OFFRE D'UNE DURÉE LIMITÉE | Obtenez 3 mois à 0.99 $ par mois

14.95 $/mois par la suite. Des conditions s'appliquent.
Page de couverture de The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

Auteur(s): Joanna Penn
Écouter gratuitement

À propos de cet audio

 Writing Craft and Creative BusinessCopyright The Creative Penn Art Développement personnel Gestion et leadership Réussite Économie
Épisodes
  • 2026 Trends And Predictions For Indie Authors And The Book Publishing Industry with Joanna Penn

    2026 Trends And Predictions For Indie Authors And The Book Publishing Industry with Joanna Penn
    Jan 5 2026
    What does 2026 hold for indie authors and the publishing industry? I give my thoughts on trends and predictions for the year ahead. In the intro, Quitting the right stuff; how to edit your author business in 2026; Is SubStack Good for Indie Authors?; Business for Authors webinars. If you'd like to join my community and support the show every month, you'll get access to my growing list of Patron videos and audio on all aspects of the author business — for the price of a black coffee (or two) a month. Join us at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. (1) More indie authors will sell direct through Shopify, Kickstarter, and local in-person events(2) AI-powered search will start to shift elements of book discoverability(3) The start of Agentic Commerce(4) AI-assisted audiobook narration will go mainstream(5) AI-assisted translation will start to take off beyond the early adopters(6) AI video becomes ubiquitous. ‘Live selling’ becomes the next trend in social sales.(7) AI will create, run, and optimise ads without the need for human intervention(8) 1000 True Fans becomes more important than ever You can find all my books as J.F. Penn and Joanna Penn on your favourite online store in all the usual formats, or order from your local library or bookstore. You can also buy direct from me at CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com. I'm not really active on social media, but you can always see my photos at Instagram @jfpennauthor. 2026 Trends and Predictions for Indie Authors and Book Publishing (1) More indie authors will sell direct through Shopify, Kickstarter, and local in-person events — and more companies like BookVault will offer even more beautiful physical books and products to support this. This trend will not be a surprise to most of you! Selling direct has been a trend for the last few years, but in 2026, it will continue to grow as a way that independent authors become even more independent. The recent Written Word Media survey from Dec 2025 noted that 30% of authors surveyed are selling direct already and 30% say they plan to start in 2026. Among authors earning over $10,000 per month, roughly half sell direct. In my opinion, selling direct is an advanced author strategy, meaning that you have multiple books and you understand book marketing and have an email list already or some guaranteed way to reach readers. In fact, Kindlepreneur reports that 66% of authors selling direct have more than 5 books, and 46% have more than 10 books. Of course, you can start with the something small, like a table at a local event with a limited number of books for sale, but if you want to consistently sell direct for years to come, you need to consider all the business aspects. Selling direct is not a silver bullet. It’s much harder work to sell direct than it is to just upload an ebook to Amazon, whether you choose a Kickstarter campaign, or Shopify/Payhip or other online stores, or regular in-person sales at events/conferences/fairs. You need a business mindset and business practices, for example, you need to pay upfront for setup as well as ongoing management, and bulk printing in some cases. You need to manage taxes and cashflow. You need to be a lot more proactive about marketing, as you won’t sell anything if you don’t bring readers to your books/products. But selling direct also brings advantages. It sets you apart from the bulk of digital only authors who still only upload ebooks to Amazon, or maybe add a print on demand book, and in an era of AI rapid creation, that number is growing all the time. If you sell direct, you get your customer data and you can reach those customers next time, through your email list. If you don’t know who bought your books and don’t have a guaranteed way to reach them, you will more easily be disrupted when things change — and they always change eventually. Kindlepreneur notes that “45% of the successful direct selling authors had over 1,000 subscribers on their email lists,” with “a clear, positive correlation between email list size and monthly direct sales income — with authors having an email list of over 15,000 subscribers earning 20X more than authors with email lists under 100 subscribers.” Selling direct means faster money, sometimes the same day or the same week in many cases, or a few weeks after a campaign finishes, as with Kickstarter. And remember, you don’t have to sell all your formats directly. You can keep your ebooks in KU, do whatever you like with audiobooks, and just have premium print products direct, or start ...
    Voir plus Voir moins
    1 h et 11 min
  • My 2026 Creative And Business Goals With Joanna Penn

    My 2026 Creative And Business Goals With Joanna Penn
    Jan 1 2026
    Happy New Year 2026! I love January and the opportunity to start afresh. I know it’s arbitrary in some ways, but I measure my life by what I create, and I also measure it in years. At the beginning of each year, I publish an article (and podcast episode) here, which helps keep me accountable. If you’d like to share your goals, please add them in the comments below. 2026 is a transitional year as I will finish my Masters degree and continue the slow pivot that I started in December 2023 after 15 years as an author entrepreneur. Just to recap that, it was: From digitally-focused to creating beautiful physical books; From high-volume, low cost to premium products with higher Average Order Value; From retailer-centric to direct first; and From distance to presence, and From creating alone to the AI-Assisted Artisan Author. I’ve definitely stepped partially into all of those, and 2026 will continue in that same direction, but I also have an additional angle for Joanna Penn and The Creative Penn that I am excited about. If you'd like to join my community and support the show every month, you'll get access to my growing list of Patron videos and audio on all aspects of the author business — for the price of a black coffee (or two) a month. Join us at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Leaning into the Transformation Economy The Creative Penn Podcast and my Patreon CommunityWebinars and live eventsFinish my Masters in Death, Religion, and CultureBones of the Deep — J.F. PennAdd merch to CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories and Short Story Collections — Joanna PennOther possible booksExperiment more with AI translation Ideally outsource more marketing to AI, but do more marketing anywayDouble down on being human, health and travel You can find all my books as J.F. Penn and Joanna Penn on your favourite online store in all the usual formats, or order from your local library or bookstore. You can also buy direct from me at CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com. I'm not really active on social media, but you can always see my photos at Instagram @jfpennauthor. Leaning into the Transformation Economy I’ve struggled with my identity as Joanna Penn and my Creative Penn brand for a few years now. When I started TheCreativePenn.com in 2008, the term ‘indie author’ was new and self-publishing was considered ‘vanity press’ and a sure way to damage your author career, rather than a conscious creative and business choice. It was the early days of the Kindle and iPhone (both launched in 2007), and podcasting and social media were also relatively new. While US authors could publish on KDP, the only option for international authors was Smashwords and the market for ebooks was tiny. Print-on-demand and digital audio were also just emerging as viable options. While it was the early era of blogging, there were very few blogs and barely any podcasts talking about self-publishing, so when I started TheCreativePenn.com in late 2008 and the podcast in March 2009, it was a new area. For several years, it was like howling into the wind. Barely any audience. Barely any traffic, and certainly very little income. But I loved the freedom and the speed at which I could learn things and put them into practice. Consume and produce. That has always been my focus. I met people on Twitter and interviewed them for my show, and over those early years I met many of the people I consider dear friends even now. Since self-publishing was a relatively unexplored niche in those early years, I slowly found an audience and built up a reputation. I also started to make more money both as an author, and as a creative entrepreneur. Over the years since, pretty much everything has changed for indie authors and we have had more and more opportunity every year. I’ve shared everything I’ve learned along the way, and it’s been a wonderful time. But as self-publishing became more popular and more authors saw more success (which is FANTASTIC!), other voices joined the chorus and now, there are many thousands of authors of all different levels with all kinds of different experiences sharing their tips through articles, books, podcasting, and social media. I started to wonder whether my perspective was useful anymore. On top of the human competition, in November 2022, ChatGPT launched, and it became clear that prescriptive non-fiction and ‘how to’ information could very easily be delivered by the AI tools, with the added benefit of personalisation. You can ...
    Voir plus Voir moins
    37 min
  • Review Of My 2025 Creative And Business Goals With Joanna Penn

    Review Of My 2025 Creative And Business Goals With Joanna Penn
    Dec 29 2025
    Another year ends, and once more, it's time to reflect on our creative goals. I hope you can take the time to review your goals and you're welcome to leave a comment below about how the year went. Did you achieve everything you wanted to? Let me know in the comments. It's always interesting looking back at my goals from a year ago, because I don't even look at them in the months between, so sometimes it's a real surprise how much they've changed! You can read my 2025 goals here and I go through how things went below. In the intro, Written Word Media 2025 Indie Author Survey Results, TikTok deal goes through [BBC]; 2025 review [Wish I'd Known Then; Two Authors], Kickstarter year in review; Plus, Anthropic settlement, the continued rise of AI-narrated audiobooks, and thinking/reasoning models (plus my 2019 AI disruption episode). My Bones of the Deep thriller, pics here, and Business for Authors webinars, coming soon. If you'd like to join my community and support the show every month, you'll get access to my growing list of Patron videos and audio on all aspects of the author business — for the price of a black coffee (or two) a month. Join us at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. J.F. Penn books — Death Valley, The Buried and the Drowned, Blood VintageJoanna Penn books — Successful Self-Publishing, 4th Edition The Creative Penn Podcast and my community on Patreon/thecreativepennUnexpected addition: Masters in Death, Religion and Culture at the University of WinchesterBook marketing. Not quite a fail but definitely lacklustre.Reflections on my 50th yearDouble down on being human. Travel and health. You can find all my books as J.F. Penn and Joanna Penn on your favourite online store in all the usual formats, or order from your local library or bookstore. You can also buy direct from me at CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com. I'm not really active on social media, but you can always see my photos at Instagram @jfpennauthor. J.F. Penn — Death Valley. A Thriller. This was my ‘desert’ book, partially inspired by visiting Death Valley, California in 2024. It’s a stand-alone, high stakes survival thriller, with no supernatural elements, although there are ancient bones and a hidden crypt, as it wouldn’t be me otherwise! The Kickstarter campaign in April had 231 Backers pledging £10,794 (~US$14,400) and the hardback is a gorgeous foiled edition with custom end papers and research photos as well as a ribbon. As an AI-Assisted Artisan Author, I used AI tools to help with the creative and business processes, including the background image of the cover design, the custom end papers, and the Death Valley book trailer, which I made with Midjourney and Runway ML. The audiobook is also narrated by my J.F. Penn voice clone, which took a while to get used to, but now I love it! You can listen to a sample here. I published Death Valley wide a few months later over the summer, so it is now out on all platforms. J.F. Penn — Blood Vintage. A Folk Horror Novel, and Catacomb audiobook I did a Kickstarter for the hardback edition of Blood Vintage in late 2024, and then in 2025, worked with a US agent to see if we could get a deal for it. That didn’t happen, and although there were some nice rejections, mostly it was silence, and the waiting around really was a pain in the proverbial. So, after a year on submission, I published Blood Vintage wide, so it’s available everywhere now. My voice clone narrated the audiobook, listen to a sample here. I also finally produced the audiobook for Catacomb, which is a stand-alone thriller inspired by the movie Taken and the legend of Beowulf set in the catacombs under Edinburgh. I used a male voice from ElevenLabs, and you can listen to a sample here. The book is also available everywhere in all formats. J.F. Penn — The Buried and the Drowned Short Story Collection One of my goals for 2025 was to get my existing short stories into print, mainly because they exist only as digital ebook and audiobook files, which in a way, feels like they almost don’t exist! Plus, I wanted to write an extra two exclusive stories and launch the special edition collection on Kickstarter Collection and then publish wide. I wrote the two stories, The Black Church, inspired by my Iceland trip in March, and also Between Two Breaths, inspired by an experience scuba diving at the Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand almost two decades ago. There are personal author’s notes accompanying every story, so it’s part-short story fiction, part-memoir, and I human-narrated...
    Voir plus Voir moins
    Moins d'une minute
Pas encore de commentaire