top strengths are learner and input—I love gathering data, finding things out, categorizing it. Part of the desire to write these books and get it all down on paper is that it helps clarify things in my own head and organize them in a way that makes them easier for me to use. I like to help people, so I always thought: if I can write this book and it helps somebody through the difficult parts I had, then I’m helping them and it won’t be as hard for someone else. But I did struggle a lot with: can I actually teach? Can I be an authority in this area? When the cozy outlining book came out, I think I had 13 or 15 books out and I still thought I might not be authorized to do this—even though I did have experience and a process. I remember someone saying: you just have to be a little further down the road than the people who are starting, and you can help them. That helped me get over that hurdle. There’s no one who is going to tell you that yes, you are ready, you have enough experience, you can write a book. You have to find that yourself somehow, or just push past those feelings and move forward.
Matty: I think a lot of people frame this idea of presenting themselves as an authority as: am I qualified to present myself as an authority to my peers? And what you’re saying is very important—it depends on the audience. If you got together with other award-winning bestselling mystery authors and tried to explain to them how to outline a novel, that would probably…
Sara: I’d be taking notes. I’d be saying, how do you do it? You tell me.
Matty: Right. There’s a difference between exchanging approaches as peers and a dynamic where the expectation is that the sharing of expertise is more one-directional—not that you don’t learn things from the earlier authors who act on your advice, but that’s not the primary dynamic. The primary dynamic is that they want help and you’re in a position to provide it.
Sara: Yeah, because you’ve been along that road. I remember not knowing how to plot a mystery and trying to figure it out. Once I figured out the structure of it, the bones underneath the story, I thought: okay, this makes sense to me and I can pass this along. It may help some people and not others, but it will probably resonate with a certain portion of people who are trying to do this.
Matty: I think there’s also something interesting about the difference between sharing expertise in an area where what you’re providing is an option people could pursue versus an area where there are essentially right and wrong answers—like tax law. In a field like that, it might actually be harder to present yourself as an authority because if you get it wrong, you get it wrong. Whereas with authorship, there are lots of good ideas and your approach to outlining might work great for one group of people and not for another. That doesn’t undermine your authority—it just means you’re offering an option, not a law.
Sara: Right. Yes.
OUTLINING FRAMEWORK AND HOUSE ANALOGY
Sara: I built that into my approach. When I did the cozy outlining book and course, I decided—especially because I’m dealing with outlining, where there are as many ways to prepare to write a book as there are authors—to say: this is what’s worked for me, and hopefully it’ll be helpful to you. This is a framework. There are some building blocks you need, but then I think of it like a house. Everybody knows what a house has: walls, floors, a ceiling. But think about how many different architectural styles and design choices are available. That’s how it is when you write a novel. I can say, here are three major building blocks, and then you take those things and make them your own. You choose the colors and the textures of your book.
Matty: I love that analogy. When you decided you wanted to write a book for other authors, we’ve already talked about the fact that some of it was just having the experience and wanting to share the knowledge and save other people the pain you’d experienced. Did you have other, maybe more business-related goals as well—like creating an additional income stream, or paving the way to speaking engagements?
DIVERSIFYING WITH NONFICTION INCOME
Sara: Yes. I wanted to diversify. I had my fiction income, but I thought I might as well go wide in a different way—not in format or retailer, but in a different type of audience altogether. I did want it to be another stream of income. Some people in the nonfiction author space lean into that heavily, but I wanted it to be a side hustle alongside my fiction. I always wanted my fiction to be the main thing I did, but I thought it’s only smart to diversify a little—to have an audience of readers and also an audience of authors. And that blends into what Jamie and I do on the Wish I’d Known Then podcast, where we’re talking about writing and craft and marketing. It’s another lane.
Matty: And you need the credibility that having a large readership provides. If you had written one book that never got traction, it would be harder to convince people to follow your advice about outlining. Having a whole portfolio of books with verifiable achievements behind them is what makes the nonfiction offering credible.
Sara: Mm-hmm.
UNEXPECTED WINS AND RECOGNITION
Matty: Has there been any unexpected benefit from that? Anything that stands out as a pleasant surprise?
Sara: Just hearing from authors that it’s been helpful—that makes me happy. I’ve also made some connections I might not otherwise have made. Working with Jennifer Hilt on the trope book was an outcome of having established myself in nonfiction for authors—I could suggest working together on that project. I’m not a big public speaker and I don’t love public speaking, so I wasn’t really looking for speaking engagements. But the nonfiction work has diversified things and given me new challenges and new things to do. I’m a learner, so I have to continually be doing something.
Matty: Was there a moment when you realized you had achieved a level of authority in the area of writing for writers?
Sara: Probably when I was at a conference and an author told me she had come specifically to meet me—and it was an author conference, not a reader conference. She said, I saw you were going to be here, and I had to come. That was… a little intimidating.
Matty: That’s great.
Sara: It was cool, but it was a little intimidating.
WHAT SHE WISHES SHE KNEW
Matty: And since you do host a podcast called Wish I’d Known Then, I have to ask: what do you wish you had known then, in either of these efforts—becoming an author, or becoming someone who advises authors?
Sara: When I became an author, I wish I had known that the publishing landscape would change so dramatically. I had no idea indie publishing would become what it became, or that there would be any path besides traditional publishing. I had ideas for books that my publisher wasn’t interested in, and I could have been working on those. Friends of mine had books in their drawers that had been rejected, and they published those in the early days of indie and did great. I wish I had seen those changes coming. But sometimes the market changes and you just don’t see it. What that experience taught me, though, is that what it is now is always going to continue to change—it’s never going to be static. Having come from traditional publishing and transitioned to indie, I know I can transition to whatever comes next. As for the nonfiction side, I wish I had known that short books are okay. When I started thinking about that first nonfiction book, I kept thinking it wasn’t long enough. I also eventually figured out that people really want the audiobook in the author’s voice for nonfiction—I did release a narrated version of the How to Write a Series book eventually, though I still haven’t gone back and done the cozy book. The nonfiction landscape is just different from fiction in some of those ways.
SHORT NONFICTION AND SECOND EDITIONS
Matty: This is interesting because it’s something I’m considering myself—the From Expertise to Authority articles I’m writing on Substack will at some point become chapters in a book, spoiler alert. I do feel like I’m getting to the point where there’s a reasonable arc through the journey I want to describe, and I could keep beefing it up forever and never get it out. For a shorter book like that, do you think of it as simply: a shorter book is fine? And would you consider going back and doing a second edition when you’ve learned more?
Sara: I might go back and do a second edition of the cozy book at some point—as time goes on you learn more and your thinking evolves. As a nonfiction reader, I get frustrated by padding: when I feel like someone is saying, I’m going to tell you this awesome thing, I’m going to tell you about it in just a minute, just hang on—I’m like, just tell me. Shorter nonfiction appeals to people like me who don’t want the extra weight. I just want the information, the how-to. So I think shorter is fine.
Matty: That’s interesting in the context of the book I wrote with Mark Leslie Lefebvre on short fiction. We put out the first edition in 2020 and then I looked at it again in 2025 and realized it really did need some freshening—there were stats that needed to be updated, and between 2020 and 2025 there had been significant things that had happened in my own career with regard to short fiction. I had judged short fiction contests, written the foreword to a short fiction anthology, published a collection of short stories. So we added a whole chapter about judging short fiction contests from the other side, which I think was genuinely valuable. But you’re right that the choice is between adding a chapter to an existing book versus the new material being substantial enough to launch an entirely new book.
Sara: Yeah, learning is a process. I’ll never learn everything there is to know about writing mysteries or writing a series, but you start with the knowledge you have. What I’ve learned since I wrote that first cozy book I would probably go back and revise—but I don’t think it would be different enough to warrant a whole new book. That’s the question: is it another chapter, or is it a launching point for something entirely new?
FUTURE IDEAS AND CLOSING
Matty: Put on your futurist hat and look into the crystal ball—is there anything you might want to venture into, a new area you’d want to establish authority in?
Sara: Well, we’ve already established I’m not very good at seeing the future. I do enjoy the nonfiction help-for-authors space, and I really enjoyed the deep-dive approach of the trope book with Jennifer. I might do something similar in the future. I have thought about doing a book on research, because I write historical mysteries now and that’s something that trips people up—how do you find the sources that will give you the details you need? So maybe that’s in the future. We’ll see.
Matty: I think that’s an interesting note to end on, actually, because another theme I see frequently is people combining two seemingly disparate areas into a new area of authority. Writing mysteries and having experience in nonfiction writing and research—combining those things into ‘research for historical mysteries’—that’s a perfect example of taking things that seem different and bringing them together to create almost a new area of authority.
Sara: And those are things you don’t think about until you hear the person’s story and think: oh, yes, that’s a perfect match for them, because they have this background and there’s a gap in the market that only they can see. You have to get in and do things, and then you realize where the knowledge gaps are that you can fill. And you think: hey, I have all this knowledge—let me show you how to do this.
Matty: If anyone feels they might have a knowledge gap that could be filled by one of your offerings, thank you so much for chatting with me about your own journey from expertise to authority. Please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do.
Sara: The easiest place to find me is my website, saraRosett.com, which has all my books. Or you can just search for my name on any platform and you’ll find me there.
Matty: Thank you so much.
Sara: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
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