Folium Books' six-month content sprint

Folium Books is an independent publisher specialising in illustrated non-fiction and nature writing. They had a beautiful backlist, strong word-of-mouth, and almost no digital presence. Their website was a catalogue with no editorial content. They had no newsletter.

The brief

The founder, Elspeth Crane, had been running Folium as a deliberate cottage operation — no investors, small print runs, careful curation. She came to us not because she wanted Folium to grow fast, but because she wanted the audience they'd earned to be able to find them reliably.

The brief was to build a content presence that felt like Folium — thoughtful, unhurried, deeply interested in the subject matter — without requiring a full-time content team that would strain the economics of a small publisher.

The system we designed

Rather than producing original content from scratch, we built a system around what Folium already had: the books themselves, their authors, and Elspeth's own deep knowledge of the subjects they published.

The newsletter — Field Notes from Folium — launched with a curated format: one excerpt from a recent or backlist title, one author note on something they'd been thinking about, one recommendation from outside the Folium catalogue. Three sections, roughly 600 words, fortnightly.

We wrote the first eight issues with Elspeth, establishing the tone, and then handed the format to her to run. The format was tight enough to be consistent without requiring significant editorial overhead.

The outcomes

After six months:

• Newsletter list: 4,200 confirmed subscribers (zero paid acquisition)
• Direct book sales from newsletter click-throughs: 30% of total direct sales
• Three author partnerships sourced directly from newsletter readers who'd reached out after an issue

The website traffic more than doubled, driven almost entirely by email-to-site journeys. A book featured in the newsletter reliably sells through its print run within a fortnight.