2026 Trends And Predictions For Indie Authors And The Book Publishing Industry with Joanna Penn

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 with a very basic Kickstarter campaign, or a table at a local fair.  Lots more tips for Shopify and Kickstarter at https://www.thecreativepenn.com/selldirectresources/  I also recommend the Novel Marketing Podcast on The Shopify Trap: Why authors keep losing money as it is a great counterpoint to my positive endorsement of selling direct on Shopify!  Among other things, Thomas notes that a fixed monthly fee for a store doesn’t match how most authors make money from books which is more in spikes, the complexity and hassle eats time and can cost more money if you pay for help, and it can reduce sales on Amazon and weaken your ranking. Basically, if you haven’t figured out marketing direct to your store, it can hurt you.All true for some authors, for some genres, and for some people’s lifestyle.  But for authors who don’t want to be on the hamster wheel of the Amazon algorithm and who want more diversity and control in income, as well as the incredible creative benefits of what you can do selling direct, then I would say, consider your options in 2025, even if that is trying out a low-financial-goal Kickstarter campaign, or selling some print books at a local fair.  Interestingly, traditional publishers are also experimenting with direct sales. Kate Elton, the new CEO of Harper Collins notes in The Bookseller’s 2026 trend article, “we are seeing global success with responsive, reader-driven publishing, subscription boxes and TikTok Shop and – crucially – developing strategies that are founded on a comprehensive understanding of the reader.”  She also notes, “AI enables us to dramatically change the way we interact with and grow audiences. The opportunities are genuinely exciting – finding new ways to help readers discover books they will love, innovating in the ways we market and reach audiences, building new channels and adapting to new methods of consuming content.” (2) AI-powered search will start to shift elements of book discoverability From LinkedIn’s 2026 Big Ideas: “Generative engine optimization (GEO) is set to replace search engine optimization (SEO) as the way brands get discovered in the year ahead. As consumers turn to AI chatbots, agentic workflows and answer engines, appearing prominently in generative outputs will matter more than ranking in search engines.”  Google has been rolling out AI Mode with its AI Overviews and is beginning to push it within Google.com itself in some countries, which means the start of a fundamental change in how people discover content online. I first posted about GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) in 2023, and it's going to change how readers find books. For years, we've talked about the long tail of search. Now, with AI-powered search, that tail is getting even longer and more nuanced. AI can understand complex, conversational queries that traditional search engines struggled with. Someone might ask, “What's a good thriller set in a small town with a female protagonist who's a journalist investigating a cold case?” and get highly specific recommendations. This means your book metadata, your website content, and your online presence need to be more detailed and conversational. AI search engines understand context in ways that go far beyond simple keywords. The authors who win in this new landscape will be those who create rich, authentic content about their books and themselves, not just promotional copy. As economist Tyler Cowen has said, “Consider the AIs as part of your audience. Because they are already reading your words and listening to your voice.” We’re in the ‘organic’ traffic phase right now, where these AI engines are surfacing content for ‘free,’ but paid ads are inevitably on the way, and even rumoured to be coming this year to ChatGPT.  By the end of 2026, I expect some authors and publishers to be paying for AI traffic, rather than blocking and protesting them.  For now, I recommend checking that your author name/s and your books are surfaced when you search on ChatGPT.com  as well as Google.com AI Mode (powered by Gemini). You want to make sure your work comes up in some way. I found that Joanna Penn and J.F. Penn searches brought up my Shopify stores, my website, podcast, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even my Patreon page, but did not bring up links to Amazon. If you only have an author presence on Amazon, does it appear in AI search at all? Do you need to improve anything about what the AI search brings up?  Traditional publishers are also looking at this, with PublishersWeekly doing webinars on various aspects of AI in early 2026, including sessions on GEO and how book sales are changing, AI agents, and book marketing.  In a 2026 predictions article on The Bookseller, the CEO of Bloomsbury Publishing noted, “The boundaries of artificial intelligence will become clearer, enabling publishers to harness its benefits while seeking to safeguard the intellectual property rights of authors, illustrators and publishers.” “AI will be deeply embedded in our workflows, automating tasks such as metadata tagging, freeing teams to focus on creativity and strategy. Challenges will persist. Generative AI threatens traditional web traffic and ad revenue models, making metadata optimisation and SEO critical for visibility as we adjust to this new reality online.” (3) The start of Agentic Commerce AI researches what you want to buy and may even buy on your behalf. Plus, I predict that Amazon does a commerce deal with OpenAI for shopping within ChatGPT by the end of 2026. In September 2025, ChatGPT launched Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which will enable bots to buy on websites in the background if authorised by the human with the credit card. VISA is getting on board with this, so is PayPal, with no doubt more payment options to come. In the USA, ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Free users can now buy directly from US Etsy sellers inside the chat interface, with over a million Shopify merchants coming soon. Shopify and OpenAI have also announced a partnership to bring commerce to ChatGPT. I am insanely excited about this as it could represent the first time we have been able to more easily find and surface books in a much more nuanced way than the 7 keywords and 3 categories we have relied on for so long! I’ve been using ChatGPT for at least the last year to find fiction and non-fiction books as I find the Amazon interface is ‘polluted’ by ads. I’ve discovered fascinating books from authors I’ve never heard of, most in very long tail areas. For example, Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby, recommended by ChatGPT as I am interested in medical anatomy and anatomical Venuses, and The Macabre by Kosoko Jackson, recommended as I like art history and the supernatural. I don’t think I would have found either of these within a nuanced discussion with ChatGPT. Even without these direct purchase integrations, ChatGPT now has Shopping Research, which I have found links directly to my Shopify store when I search for my books specifically.   Walmart has partnered with OpenAI to create AI-first shopping experiences, and you have to wonder what Amazon might be doing? In Nov 2025, Amazon signed a “strategic partnership” with OpenAI, and even though it's focused on the technical side of AI, those two companies in a room together might also be working on other plans … I’m calling it for 2026. I think Amazon will sign a commerce agreement with OpenAI sometime before the end of the year. This will enable at least recommendation and shopping links into Amazon stores (presumably using an OpenAI affiliate link), or perhaps even Instant Checkout with ChatGPT for Amazon. It will also enable a new marketing angle, especially if paid ads arrive in ChatGPT, perhaps even integrating with Amazon Ads in some way as part of any possible agreement, since ads are such a good revenue stream for Amazon anyway.  The line between discovery, engagement, and purchase is collapsing. Someone could be having a conversation with an AI about what to read next, and within that same conversation, purchase a bookwithout ever leaving the chat interface. This already happens within TikTok and social commerce clearly works for many authors. It’s possible that the next development for book discoverability and sales might be within AI chats.  This will likely stratify the already fragmented book eco-system even more. Some readers will continue to live only within the Amazon ecosystem and (maybe) use their Rufus chatbot to buy, and others will be much wider in their exploration of how to find and discover books (and other products and services). If you haven’t tried it yet, try ChatGPT.com Shopping Research for a book. You can do this on the free tier. Use the drop down in the main chat box and select Shopping Research. It doesn't have to be for your book. It can be any book or product, for example, our microwave died just before Christmas so I used it to find a new one. But do a really nuanced search with multiple requirements. Go far beyond what you would search for on Amazon. In the results, notice that (at the time of writing) it does not generally link to Amazon, but to independent sites and stores. As above, I think this will change by the end of 2026, as some kind of commerce deal with Amazon seems inevitable. (4) AI-assisted audiobook narration will go mainstream I've been talking about AI narration of audiobooks since 2019, and over the years, I’ve tried various different options. In 2025, the technology reached a level of emotional nuance that made it much easier to create satisfying fiction audio as well as non-fiction. It also super-charges accessibility, making audio available in more languages and more accents than ever before. Of course, human narration remains the gold standard, but the cost makes it prohibitive for many authors, and indeed many small traditional publishers, for all books. If it costs $2000 – $10,000 to create an audiobook, you have to sell a lot to make a profit, and the dominance of subscription models have made it harder to recoup the costs.  Famous narrators and voice artists who have an audience may still be worth investing in, as well as premium production, but require an even higher upfront cost and therefore higher sales and streams in return. AI voice/audio models are continuing to improve, and even as this goes out, there are rumours on TechCrunch that OpenAI’s new device, designed by Jony Ive who designed the iPhone, will be audio first and OpenAI are improving their voice models even more in preparation for that launch.  In 2026, I think AI-narrated audio will go mainstream with far-reaching adoption across publishing and the indie author world in many different languages and accents. This will mean a further stratification of audiobooks, with high quality, high production, high cost human narrated audio for a small percentage of books, and then mass market, affordable AI-narrated audio for the rest. AI-narrated audiobooks will make audio ubiquitous, and just as (almost) every print book has an ebook format, in 2026, they will also have an audio format. I straddle both these worlds, as I am still a human audiobook narrator for my own work. I human-narrated Successful Self-Publishing Fourth Edition (free audiobook) and The Buried and the Drowned, my short story collection.  I also use AI narration for some books. ElevenLabs remains my preferred service and in 2025, I used my J.F. Penn voice clone for Death Valley and also Blood Vintage, while using a male voice for Catacomb.  I clearly label my AI-narration in the sales description and also on the cover, which I think is important, although it is not always required by the various services.  You can distribute ElevenLabs narrated audiobooks on Spotify, Kobo Writing Life, YouTube, ElevenReader, and of course your own store if you use Shopify with Bookfunnel. There are many other services springing up all the time, so make sure you check the rights you have over the finished audio, as well as where you can sell and distribute the final files. If they are just using ElevenLabs models in the back-end, then why not just do that directly? (Most services will be using someone's model in the back-end, since most companies do not train their own models.) Of course, you can use Amazon’s own narration.  While Amazon originally launched Audible audiobooks with Virtual Voice (AVV) in November 2023, it was rolled out to more authors and territories in 2025. If your book is eligible, the option to create an audiobook will appear on your KDP dashboard. With just a few clicks, you can create an audiobook from a range of voices and accents, and publish it on Amazon and Audible. However, the files are not yours. They are exclusive to Amazon and you cannot use them on other platforms or sell them direct yourself. But they are also free, so of course, many authors, especially those in KU, will use this option. I have done some for my mum's sweet romance books as Penny Appleton and I will likely use them for my books in translation when the option becomes available. Traditional publishers are experimenting with AI-assisted audiobook narration as well.  MacMillan is selling digital audiobooks read by AI directly on their store. PublishersWeekly reports that PRH Audio “has experimented with artificial voice in specific instances, such as entrepreneur Ely Callaway’s posthumous memoir The Unconquerable Game,” when an “authorized voice replica” was created for the audiobook. The article also notes that PRH Audio “embrace artificial intelligence across business operations—my entire department [PRH Audio] is using AI for business applications.” And while indie authors can’t use AI voices on ACX right now, Audible have over 100 voices available to selected publishing partnerships, as reported by The Guardian with “two options for publishers wishing to make use of the technology: “Audible-managed” production, or “self-service” whereby publishers produce their own audiobooks with the help of Audible’s AI technology.” In 2026, it’s likely that more traditional publishers — as well as indie authors — will get their backlist into audio with AI narration. (5) AI-assisted translation will start to take off beyond the early adopters Over the years, I've done translation deals with traditional publishers in different languages (German, French, Spanish, Korean, Italian) for some fiction and non-fiction books. But of course, to get these kinds of deals, you have to be proactive about pitching, or work with an agent for foreign rights only, and those are few and far between! There are also lots of languages and territories worldwide, and most deals are for the bigger markets, leaving a LOT of blue water for books in translation, even if you have licensed some of the bigger markets. I did my first partially AI-translated books in 2019 when I used Deepl.com for the first draft and then worked with a German editor to do 3 non-fiction books in German. While the first draft was cheap, the editing was pretty expensive, so I stopped after only doing a couple. I have made the money back now, but it took years. In 2025, AI Translation began to take off with ScribeShadow, GlobeScribe.ai, and more recently, in November 2025, Kindle Translate boosting the number of translated books available. Kindle Translate is (currently) only available to US authors for English into Spanish and also German into English, but in 2026, this will likely roll out to more languages and more authors, making it easier than ever to produce translations for free. Of course, once again, the gold standard is human translation, or at least human-edited translations, but the cost is prohibitive even just for proof-reading, and if there is a cheap or even free option, like Kindle Translate, then of course, authors are going to try it. If the translation gets bad reviews, they can just un-publish. There are many anecdotal stories of indie success in 2025 with AI-translated genre fiction sales (in series) in under-served markets like Italian, French, and Spanish, as well as more mainstream adoption in German. I was around in the Kindle gold-rush days of 2009-2012 and the AI-translation energy right now feels like that. There are hardly any Kindle ebooks in many of these languages compared to how many there are in English, so inevitably, the rush is on to fill the void, especially in genres that are under-served by traditional publishers in those markets. Yes, some of these AI translated books will be ‘AI-slop,' but readers are not stupid. Those books will get bad reviews and thus will sink to the bottom of the store, never to be seen again.  The AI translation models are also improving rapidly, and Amazon's Kindle Translate may improve faster than most, for books specifically, since they will be able to get feedback in terms of page reads.  Amazon is also a major investor in Anthropic, which makes Claude.ai, widely considered the best quality for creative writing and translation, so it's likely that is used somewhere in the mix. Some traditional publishers are also experimenting with AI-assisted translation, with Harlequin France reportedly using AI translation and human proofreaders, as reported by the European Council of Literary Translators’ Associations in December 2025.  Academic publisher Taylor and Francis is also using AI for book translation, noting: “Following a program of rigorous testing, Taylor & Francis has announced plans to use AI translation tools to publish books that would otherwise be unavailable to English-language readers, bringing the latest knowledge to a vastly expanded readership.” “Until now, the time and resources required to translate books has meant that the majority remained accessible only to those who could read them in the original language. Books that were translated often only became available after a significant delay. Today, with the development of sophisticated AI translation tools, it has become possible to make these important texts available to a broad readership at speed, without compromising on accuracy.” (6) AI video becomes ubiquitous. ‘Live selling’ becomes the next trend in social sales. In 2025, short form AI-generated video became very high quality. OpenAI released Sora 2, and YouTube announced new Shorts creation tools with Veo 3, which you can also use directly within Gemini. There are tons of different AI video apps now, including those within the social media sites themselves. There is more video than ever and it’s much easier to create. I am not a fan of short form video! I don't make it and I don't consume it, but I do love making book trailers for my Kickstarter campaigns and for adding to my book pages and using on social media. I made a trailer for The Buried and the Drowned using Midjourney for images and then animation of those images, and Canva to put them together along with ElevenLabs to generate the music. But despite the AI tools getting so much easier to use, you still have to prompt them with exactly what you want. I can’t just upload my book and say, “Make a book trailer,” or “Make a short film.”  This may change with generative video ads, which are likely to become more common in 2026, as video turns specifically commercial.  Video ads may even be generated specifically for the user, with an audience of one, maybe even holding your book in their hands (using something like Cameos on Sora), in the same way that some AI-powered clothing stores do virtual try-ons.  This might also up-end the way we discover and buy things, as the AI for eCommerce and Amazon Sellers newsletter says about OpenAI’s Sora app, “OpenAI isn't just trying to build a TikTok competitor. They're building a complete reimagining of how we discover and buy things …” “The combination of ChatGPT's research capabilities and Sora's potential for emotional manipulation—I mean, “engagement”—could create something we've never seen before: an AI ecosystem that might eventually guide you through every type of purchase, from the most considered to the most impulsive.” In 2026, there will be A LOT more AI-generated video, but that also leads to the human trend of more live video.  While you can use an AI avatar that looks and sounds like you using tools like HeyGen or Synthesia, live video has all the imperfect human elements that make it stand-out, plus the scarcity element which leads to the purchase decision within a countdown period. Live video is nothing new in terms of brand building and content in general, but it seems that live events primarily for direct sales might be a thing in 2026. Kim Kardashian hosted Kimsmas Live in December 2025 with a 45 minute live shopping event with special guests, described as entertainment but designed to be a sales extravaganza.  Indie authors are doing a similar thing on TikTok with their books, so this is a trend to watch in 2026, especially if you feel that live selling might fit with your personality and author business goals. It’s certainly not for everyone, but I suspect it will suit a different kind of creator to those who prefer ‘no face’ video, or no video at all! On other aspects of the human side of social media, Adam Mosseri the CEO of Instagram put a post on Threads called Authenticity after Abundance. He said,  “Everything that made creators matter—the ability to be real, to connect, to have a voice that couldn’t be faked—is now suddenly accessible to anyone with the right tools.” “Deepfakes are getting better and better. AI is generating photographs and videos indistinguishable from captured media. The feeds are starting to fill up with synthetic everything. And in that world, here’s what I think happens.Creators matter more.”  It’s a long article so just to pick a few things from it:  “We like to talk about “AI slop,” but there is a lot of amazing AI content … we are going to start to see more and more realistic AI content.”  I’ve talked to my Patreon Community about this ‘tsunami of excellence’ as these tools are just getting better and better and the word ‘slop’ can also be applied to purely human output, too. If you think that AI content is ‘worse’ than wholly human content, in 2026, you are wrong. It is now very very good, especially in the hands of people who can drive the AI tools. Back to Adam’s post:  “Authenticity is fast becoming a scarce resource, …The creators who succeed will be those who figure out how to maintain their authenticity [even when it can be simulated] …” “The bar is going to shift from “can you create?” to “can you make something that only you could create?” He talks about how the personal content on Instagram now is: “unpolished; it’s blurry photos and shaky videos of people’s daily experiences … flattering imagery is cheap to produce and boring to consume. People want content that feels real… Savvy creators are going to lean into explicitly unproduced and unflattering images of themselves. In a world where everything can be perfected, imperfection becomes a signal. Rawness isn’t just aesthetic preference anymore—it’s proof. It’s defensive. A way of saying: this is real because it’s imperfect.” While I partially love this, and I really hope it’s true, as in I hope we don’t need to look good for the camera anymore I would also challenge Adam on this, because pretty much every woman I know on social media has been sent sexual messages, and/or told they are ugly and/or fat when posting anything unflattering. I’ve certainly had both even for the same content, but I don’t expect Adam has been the target for such posting! But I get his point.  He goes on:“Labeling content as authentic or AI-generated is only part of the solution though. We, as an industry, are going to need to surface much more context about not only the media on our platforms, but the accounts that are sharing it in order for people to be able to make informed decisions about what to believe. Where is the account? When was it created? What else have they posted?”  This is exactly what I’ve been saying for a while under my double down on being human focus. I use my Instagram @jfpennauthor as evidence of humanity, not as a sales channel. You can do both of course, but increasingly, you need to make sure your accounts at places have longevity and trust, even by the platforms themselves.  Adam finishes: “In a world of infinite abundance and infinite doubt, the creators who can maintain trust and signal authenticity—by being real, transparent, and consistent—will stand out.” For other marketing trends for 2026, I recommend publicist Kathleen Schmidt’s SubStack which is mostly focused on traditional publishing but still interesting for indies. In her 2026 article, she notes:   “We have reached a social media saturation point where going viral can be meaningless and should not be the goal; authenticity and creativity should. She also says, “In-person events are important again,” and, “Social media marketing takes a nosedive… we have reached a saturation point … What publishers must figure out is how to make their social media campaigns stand out. If they remain somewhat uninspired, the money spent on social ads won’t convert into book sales.” I think this is part of the rise of live selling as above, which can stand out above more ‘produced’ videos.  Kathleen also talks about AI usage. “AI can help lighten the burden of publicity and marketing.” “A lot of AI tools are coming to market to lessen the load: they can write pitches, create media lists for you, send pitches for you, and more. I know the industry is grappling with all things AI, but some of these tools are huge time savers and may help a book more than hurt it.” On that note …  (7) AI will create, run, and optimise ads without the need for human intervention Many authors will be very happy about this as marketing is often the bane of our author business lives! As I noted in my 2026 goals, I would love to outsource more marketing tasks to AI. I want an “AI book marketing assistant” where I can upload a book and specify a budget and say, ‘Go market this,’ then the AI will action the marketing, without me having to cobble together workflows between systems. Of course, it will present plans for me to approve but it will do the work itself on the various platforms and monitor and optimize things for me. I really hope 2026 is the year this becomes possible, because we are on the edge of it already in some areas.   Amazon Ads launched a new agentic AI tool in September 2025 that creates professional-quality ads.  I’ve also been working with Claude in Chrome browser to help me analyse my Amazon Ad data and suggest which keywords/products to turn off and what to put more budget into. I’ll do a Patreon video on that soon.  Meta announced it will enable AI ad creation by the end of 2026 for Facebook and Instagram. For authors who find ad creation overwhelming or time-consuming, this could be a game-changer. Of course, you will still need a budget! (8) 1000 True Fans becomes more important than ever Lots of authors and publishers are moaning about the difficulty of reaching readers in an era of ‘AI slop’ but there is no shortage of excellent content created by humans, or humans using AI tools.  As ever, our competition is less about other authors, or even authors using AI-assisted creation, we’re competing against everything else that jostles for people’s attention, and the volume of that is also growing exponentially.  I’ve never been a fan of rapid release, and have said for years that you can’t keep up with the pace of the machines. So play a different game.  As Kevin Kelly wrote in 2008, If you have 1000 true fans, (also known as super fans), “you can make a living — if you are content to make a living but not a fortune.” [Kevin Kelly was on this show in 2023 talking about Excellent Advice for Living.] Many authors and the publishing industry are stuck in the old model of aiming to sell huge volumes of books at a low profit margin to a massive number of readers, many of them releasing ever faster to try and keep the algorithms moving. But the maths can work for the smaller audience of more invested readers and fans. If you only make $2 profit on an ebook, you need to sell 500 ebooks to make $1000, and then do it again next month. Or you can have a small community like my patreon.com/thecreativepenn where people pay $2 (or more) a month, so even a small revenue per person results in a better outcome over the year, as it is consistent monthly income with no advertising.  But what if you could make $20 profit per book?  That is entirely possible if you’re producing high quality hardbacks on Kickstarter, or bundle deals of audiobooks, or whole series of ebooks. You would only need to sell to 50 people to make $1000. What about $100 profit per sale, which you can do with a small course or live event?  You only need 10 people to make $1000, and this in-person focus also amplifies trust and fosters human connection.  I’ve found the intimacy of my live Patreon Office Hours and also my webinars have been rewarding personally, but also financially, and are far more memorable — and potentially transformative — than a pre-recorded video or even another book. From the LinkedIn 2026 Big Ideas article: “In an AI-optimized world, intentional human connection will become the ultimate luxury.”  The 1000 True Fans model is about serving a smaller, more personal audience with higher value products (and maybe services if that’s your thing). As ever, its about niche and where you fit in the long long long long long tail. It’s also about trust. Because there is definitely a shortage of that in so many areas, and as Adam Mosseri of Instagram has said, trust will be increasingly important.  Trust takes time to build, but if you focus on serving your audience consistently, and delivering a high quality, and being authentic, this emerges as part of being human. In an echo of what happened when online commerce first took off, we are back to talking about trust. Back in 2010, I read Trust Agents: by Julien Smith and Chris Brogan, which clearly needs a comeback. There was a 10th anniversary edition published in 2020, so that’s worth a read/listen.  Chris Brogan was also on this show in 2017 when we talked about finding and serving your niche for the long term. That interview is still relevant, here’s a quick excerpt, where I have (lightly edited) his response to my question on this topic back in 2017: Jo: The principle of know, like, and trust, why is that still important or perhaps even more important these days? Chris: There are a few things that at play there, Joanna. One is that the same tools that make it so easy for any of us to start and run a business also allow certain elements to decide whether or not they want to do something dubious. And with all new technologies that come, you know, there's nothing unique about these new technologies. In the 1800s, anyone could put anything in a bottle and sell it to you and say, this is gonna cure everything. Cancer — gone. And the bottle could have nothing in. You know, it could be Kool-Aid. And so, the idea of trying to understand what's behind the business though, one beautiful thing that's come is that we can see in much more dimensions who we're dealing with. We can understand better who's the face behind the brand.  I really want people to try their best to be a lot clearer on what they stand for or what they say. And I don't really mean a tagline. I mean, humans don't really talk like that. They don't throw some sentence out as often as they can that you remember them for that phrase.  But I would say that, we have so many media available to us — the plural of mediums — where we can be more of ourselves. And I think that there's a great opportunity to share the ‘you’ behind the scenes, and some people get immediately terrified about this, ‘Ah, the last thing I want is for people to know more about me,’ but I think we have such an opportunity.  We have such an opportunity to voice our thoughts on something, to talk about the story that goes behind the product. We were all raised on overly produced material, but I think we don't want that anymore. We really want clarity, brevity, simplicity. We want the ability for what we feel is connection and then access.  And so I think it's vital that we connect and show people our accessibility, not so that they can pester us with strange questions, but more so that you can say, this person stands with their product and their service and this person believes these things, and I feel something when I hear them and I wanna be part of that.” That’s from Chris Brogan’s interview here in 2017, and he is still blogging and speaking at writing at ChrisBrogan.com and I’m going to re-listen to the audiobook of Trust Agents again myself as I think it’s more relevant than ever.  The original quote comes from Bob Burg in his 1994 book, Endless Referrals, “All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust.” That still applies, and absolutely fits with the 1000 True Fans model of aiming to serve a smaller audience. As Kevin Kelly says in 1000 True Fans, “Instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely peaks of platinum bestseller hits, blockbusters, and celebrity status, you can aim for direct connection with a thousand true fans.” “On your way, no matter how many fans you actually succeed in gaining, you’ll be surrounded not by faddish infatuation, but by genuine and true appreciation. It’s a much saner destiny to hope for. And you are much more likely to actually arrive there.” In 2026, I hope that more authors (including me!) let go of ego goals and vanity metrics like ranking, gross sales (income before you take away costs), subscribers, followers, and likes, and consider important business numbers like profit (which is the money you have after costs like marketing are taken out), as well as number of true fans — and also lifestyle elements like number of weekends off, or days spent enjoying life and not just working!  OK, that’s my list of trends and predictions for 2026. Let me know what you think in the comments. Do you agree? Am I wrong? What have I missed? The post 2026 Trends And Predictions For Indie Authors And The Book Publishing Industry with Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

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 Community Webinars and live events Finish my Masters in Death, Religion, and Culture Bones of the Deep — J.F. Penn Add merch to CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com  How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories and Short Story Collections — Joanna Penn Other possible books Experiment more with AI translation  Ideally outsource more marketing to AI, but do more marketing anyway Double 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 ask Chat or Claude or Gemini how you can self-publish your particular book and they will help you step by step through the process of any site. You can share your screen or upload screenshots and it can help with what fields to fill in (very useful with translations!), as well as writing sales descriptions, researching keywords, and offering marketing help targeted to your book and your niche, and tailored to your voice.  Once again, I questioned what value I could offer the indie author community, and I’ve pulled back over the last few years as I’ve been noodling around this.  But over the last few weeks, a penny has dropped. Here’s my thinking in case it also helps you. Firstly, I want to be useful to people. I want to help.   In my early days of speaking professionally, from 2005-ish, I wanted to be the British (introvert) Tony Robbins, someone who inspired people to change, to achieve things they didn’t think they could. Writing a book is one of those things. Making a living from your writing is another. So I leaned into the self-help and how-to niche. But now that is now clearly commoditised. But recently, I realised that my message has always been one of transformation, and in the following four areas.  From someone who doesn’t think they are creative but who desperately wants to write a book, to someone who holds their first book in their hand and proudly says, ‘I made this.’ The New Author. From someone who has no confidence in their author voice, who wonders if they have anything to say, to someone who writes their story and transforms their own life, as well as other people’s. The Confident Author. From an author with one or a handful of books who doesn’t know much about business, to a successful author with a growing business heading towards their first six figure year. The Author-Entrepreneur. And finally, from a tech-phobic, fearful author who worries that AI makes it pointless to create anything and will steal all the jobs, to a confident AI-assisted creative who uses AI tools to enhance and amplify their message and their income. The AI-Assisted Artisan Author. These are four transformations I have been through myself, and with my work as Joanna Penn/The Creative Penn, I want to help you through them as well. So in 2026, I am repositioning myself as part of The Transformation Economy. What does this mean? There is a book out in February, The Transformation Economy by B. Joseph Pine II, who is also the author of The Experience Economy, which drove a lot of the last decade’s shift in business models. I have the book on pre-order, but in the meantime, I am doing the following. I will revamp TheCreativePenn.com with ‘transformation’ as the key frame and add pathways through my extensive material, rather than just categories of how to do things.  I’ve already added navigation pages for The New Author, The Confident Author, The Author-Entrepreneur, and The AI-Assisted Artisan Author, and I will be adding to those over time.  My content is basically the same, as I have always covered these topics, but the framing is now different. The intent is different.  The Creative Penn Podcast will lean more heavily into transformation, rather than just information — And will focus on the first three of the categories above, the more creative, mindset and business things.  My Patreon will continue to cover all those things, and that’s also where I post most of my AI-specific content, so if you’re interested in The AI-Assisted Artisan Author transformation path, come on over to patreon.com/thecreativepenn  I have more non-fiction books for authors coming, and lots more ideas now I am leaning into this angle.  I’ll also continue to do webinars on specific topics in 2026, and also add speaking back in 2027. It’s harder to think about transformation when it comes to fiction, but it’s also really important since fiction books in particular are highly commodified, and will become even more so with the high production speeds.  Yes, all readers have a few favourite authors but most will also read a ton of other books without knowing or caring who the author is.  Fiction can be transformational. Reader’s aren’t buying a ‘book.’ They’re buying a way to escape, to feel deeply, to experience things they never could in real life. A book can transform a day from ‘meh’ into ‘fantastic!’ My J.F. Penn fiction is mostly inspired by places, so my stories transport you into an adventure somewhere wonderful, and they all offer a deeper side of transformative contemplation of ‘memento mori’ if you choose to read them in that way.  They also have elements of gothic and death culture that I am going to lean into with some merch in 2026, so more of an identity thing than just book sales. I’m not quite sure what this means yet, but no doubt it will emerge. I’ll also shape my JFPennBooks.com site into more transformative paths, rather than just genre lists, as part of this shift.  My memoir Pilgrimage always reflected a transformation, both reflecting my own midlife shift but I’ve also heard from many who it has inspired to walk alone, or to travel on pilgrimage themselves.  Of course, transformation is not just for our readers or the people we serve as part of our businesses. It’s also for us.  One of the reasons why we are writers is because this is how we think. This is how we figure out our lives. This is how we get the stories and ideas out of our heads and into the world.  Writing and creating are transformative for us, too. That is part of the point, and a great element of why we do this, and why we love this. Which is why I don’t really understand the attraction of purely AI-generated books. There’s no fun in that for me, and there’s no transformation, either. Of course, I LOVE using Chat and Claude and Gemini Thinking models as my brainstorming partners, my research buddies, my marketing assistants, and as daily tools to keep me sparkly. I smiled as I wrote that (and yes, I human-wrote this!) because sparkly is how I feel when I work with these tools.  Programmers use the term ‘vibe coding’ which is going back and forth and collaborating together, sparking off each other. Perhaps that I am doing is ‘vibe creation.’ I feel it as almost an effervescence, a fun experience that has me laughing out loud sometimes. I am more creative, I am more in flow. I am more ‘me’ now I can create and think at a speed way faster than ever before. My mind has always worked at speed and my fingers are fast on the keys but working in this way makes me feel like I create in the high performance zone far more often.  I intend to lean more into that in 2026 as part of my own transformation (and of course, I share my experiences mainly in the Community at patreon.com/thecreativepenn ). [Note, I pay for access to all models, and currently use ChatGPT 5.2 Thinking, Claude Opus 4.5, and Gemini 3 Pro).  So that’s the big shift this year, and the idea of the Transformation Economy will underpin everything else in terms of my content.  The Creative Penn Podcast and my Patreon Community The Creative Penn Podcast continues in 2026, although I am intending to reduce my interviews to once every two weeks, with my intro and other content in between. We’ll see how that goes as I am already finding some fascinating people to talk to!  Thank you for your comments, your pictures, and also for sharing the episodes that resonate with you with the wider community. Your reviews are also super useful wherever you are listening to this, so please leave a review wherever you’re listening this as it helps with discovery.  Thanks also to everyone in my Patreon Community, which I really enjoy, especially as we have doubled down on being human through more live office hours. I will do more of those in 2026 and the first one of the year will blearily UK time so Aussies and Kiwis can come. I also share new content almost every week, either an article, a video or an audio episode around writing craft, author business, and lots on different use cases for AI tools.  If you join the Patreon, start on the Collections tab where you will find all the backlist content to explore. It’s less than the price of a coffee a month so if you get value from the show, and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com/thecreativepenn My Books and Travel Podcast is on hiatus for interviews, since the Masters is taking up the time I would have had for that. However I plan to post some solo episodes in 2026, and I also post travel articles there, like my visits to Gothic cathedrals and city breaks and things like that. Check it out at https://www.booksandtravel.page/blog/  Webinars and live events  Along with my Patreon office hours, I’m enjoying the immediacy and energy of live webinars and they work with my focus on transformation, as well as on ‘doubling down on being human’ in an age of AI, so I will be doing more this year. The first is on Business for Authors, coming on 10 and 24 January, which is aimed at helping you transform your author business in 2026, or if you’re just getting started, then transform into someone who has even a small clue about business in general!Details at TheCreativePenn.com/live and Patrons get 25% off. In terms of live in-person events, it looks like I will be speaking at the Alliance of Independent Authors event at the London Book Fair in March, and I’ll attend the Self-Publishing Show Live in June, although I won’t be speaking. There might be other things that emerge, but in general, I’m not doing much speaking in 2026 because I need to …  Finish my Masters in Death, Religion, and Culture  This represents a lot of work as I am doing the course full-time. I should be finished in September, and much of the middle of the year will be focused on a dissertation. I’m planning on doing something around AI and death, so that will no doubt lead into some fiction at a later stage! Talking of fiction …  Bones of the Deep — J.F. Penn The Masters is pretty serious, as is academic research and writing in general, and I found myself desperate to write a rollicking fun story over the holiday break between terms.  I’ve talked about this ‘tall-ship’ story for a while and now I’m committing to it.  Back in 1999, I sailed on the tall-ship Soren Larsen from Fiji to Vanuatu, one of the three trips that shaped my life.   It was the first time I’d been to the South Pacific, the first time I sailed blue water (with no land in sight), and I kept a journal and drew maps of the trip. It also helped me a make a decision to leave the UK and I headed for Australia nine months later in early 2000, and ended up being away 11 years in Australia and New Zealand.  I came home to visit of course, but only moved back to the UK in 2011, so that trip was memorable and pivotal in many ways and has stuck in my mind.  The story is based on that crossing, but of course, as J.F. Penn my imagination turns it into essentially a ‘locked room,’ there is no escape out there, especially if the danger comes from the sea. Another strand of the story comes from a recent academic essay for my Masters, when I wrote about the changes in museum ethics around human remains and medical specimens i.e. body parts in jars, and how some remains have been repatriated to the indigenous peoples they were stolen from. I’ve also talked before about how I love ‘merfolk’ horror like Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant, All the Murmuring Bones by A.G. Slatter, and Merfolk by Jeremy Bates. These are no smiling fantasy mermaids and mermen. They are predators. What might happen if the remains of a mer-saint were stolen from the deep, and what might happen to the ship that the remains are being transported in, and the people on board?  I’m about a third in, and I am having great fun! It will actually be a thriller, with a supernatural edge, rather than horror, and it is called Bones of the Deep, and it will be out on Kickstarter in April, and everywhere by the summer.  You can check out the Kickstarter pre-launch page with photos from my 1999 trip, the cover for the book, and the sales description at JFPenn.com/bones  Add merch to CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com  I’ve dipped my toe into merch a number of times and then removed the products, but now I’m clear on my message of transformation, I want to revisit this. My books remain core for both sites, but for CreativePennBooks, I also want to add other products with what are essentially affirmations — ‘Creative,’ ‘I am creative, I am an author,’ and variants of the poster I have had on my wall for years, ‘Measure your life by what you create.’ This is the affirmation I had in my wallet for years! For JFPennBooks, the items will be gothic/memento mori/skull-related. Everything will be print-on-demand. I will not be shipping anything myself, so I’m working with my designer Jane on this and then need to order test samples, and then get them added to the store. Likely mid-year at this rate! How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories and Short Story Collections — Joanna Penn I have a draft of this already which I expanded from the transcript of a webinar I did on this topic as part of The Buried and the Drowned campaign.  It turns out I’ve learned a lot about this over the years, and also on how to make a collection, so I will get that out at some point this year. I won’t do a Kickstarter for it, but I will do direct sales for at least a month and include a special edition, workbook, and bundles on my store first before putting it wide. I will also human-narrate that audiobook.  Other possible books  I’m an intuitive creative and discovery writer, so I don’t plan out what I will write in a year. The books tend to emerge and then I pick the next one that feels the most important. After the ones above, there are a few candidates.  Crown of Thorns, ARKANE thriller #14. Regular readers and listeners will know how much I love religious relics, and it’s about time for a big one! I have a trip to Paris planned in the spring, as the Crown of Thorns is at Notre Dame, and I have some other locations to visit. My ARKANE thrillers always emerge from in-person travels, so I am looking forward to that. Maybe late 2026, maybe 2027.   AI + religion technothriller/short stories. I already have some ideas sketched out for this and my Masters thesis will be something around AI, religion, and death, so I expect something will emerge from all that study and academic writing. Not sure what, but it will be interesting! The Gothic Cathedral Book. I have tens of thousands of words written, and lots of research and photos and thoughts. But it is still in the creative chaos phase (which I love!) and as yet has not emerged into anything coherent. Perhaps it will in 2026, and the plan is to re-focus on it after my Masters dissertation.  I feel like the Masters study and the academic research process will make this an even better book, But I am holding my plans for this lightly, as it feels like another ‘big’ book for me, like my ‘shadow book’ (which became Writing the Shadow) and took more than a decade to write!  How to be Creative. I have also written bits and bobs on this over many years, but it feels like it is re-emerging as part of my focus on transformation. Probably unlikely for 2026 but now back on the list …  Experiment more with AI translation  AI-assisted translation has been around for years now in various forms, and I have experimented with some of the services, as well as working with human narrators and editors in different languages, as well as licensing books in translation. But when Amazon launched Kindle Translate in November 2025, it made me think that AI-assisted translation will become a lot more popular in 2026. AI audiobook narration became good enough for many audiobooks in 2025, and it seems like AI-translation will be the same in 2026.   Yes, of course, human translation is still the gold standard, as is human narration, and that would be the primary choice for all of us — if it was affordable. But frankly, it’s not affordable for most indie authors, and indeed many small publishers. Many books don’t get an audiobook edition and most books don’t get translated into every language.  It costs thousands per book for a human translator, and so it is a premium option. I have only ever made a small profit on the books that I paid for with human translators and it took years, and while I have a few nice translation deals on some books, I’m planning to experiment more with AI translation in 2026. More languages, more markets, more opportunities to reach readers. More on this in the next episode when I’ll cover trends for 2026. Ideally outsource more marketing to AI, but do more marketing anyway You have to reach readers somehow, and you have to pay for book marketing with your time and/or your money. Those authors killing it on TikTok pay with their time, and those leaning heavily on ads are paying with money. Most of us do a bit of both.  There is no passive income from books, and even a backlist has to be marketed if you want to see any return. But I, like most authors, am not excited about book marketing. I’d rather be working on new books, or thinking about the ramifications of the changes ahead and writing or talking about that in my Patreon Community or here on the podcast. However, my book sales income remains about the same even as I (slowly) produce more books, so I need to do more book marketing in 2026. I said that last year of course, and didn’t do much more than I did in 2024, so here I am again promising to do a better job!   Every year, I hope to have my “AI book marketing assistant” up and running, and maybe this will be the year it happens. My measure is to be able to upload a book and specify a budget and say, ‘Go market this,’ and then the AI will action the marketing, without me having to cobble together workflows between systems. Of course, it will present plans for me to approve but it will do the work itself on the various platforms and monitor and optimize things for me.  We have something like that already with Amazon auto-ads, but that is specific to Amazon Advertising and only works with certain books in certain genres. I have auto-ads running for a couple of non-fiction books, but not for any fiction.  I’d also ideally like more sales on my direct stores, JFPennBooks.com and CreativePennBooks.com which means a different kind of marketing.  Perhaps this will happen through ChatGPT shopping or other AI-assisted e-commerce, which should be increasing in 2026. More on that in trends for the year to come in the next show.  Double down on being human, health and travel  I have a lot of plans for travel both for book research and also holidays with Jonathan but he has to finish his MBA and then we have some family things that take priority, so I am not sure where or when yet, but it will happen! Paris will definitely happen as part of the research for Crown of Thorns, hopefully in the spring. I’ve been to Paris many times as it’s just across the Channel and we can go by train but it’s always wonderful to visit again. Health-wise, I’ll continue with powerlifting and weight training twice a week as well as walking every day. It’s my happy place! What about you?  If you’d like to share your goals for 2026, please add them in the comments below — and remember, I’m a full-time author entrepreneur so my goals are substantial. Don’t worry if yours are as simple as ‘Finish the first draft of my book,’ as that still takes a lot of work and commitment!  All the best for 2026 — let’s get into it! The post My 2026 Creative And Business Goals With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

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 Vintage Joanna Penn books — Successful Self-Publishing, 4th Edition The Creative Penn Podcast and my community on Patreon/thecreativepenn Unexpected addition: Masters in Death, Religion and Culture at the University of Winchester Book marketing. Not quite a fail but definitely lacklustre. Reflections on my 50th year Double 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 the audiobook.  I achieved this goal with a Kickstarter in September, 2025, with 206 Backers pledging almost £8000 (~US$10,600) for the various editions. I also did my first patterned sprayed edges and I love the hardback. It has head and tail bands which make the hardback really strong, gorgeous paper, foiling, a ribbon, colour photos, and custom end papers. The Buried and the Drowned is now out everywhere in all editions. As ever, if you enjoy the stories, a review would be much appreciated!  Joanna Penn Books for Authors Early in the year, How to Write Non-Fiction Second Edition launched wide as I only sold it through my store in 2024, so it’s available everywhere in all formats including a special hardback and workbook at CreativePennBooks.com. While I didn't write it in 2025, I made the money on it this year, which is important! I also unexpectedly wrote the Fourth Edition of Successful Self-Publishing, mainly because I saw so much misinformation and hype around selling direct, and I also wanted to write about how many options there are for indie authors now. The ebook and audiobook (narrated by human me) are free on my store, CreativePennBooks.com and also available in print, in all the usual places. If you haven’t revisited options for indie authors for a while, please have a read/listen, as the industry moves fast! All my fiction and non-fiction audiobooks are now on YouTube After an inspiring episode with Derek Slaton, I put all my audiobooks and short stories on YouTube. Firstly, my non-fiction channel is monetised so I get some income from that. It’s not much, but it’s something.  More importantly, it’s marketing for my books, and many audiobook listeners go on to buy other editions especially non-fiction listeners who will often buy print as well. I’m one of those listeners! It’s also doubling down on being human, since I human narrate most of my audiobooks, including almost all of my non-fiction, as well as the memoir, and short stories. This helps bring people into my ecosystem and they may listen to the podcast as well and end up buying other books or joining the Patreon. Finally, in an age of generative AI assisted search recommendations, I want my books and content inside Gemini, which is Google’s AI. I want my books surfaced in recommendations and YouTube is owned by Google, and their AI overviews often point to videos. Only you can decide what you want to do with your audiobooks, but if you want to listen to mine, they are on YouTube @thecreativepenn for non-fiction or YouTube @jfpennauthor for fiction and memoir. The Creative Penn Podcast and my Patreon Community   It’s been another full year of The Creative Penn Podcast and this is episode 842, which is kind of crazy. If you don’t know the back story, I started podcasting in March 2009 on a sporadic schedule and then went to weekly about a decade ago in 2015 when I committed to making it a core part of my author business.  Thanks to our wonderful corporate sponsors for the year, all services I personally use and recommend — ProWritingAid, Draft2Digital, Kobo Writing Life, Bookfunnel, Written Word Media, Publisher Rocket and Atticus.  It’s also been a fantastic year inside my Patreon Community at patreon.com/thecreativepenn so thanks to all Patrons!  I love the community we have as I am able to share my unfiltered thoughts in a way that I have stopped doing in the wider community. Even a tiny paywall makes a big difference in keeping out the haters. I’ve done monthly audio Q&As which are extra solo shows answering patron questions. I’ve also done several live office hours on video, and shared content every week on AI tools, writing and author business tips. Patrons also get discounts on my webinars. I did two webinars on The AI-Assisted Artisan Author, which I am planning to run again sometime in 2026 as they were a lot of fun and so much continues to change. If you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com/thecreativepenn We have almost 1400 paying members now which is wonderful. Thanks for being part of the Community!   Unexpected goal of the year: Masters in Death, Religion and Culture at the University of Winchester During the summer as I did my gothic research, I realised that I was feeling quite jaded about the publishing world and sick of the drama in the author community over AI. My top 5 Clifton Strengths are Learner, Intellection, Strategic, Input, and Futuristic — and I needed more Input and Learning. I usually get that from travel and book research, but I wasn’t getting enough of that since Jonathan is busy finishing his MBA.  So I decided to lean into the learning and asked ChatGPT to research some courses I could do that would suit me. It found the Masters in Death, Religion and Culture at the University of Winchester, which I could do full-time and online.  It would be a year of reading quite different things, writing academic essays which is something I haven’t done for decades, and hanging out with a new group of people who were just as fascinated with macabre topics as I am.  I started in September and have now finished the first term, tackling topics around thanatology and death studies, hell and the afterlife in the Christian tradition, and the ethics of using human remains to inspire fiction, amongst other interesting things.  It was a challenge to get back into the style of academic essay writing, but I’m enjoying the rigour of the research and the citations, which is something that the indie author community needs more of, a topic I will revisit in 2026. I have found the topics fascinating, and the degree is a great way to expand my mind in a new direction, and distract me from the dramas of the author community. I’ll be back into it in mid-January and will finish in September 2026. Book marketing. Not quite a fail but definitely lacklustre. I said I would “Do a monthly book marketing plan and organise paid ad campaigns per month for revolving first books in series and my main earners.” I didn’t do this! I also said I would organise my Shopify stores, CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com into more collections to make it easier for readers to find things they might want to buy.  While I did change the theme of CreativePennBooks.com over to Impulse to make it easier to find collections, I haven’t done much to reorganise or add new pathways through the books. I’m rolling this part of the goal into 2026.  I said I would reinvigorate my content marketing for JFPenn, and make more of BooksAndTravel.page with links back to my stores, and do fiction specific content marketing with the aim of surfacing more in the LLMs as generative search expands. I did a number of episodes on Books and Travel in 2025, but once I started the Masters, I had to leave that aside, and although I have started some extra content on JFPennBooks.com, I am not overly enthusiastic about it! I also said I would “Leverage AI tools to achieve more as a one-person business.” I use AI tools (mainly ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini) every day for different things but as ever, I am pretty scatter gun about what I do. I lean into intuition and I love research so I am more likely to ask the AI tools to do a deep research report on south Pacific merfolk mythology, or how gothic architecture impacted sacred music, or geology and deep time, rather than asking for marketing hooks.   I intended to use more AI for book marketing, but as ever, I was too optimistic about the timeline of what might be possible. There’s lots you can do with prompting, finessing things and then posting on various platforms, but I’m not interested in spending time doing that.  My gold standard for an AI assistant is to feed it the finished book and then say, “Here’s a budget. Go market this,” and not have to connect lots of things together into some Frankenstein-workflow. That’s not available yet. Maybe in 2026 …  Of course, I still do book marketing. I have to in order to sell any books and make money from book sales. We all have to do some kind of book marketing! I have my Kickstarter launches which I put effort into, as well as consistent backlist sales fed by the podcast, and my email newsletter (my combined list is around 60K). I have auto campaigns running on Amazon Ads, and I have used Written Word Media campaigns as well as BookBub throughout the year. This is basically the minimum, so as usual, must do better! I’m pretty sure I’m not the only author saying this! However, my business has multiple streams of income, and I have the podcast sponsorship revenue as well as the Patreon, plus sporadic webinars, which add to my bottom line and don’t require paid advertising at all.  Reflections on my 50th year I woke up on my 50th birthday in March in Iceland, by the Black Church of Budir out on the Skaefellsnes peninsula. As seals played in the sea and we walked in the snow over the ancient lava field under the gaze of the volcano that inspired Jules Verne Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and my short story, The Black Church, which you can find in my collection, The Buried and the Drowned.  On that trip, we also saw the northern lights and had a memorable trip that marked a real shift for me. I’ve been told by lots of people that 50 is a ‘proper’ birthday, as in one of those that makes you stop and reconsider things, and it has indeed been that, although I have also found the last few years of perimenopause to be a large part of the change as well. A big shift is around priorities and not caring so much what other people think, which is a relief in many ways. Also, I don’t have the patience to do things that I don’t think are worth doing for the longer term, and I am appreciating a quieter life. I’d rather lie in a sunbeam and read with Cashew and Noisette next to me then create marketing assets or spend time on social media. I’d rather go for a walk with Jonathan than go to a conference or networking event. In my Pilgrimage memoir, I quote an anonymous source, “Pilgrim, pass by that which you do not love.” It’s a powerful message, and I take it to mean, stop listening to people who tell you what is important. Listen to yourself more and only pay attention to that which you feel drawn to explore. On pilgrimage, it might be turning away from the supposedly important shrine of a saint to go and sit in nature and feel closer to God that way.  In our author lives, it might be turning away from the things that just feel wrong for us, and leaning into what is enjoyable, that which feels worthwhile, that which we want to keep doing for the long term. Let’s face it, as always, that is the writing, the thinking, the imagination.  As ever, I have this mantra on my wall: “Measure your life by what you create.” It’s the creation side of things that we love and that’s what we need to remember when everything else gets a little much. Many authors left social media in 2025, and while I haven’t left it altogether, I don’t use it much. I post pictures proving I am human on Instagram @jfpennauthor which automatically post to Facebook. I barely check my pages on Facebook though. I’m also still on X with a carefully curated feed that I mainly use to learn new cool AI things which I share with my Patreon Community.  Double down on being human. Travel and health.  Yes, I am a human author, and yes, I continue to age! When you've been publishing a while, you need to update your author photos periodically and I finally had a photoshoot I loved with Betty Bhandari Photography, which means I can add the new pics to my websites and the back of my books. Are you up to date with your author photos? (or at least within a decade of the last photoshoot?!) Here are a few of the pictures on Instagram @jfpennauthor. Healthwise, I gave up calisthenics as it was too much on top of the powerlifting and the amount of walking I do. I did another British Powerlifting competition in September in the M2 category (based on age) and 63kgs category (based on weight). Deadlift: 95kgs. Squat: 60kgs. BenchPress: 37.5kgs. While this is less overall than last year, I also weigh less, so I’m actually stronger based on lift to body weight percentage. I have also done a few pull-ups in the last week with no band, which I am thrilled with! On the travel side, Iceland was the big trip, and I also had a weekend in Berlin for the film festival, where I met up with a producer and a director around an adaptation of my Day of the Vikings thriller. That didn’t pan out, as most of these things don’t, but I certainly learned a lot about the industry — and why it doesn’t suit me! Once again, I dipped my toe into screenwriting and then ran away, as has happened multiple times over the years. When will I learn? …  Over the summer of 2025, I visited lots of gothic cathedrals including Lichfield, Rochester, Durham, York, and revisiting Canterbury, as part of my book research for the Gothic Cathedral book. I have tens of thousands of words on this project, but it isn’t ready yet, so this is carried over into 2026 as it might happen then, depending on the Masters. I spoke at Author Nation in Las Vegas in November 2025, and before it started, I visited (Lower) Antelope Canyon, one of the places on my bucket list, and it did not disappoint. What a special place and no doubt it will appear in a story at some point! How did your 2025 go? I hope your 2025 had some wonderful times as well as no doubt some challenges — and that you have time for reflection as the year turns once more.  Let me know in the comments whether you achieved your creative goals and any other reflections you'd like to share.The post Review Of My 2025 Creative And Business Goals With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you be more relaxed about your writing process? What are some specific ways to take the pressure off your art and help you enjoy the creative journey? With Joanna Penn and Mark Leslie Lefebvre. In the intro, Spotify 2025 audiobook trends; Audible + BookTok; NonFiction Authors Guide to SubStack; OpenAI and Disney agreement on Sora; India AI licensing; Business for Authors January webinars; Mark and Jo over the years Mark Leslie LeFebvre is the author of horror and paranormal fiction, as well as nonfiction books for authors. He's also an editor, professional speaker, and the Director of Business Development at Draft2Digital. Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, and memoir as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. Mark and Jo co-wrote The Relaxed Author in 2021. You can listen to us talk about the process here. 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.  Show Notes Why the ‘relaxed' author Write what you love Write at your own pace Write in a series (if you want to) Schedule time to fill the creative well and for rest and relaxation Improve your writing process — but only if it fits with your lifestyle You can find The Relaxed Author: Take the Pressure Off Your Art and Enjoy the Creative Journey on CreativePennBooks.com as well as on your favorite online store or audiobook platform, or order in your library or bookstore. You can find Mark Leslie Lefebvre and his books and podcast at Stark Reflections.ca Why the ‘relaxed' author? Joanna: The definition of relaxed is “free from tension and anxiety,” from the Latin laxus, meaning loose, and to be honest, I am not a relaxed or laid-back person in the broader sense.  Back in my teens, my nickname at school was Highly Stressed. I’m a Type A personality, driven by deadlines and achieving goals. I love to work and I burned out multiple times in my previous career as an IT consultant.  If we go away on a trip, I pack the schedule with back-to-back cultural things like museums and art galleries to help my book research. Or we go on adventure holidays with a clear goal, like cycling down the South-West coast of India. I can’t even go for a long walk without training for another ultra-marathon! So I am not a relaxed person — but I am a relaxed author. If I wanted to spend most of my time doing something that made me miserable, I would go back to my old day job in consulting. I was paid well and worked fewer hours overall. But I measure my life by what I create, and if I am not working on a creative project, I am not able to truly relax in my downtime. There are always more things I want to learn and write about, always more stories to be told and knowledge to share. I don’t want to kill my writing life by over-stressing or burning out as an author. I write what I love and follow my Muse into projects that feel right. I know how to publish and market books well enough to reach readers and make some money. I have many different income streams through my books, podcast and website.  Of course, I still have my creative and business challenges as well as mindset issues, just like any writer. That never goes away. But after a decade as a full-time author entrepreneur, I have a mature creative business and I’ve relaxed into the way I do things.  I love to write, but I also want a full and happy, healthy life. I’m still learning and improving as the industry shifts — and I change, too. I still have ambitious creative and financial goals, but I am going about them in a more relaxed way and in this book, I’ll share some of my experiences and tips in the hope that you can discover your relaxed path, too. Mark: One of the most fundamental things you can do in your writing life is look at how you want to spend your time. I think back to the concept of: ‘You're often a reflection of the people you spend the most time with.’ Therefore, typically, your best friend, or perhaps your partner, is often a person you love spending time with. Because there’s something inherently special about spending time with this person who resonates in a meaningful way, and you feel more yourself because you're with them. In many ways, writing, or the path that you are on as a writer, is almost like being on a journey with an invisible partner. You are you. But you are also the writer you. And there’s the two of you traveling down the road of life together. And so that same question arises. What kind of writer-self do you want to spend all your time with? Do you want to spend all your time with a partner that is constantly stressed out or constantly trying to reach deadlines based on somebody else's prescription of what success is?  Or would you rather spend time with a partner who pauses to take a contemplative look at your own life, your own comfort, your own passion and the things that you are willing to commit to? Someone who allows that all to happen in a way that feels natural and comfortable to you. I’m a fan of the latter, of course, because then you can focus on the things you're passionate about and the things you're hopeful about rather than the things you're fearful about and those that bring anxiety and stress into your life. To me, that’s part of being a relaxed author. That underlying acceptance before you start to plan things out. If the writing life is a marathon, not a sprint, then pacing, not rushing, may be the key. We have both seen burnout in the author community. People who have pushed themselves too hard and just couldn’t keep up with the impossible pace they set for themselves. At times, indie authors would wear that stress, that anxiety, that rush to produce more and more, as a badge of honor. It’s fine to be proud of the hard work that you do. It’s fine to be proud of pushing yourself to always do better, and be better. But when you push too far — beyond your limits — you can ultimately do yourself more harm than good. Everyone has their own unique pace—something that they are comfortable with—and one key is to experiment until you find that pace, and you can settle in for the long run. There’s no looking over your shoulder at the other writers. There’s no panicking about the ones outpacing you. You’re in this with yourself. And, of course, with those readers who are anticipating those clearly communicated milestones of your releases.  I think that what we both want for authors is to see them reaching those milestones at their own paces, in their own comfort, delighting in the fact their readers are there cheering them on. Because we’ll be silently cheering them along as well, knowing that they’ve set a pace, making relaxed author lifestyle choices, that will benefit them in the long run. “I’m glad you're writing this book. I know I'm not the only author who wants peace, moments of joy, and to enjoy the journey. Indie publishing is a luxury that I remember not having, I don't want to lose my sense of gratitude.” —Anonymous author from our survey Write what you love Joanna: The pandemic has taught us that life really is short. Memento mori — remember, you will die.  What is the point of spending precious time writing books you don’t want to write?  If we only have a limited amount of time and only have a limited number of books that we can write in a lifetime, then we need to choose to write the books that we love. If I wanted a job doing something I don’t enjoy, then I would have remained in my stressful old career as an IT consultant — when I certainly wasn’t relaxed! Taking that further, if you try to write things you don't love, then you're going to have to read what you don't love as well, which will take more time. I love writing thrillers because that’s what I love to read. Back when I was miserable in my day job, I would go to the bookstore at lunchtime and buy thrillers. I would read them on the train to and from work and during the lunch break. Anything for a few minutes of escape. That’s the same feeling I try to give my readers now. I know the genre inside and out. If I had to write something else, I would have to read and learn that other genre and spend time doing things I don't love. In fact, I don't even know how you can read things you don't enjoy. I only give books a few pages and if they don’t resonate, I stop reading. Life really is too short.  You also need to run your own race and travel your own journey. If you try to write in a genre you are not immersed in, you will always be looking sideways at what other authors are doing, and that can cause comparisonitis — when you compare yourself to others, most often in an unfavorable way. Definitely not relaxing! Writing something you love has many intrinsic rewards other than sales. Writing is a career for many of us, but it's a passion first, and you don't want to feel like you've wasted your time on words you don’t care about. “Write what you know” is terrible advice for a long-term career as at some point, you will run out of what you know. It should be “write what you want to learn about.” When I want to learn about a topic, I write a book on it because that feeds my curiosity and I love book research, it’s how I enjoy spending my time, especially when I travel, which is also part of how I relax.  If you write what you love and make it part of your lifestyle, you will be a far more relaxed author. Mark: It’s common that writers are drawn into storytelling from some combination of passion, curiosity, and unrelenting interest. We probably read or saw something that inspired us, and we wanted to express those ideas or the resulting perspectives that percolated in our hearts and minds. Or we read something and thought, “Wow, I could do this; but I would have come at it differently or I would approach the situation or subject matter with my own flair.” So, we get into writing with passion and desire for storytelling. And then sometimes along the way, we recognize the critical value of having to become an entrepreneur, to understand the business of writing and publishing. And part of understanding that aspect of being an author is writing to market, and understanding shifts and trends in the industry, and adjusting to those ebbs and flows of the tide. But sometimes, we lose sight of the passion that drew us to writing in the first place. And so, writing the things that you love can be a beacon to keep you on course. I love the concept of “Do something that you love, and you'll never work a day in your life.” And that's true in some regard because I've always felt that way for almost my entire adult life. I've been very lucky. But at the same time, I work extremely hard at what I love. Some days are harder than others, and some things are really difficult, frustrating and challenging; but at the end of the day, I have the feeling of satisfaction that I spent my time doing something I believe in. I've been a bookseller my entire life even though I don't sell books in brick-and-mortar bookstores anymore—that act of physically putting books in people's hands. But to this day, what I do is virtually putting books in people's hands, both as an author and as an industry representative who is passionate about the book business. I was drawn to that world via my passion for writing. And that’s what continues to compel me forward. I tried to leave the corporate world to write full time in 2018 but realized there was an intrinsic satisfaction to working in that realm, to embracing and sharing my insights and knowledge from that arena to help other writers. And I couldn’t give that up. For me, the whole core, the whole essence of why I get up in the morning has to do with storytelling, creative inspiration, and wanting to inspire and inform other people to be the best that they can be in the business of writing and publishing. And that’s what keeps me going when the days are hard. Passion as the inspiration to keep going There are always going to be days that aren’t easy.  There will be unexpected barriers that hit you as a writer. You’ll face that mid-novel slump or realize that you have to scrap an entire scene or even plotline, and feel like going back and re-starting is just too much. You might find the research required to be overwhelming or too difficult.  There’ll be days when the words don’t flow, or the inspiration that initially struck you seems to have abandoned you for greener pastures. Whatever it is, some unexpected frustration can create what can appear to be an insurmountable block. And, when that happens, if it's a project you don't love, you're more likely to let those barriers get in your way and stop you. But if it's a project that you're passionate about, and you’re writing what you love, that alone can be what greases the wheels and helps reduce that friction to keep you going. At the end of the day, writing what you love can be a honing, grounding, and centering beacon that allows you to want to wake up in the morning and enjoy the process as much as possible even when the hard work comes along. “For me, relaxation comes from writing what I know and love and trusting the emergent process. As a discovery writer, I experience great joy when the story, characters and dialogue simply emerge in their own time and their own way. It feels wonderful.” — Valerie Andrews “Writing makes me a relaxed author. Just getting lost in a story of my own creation, discovering new places and learning what makes my characters tick is the best way I know of relaxing. Even the tricky parts, when I have no idea where I am going next, have a special kind of charm.” – Imogen Clark Write at your own pace Mark: Writing at your own pace will help you be a more relaxed author because you’re not stressing out by trying to keep up with someone else. Of course, we all struggle with comparing ourselves to others. Take a quick look around and you can always find someone who has written more books than you. Nora Roberts, traditionally published author, writes a book a month. Lindsey Buroker, fantasy indie author, writes a book a month of over 100,000 words. If you compare yourself to someone else and you try to write at their pace, that is not going to be your relaxed schedule. On the other hand, if you compare yourself to Donna Tartt, who writes one book every decade, you might feel like some speed-demon crushing that word count and mastering rapid release. Looking at what others are doing could result in you thinking you're really slow or you could think that you're super-fast. What does that kind of comparison actually get you? I remember going to see a talk by Canadian literary author Farley Mowat when I was a young budding writer. I’ll never forget one thing he said from that stage: “Any book that takes you less than four years to write is not a real book.” Young teenage Mark was devastated, hurt and disappointed to hear him say that because my favorite author at the time, Piers Anthony, was writing and publishing two to three novels a year. I loved his stuff, and his fantasy and science fiction had been an important inspiration in my writing at that time. (The personal notes I add to the end of my stories and novels came from enjoying his so much). That focus on there being only a single way, a single pace to write, ended up preventing me from enjoying the books I had already been loving because I was doing that comparisonitis Joanna talks about, but as a reader. I took someone else’s perspective too much to heart and I let that ruin a good thing that had brought me personal joy and pleasure. It works the same way as a writer. Because we have likely developed a pattern, or a way that works for us that is our own. We all have a pace that we comfortably walk; a way we prefer to drive. A pattern or style of how and when and what we prefer to eat. We all have our own unique comfort food. There are these patterns that we're comfortable with, and potentially because they are natural to us. If you try to force yourself to write at a pace that's not natural to you, things can go south in your writing and your mental health. And I’m not suggesting any particular pace, except for the one that’s most natural and comfortable to you. If writing fast is something that you're passionate about, and you're good at it, and it's something you naturally do, why would you stop yourself from doing that? Just like if you're a slow writer and you're trying to write fast: why are you doing that to yourself? There’s a common pop song line used by numerous bands over the years that exhorts you to “shake what you got.” I like to think the same thing applies here. And do it with pride and conviction. Because what you got is unique and awesome. Own it, and shake it with pride. You have a way you write and a word count per writing session that works for you. And along with that, you likely know what time you can assign to writing because of other commitments like family time, leisure time, and work (assuming you’re not a full-time writer). Simple math can provide you with a way to determine how long it will take to get your first draft written. So, your path and plans are clear. And you simply take the approach that aligns with your writer DNA. Understanding what that pace is for you helps alleviate an incredible amount of stress that you do not need to thrust upon yourself. Because if you're not going to be able to enjoy it while you're doing it, what's the point? Your pace might change project to project While your pace can change over time, your pace can also change project to project. And sometimes the time actually spent writing can be a smaller portion of the larger work involved. I was on a panel at a conference once and someone asked me how long it took to write my non-fiction book of ghost stories, Haunted Hamilton. “About four days,” I responded. And while that’s true — I crafted the first draft over four long and exhausting days writing as much as sixteen hours each day — the reality was I had been doing research for months. But the pen didn’t actually hit the paper until just a few days before my deadline to turn the book over to my editor. That was for a non-fiction book; but I’ve found I do similar things with fiction. I noodle over concepts and ideas for months before I actually commit words to the page. The reason this comes to mind is that I think it’s important to recognize the way that I write is I first spend a lot of time in my head to understand and chew on things. And then by the time it comes to actually getting the words onto the paper, I've already done much of the pre-writing mentally. It's sometimes not fair when you’re comparing yourself to someone else to look at how long they physically spend in front of a keyboard hammering on that word count, because they might have spent a significantly longer amount of a longer time either outlining or conceptualizing the story in their mind or in their heart before they sat down to write. So that's part of the pace, too. Because sometimes, if we only look at the time spent at the ‘writer’s desk,’ we fool ourselves when we think that we're a slow writer or a fast writer. Joanna:  Your pace will change over your career My first novel took 14 months and now I can write a first draft in about six weeks because I have more experience. It's also more relaxing for me to write a book now than it was in the beginning, because I didn't know what I was doing back then.  Your pace will change per project I have a non-fiction work in progress, my Shadow Book (working title), which I have started several times. I have about 30,000 words but as I write this, I have backed away from it because I’m (still) not ready. There’s a lot more research and thinking I need to do. Similarly, some people take years writing a memoir or a book with such emotional or personal depth that it needs more to bring it to life. Your pace will also shift depending on where you are in the arc of life Perhaps you have young kids right now, or you have a health issue, or you’re caring for someone who is ill. Perhaps you have a demanding day job so you have less time to write. Perhaps you really need extended time away from writing, or just a holiday. Or maybe there’s a global pandemic and frankly, you’re too stressed to write! The key to pacing in a book is variability — and that’s true of life, too. Write at the pace that works for you and don’t be afraid to change it as you need to over time. “I think the biggest thing for me is reminding myself that I'm in this to write. Sometimes I can get caught up in all the moving pieces of editing and publishing and marketing, but the longer I go without writing, or only writing because I have to get the next thing done instead of for enjoyment, the more stressed and anxious I become. But if I make time to fit in what I truly love, which is the process of writing without putting pressure on myself to meet a deadline, or to be perfect, or to meet somebody else's expectations — that's when I become truly relaxed.” – Ariele Sieling  Write in a series (if you want to) Joanna: I have some stand-alone books but most of them are in series, both for non-fiction and for my fiction as J.F. Penn. It’s how I like to read and write. As we draft this book, I’m also writing book 12 in my ARKANE series, Tomb of Relics. It’s relaxing because I know my characters, I know my world; I know the structure of how an ARKANE story goes. I know what to put in it to please my readers. I have already done the work to set up the series world and the main characters and now all I need is a plot and an antagonist.  It’s also quicker to write and edit because I’ve done it before. Of course, you need to put in the work initially so the series comes together, but once you’ve set that all up, each subsequent book is easier. You can also be more relaxed because you already have an audience who will (hopefully) buy the book because they bought the others. You will know approximately how many sales you’ll get on launch and there will be people ready to review. Writing in a non-fiction series is also a really good idea because you know your audience and you can offer them more books, products and services that will help them within a niche. While they might not be sequential, they should be around the same topic, for example, this is part of my Books for Authors series. Financially, it makes sense to have a series as you will earn more revenue per customer as they will (hopefully) buy more than one book. It’s also easier and more relaxing to market as you can set one book to free or a limited time discount and drive sales through to other books in the series. Essentially, writing a book in a series makes it easier to fulfill both creative and financial goals. However, if you love to read and write stand-alone books, and some genres suit stand-alones better than series anyway, then, of course, go with what works for you!  Mark: I like to equate this to no matter where you travel in the world, if you find a McDonald's you pretty much know what's on the menu and you know what to expect. When you write in a series, it's like returning to hang out with old friends. You know their backstory; you know their history so you can easily fall into a new conversation about something and not have to get caught up on understanding what you have in common. So that's an enormous benefit of relaxing into something like, “Oh, I’m sitting down over coffee, chatting with some old friends. They’re telling me a new story about something that happened to them. I know who they are, I know what they're made out of.” And this new plot, this new situation, they may have new goals, they may have new ways they’re going to grow as characters, but they're still the same people that we know and love. And that's a huge benefit that I only discovered recently because I'm only right now working on book four in my Canadian Werewolf series. Prior to that, I had three different novels that were all the first book in a series with no book two. And it was stressful for me. Writing anything seemed to take forever. I was causing myself anxiety by jumping around and writing new works as opposed to realizing I could go visit a locale I'm familiar and comfortable with. And I can see new things in the same locale just like sometimes you can see new things and people you know and love already, especially when you introduce something new into the world and you see how they react to it. For me, there's nothing more wonderful than that sort of homecoming. It's like a nostalgic feeling when you do that. I’ve seen a repeated pattern where writers spend years writing their first book. I started A Canadian Werewolf in New York in 2006 and I did not publish it until ten years later, after finishing it in 2015. (FYI, that wasn’t my first novel. I had written three and published one of them prior to that). That first novel can take so long because you're learning.  You’re learning about your characters, about the craft, about the practice of writing, about the processes that you’re testing along the way. And if you are working on your first book and it’s taking longer than planned, please don’t beat yourself up for that. It’s a process. Sometimes that process takes more time. I sometimes wonder if this is related to our perception of time as we age. When you're 10 years old, a day compared to your lifetime is a significant amount of time, and thinking about a year later is considering a time that is one-tenth of your life. When you have a few more decades or more under your belt, that year is a smaller part of the whole. If you’re 30, a year is only one-thirtieth of your life. A much smaller piece. Just having written more books, particularly in a series, removes the pressure of that one book to represent all of you as a writer.  I had initial anxiety at writing the second book in my Canadian Werewolf series. Book two was more terrifying in some ways than book one because finally, after all this time, I had something good that I didn’t want to ruin. Should I leave well enough alone? But I was asked to write a short story to a theme in an anthology, and using my main character from that first novel allowed me to discover I could have fun spending more time with these characters and this world. And I also realized that people wanted to read more about these characters. I didn't just want to write about them, but other people wanted to read about them too. And that makes the process so much easier to keep going with them. So one of the other benefits that helps to relax me as a writer working on a series is I have a better understanding of who my audience is, and who my readers are, and who will want this, and who will appreciate it. So I know what worked, I know what resonated with them, and I know I can give them that next thing. I have discovered that writing in a series is a far more relaxed way of understanding your target audience better. Because it's not just a single shot in the dark, it's a consistent on-going stream. Let me reflect on a bit of a caveat, because I’m not suggesting sticking to only a single series or universe. As writers, we have plenty of ideas and inspirations, and it’s okay to embrace some of the other ones that come to us. When I think about the Canadian rock trio, Rush, a band that produced 19 studio albums and toured for 40 years, I acknowledge a very consistent band over the decades. And yet, they weren't the same band that they were when they started playing together, even though it was the same three guys since Neil Peart joined Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson. They changed what they wrote about, what they sang about, themes, styles, approaches to making music, all of this. They adapted and changed their style at least a dozen times over the course of their career. No album was exactly like the previous album, and they experimented, and they tried things. But there was a consistency of the audience that went along with them. And as writers, we can potentially have that same thing where we know there are going to be people who will follow us. Think about Stephen King, a writer who has been writing in many different subjects and genres. And yet there's a core group of people who will enjoy everything he writes, and he has that Constant Reader he always keeps in mind. And so, when we write in a series, we're thinking about that constant reader in a more relaxed way because that constant reader, like our characters, like our worlds, like our universes, is like we're just returning to a comfortable, cozy spot where we're just going to hang out with some good friends for a bit. Or, as the contemplative Rush song Time Stand Still expresses, the simple comfort and desire of spending some quality time having a drink with a friend. Schedule time to fill the creative well and for rest and relaxation Mark: What we do as writers is quite cerebral, so we need to give ourselves mental breaks in the same way we need to sleep regularly. Our bodies require sleep. And it's not just physical rest for our bodies to regenerate, it's for our minds to regenerate. We need that to stay sane, to stay alive, to stay healthy. The reality for us as creatives is that we're writing all the time, whether or not we're in front of a keyboard or have a pen in our hand. We’re always writing, continually sucking the marrow from the things that are happening around us, even when we're not consciously aware of it. And sometimes when we are more consciously aware of it, that awareness can feel forced. It can feel stressful. When you give yourself the time to just let go, to just relax, wonderful things can happen. And they can come naturally, never feeling that urgent sense of pressure. Downtime, for me, is making space for those magic moments to happen. I was recently listening to Episode 556 of The Creative Penn podcast where Joanna talked about the serendipity of those moments when you're traveling and you're going to a museum and you see something. And you're not consciously there to research for a book, but you see something that just makes a connection for you. And you would not have had that for your writing had you not given yourself the time to just be doing and enjoying something else. And so, whenever I need to resolve an issue or a problem in a project I’m writing, which can cause stress, I will do other things. I will go for a run or walk the dogs, wash the dishes or clean the house. Or I’ll put on some music and sing and dance like nobody is watching or listening—and thank goodness for that, because that might cause them needless anxiety. The key is, I will do something different that allows my mind to just let go. And somewhere in the subconscious, usually the answer comes to me. Those non-cerebral activities can be very restorative. Yesterday, my partner Liz and I met her daughter at the park. And while we quietly waited, the two of us wordlessly enjoyed the sights and sounds of people walking by, the river in the background, the wind blowing through the leaves in the trees above us. That moment wasn't a purposeful, “Hey, we're going to chill and relax.” But we found about five minutes of restorative calm in the day.  A brief, but powerful ‘Ah’ moment. And when I got back to writing this morning, I drew upon some of the imagery from those few minutes. I didn't realize at the time I was experiencing the moment yesterday that I was going to incorporate some of that imagery in today's writing session. And that's the serendipity that just flows very naturally in those scheduled and even unscheduled moments of relaxation. Joanna: I separate this into two aspects because I’m good at one and terrible at the other!  I schedule time to fill the creative well as often as possible. This is something that Julia Cameron advises in The Artist's Way, and I find it an essential part of my creative practice. Essentially, you can’t create from an empty mind. You have to actively seek out ways to spark ideas. International travel is a huge part of my fiction inspiration, in particular. This has been impossible during the pandemic and has definitely impacted my writing. I also go to exhibitions and art galleries, as well as read books, watch films and documentaries. If I don't fill my creative well, then I feel empty, like I will never have another idea, that perhaps my writing life is over. Some people call that writer's block but I know that feeling now. It just means I haven’t filled my creative well and I need to schedule time to do that so I can create again.  Consume and produce. That’s the balance you need in order to keep the creative well filled and the words flowing. In terms of scheduling time to relax instead of doing book research, I find this difficult because I love to work. My husband says that I'm like a little sports car that goes really, really fast and doesn't stop until it hits a wall. I operate at a high productivity level and then I crash! But the restrictions of the pandemic have helped me learn more about relaxation, after much initial frustration. I have walked in nature and lain in the garden in the hammock and recently, we went to the seaside for the first time in 18 months. I lay on the stones and watched the waves. I was the most relaxed I’ve been in a long time. I didn't look at my phone. I wasn't listening to a podcast or an audiobook. We weren't talking. We were just being there in nature and relaxing.  Authors are always thinking and feeling because everything feeds our work somehow. But we have to have both aspects — active time to fill the creative well and passive time to rest and relax. “I go for lots of walks and hikes in the woods. These help me work out the kinks in my plots, and also to feel more relaxed! (Exercise is an added benefit!)” –T.W. Piperbrook Improve your writing process — but only if it fits with your lifestyle Joanna: A lot of stress can occur in writing if we try to change or improve our process too far beyond our natural way of doing things.  For example, trying to be a detailed plotter with a spreadsheet when you’re really a discovery writer, or trying to dictate 5,000 words per hour when you find it easier to hand write slowly into a journal. Productivity tips from other writers can really help you tweak your personal process, but only if they work for you — and I say this as someone who has a book on Productivity for Authors! Of course, it’s a good idea to improve things, but once you try something, analyze whether it works for you — either with data or just how you feel. If it works, great. Adopt it into your process. If it doesn’t work, then discard it. For example, I wrote my first novel in Microsoft Word. When I discovered Scrivener, I changed my process and never looked back because it made my life so much easier. I don’t write in order and Scrivener made it easier to move things around. I also discovered that it was easier for me to get into my first draft writing and creating when I was away from the desk I use for business, podcasting, and marketing tasks. I started to write in a local cafe and later on in a co-working space. During the pandemic lockdown, I used specific playlists to create a form of separation as I couldn’t physically go somewhere else. Editing is an important part of the writing process but you have to find what works for you, which will also change over time. Some are authors are more relaxed with a messy first draft, then rounds of rewrites while working with multiple editors. Others do one careful draft and then use a proofreader to check the finished book. There are as many ways to write as there are writers.  A relaxed author chooses the process that works in the most effective way for them and makes the book the best it can be. Mark: When it comes to process, there are times when you're doing something that feels natural, versus times when you're learning a new skill. Consciously and purposefully learning new skills can be stressful; particularly because it’s something we often put so much emphasis or importance upon. But when you adapt on-going learning as a normal part of your life, a natural part of who and what you are, that stress can flow away. I'm always about learning new skills; but over time I’ve learned how to absorb learning into my everyday processes. I'm a pantser, or discovery writer, or whatever term we can apply that makes us feel better about it. And every time I've tried to stringently outline a book, it has been a stressful experience and I’ve not been satisfied with the process or the result.  Perhaps I satisfied the part of me that thought I wanted to be more like other writers, but I didn't satisfy the creative person in me. I was denying that flow that has worked for me. I did, of course, naturally introduce a few new learnings into my attempts to outline; so I stuck with those elements that worked, and abandoned the elements that weren’t working, or were causing me stress. The thought of self-improvement often comes with images of blood, sweat, and tears. It doesn't have to. You don't have to bleed to do this; it can be something that you do at your own pace. You can do it in a way that you're comfortable with so it's causing you no stress, but allowing you to learn and grow and improve. And if it doesn't work but you force yourself to keep doing it because a famous writer or a six-figure author said, “this is the way to do it,” you create pressure. And when you don’t do it that way, you can think of yourself as a failure as opposed to thinking of it as, “No, this is just the way that I do things.” When you accept how you do things, if they result in effectively getting things done and feeling good about it at the same time, you have less resistance, you have less friction, you have less tension.  Constantly learning, adapting, and evolving is good. But forcing ourselves to try to be or do something that we are not or that doesn't work for us, that causes needless anxiety. “I think a large part of it comes down to reminding myself WHY I write. This can mean looking back at positive reviews, so I can see how much joy others get from my writing, or even just writing something brand new for the sake of exploring an idea. Writing something just for me, rather than for an audience, reminds me how much I enjoy writing, which helps me to unwind a bit and approach my projects with more playfulness.” – Icy Sedgwick You can find The Relaxed Author: Take the Pressure Off Your Art and Enjoy the Creative Journey on CreativePennBooks.com as well as on your favorite online store or audiobook platform, or order in your library or bookstore. The post The Relaxed Author Writing Tips With Joanna Penn and Mark Leslie Lefebvre first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What does it really take to build a multi-six-figure author business with no advertising? Is running your own warehouse really necessary for direct sales success — or is there a simpler path using print-on-demand that works just as well? In this conversation, Sacha Black and I compare our very different approaches to selling direct, from print on demand to pallets of books, and explore why the right model depends entirely on who you are and what your goals are for your author business. In the intro, Memoir Examples and interviews [Reedsy, The Creative Penn memoir tips]; Written Word Media annual indie author survey results; Successful Self-Publishing Fourth Edition; Business for Authors webinars; Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant; Camino Portuguese Coastal on My Camino Podcast; Creating while Caring Community with Donn King; The Buried and the Drowned by J.F. Penn Today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it’s delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn  Sacha Black is the author of YA and non-fiction for authors and previously hosted The Rebel Author Podcast. As Ruby Roe, she is a multi-six-figure author of sapphic romantasy. 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.  Show Notes Two models for selling direct: print on demand vs running your own warehouse. Plus, check out Sacha's solo Rebel Author episode about the details of the warehouse. Cashflow management Kickstarter lessons: pre-launch followers, fulfillment time, and realistic timelines How Sacha built a multi-six-figure business through TikTok with zero ad spend Matching your business model to your personality and skill set Building resilience: staff salaries, SOPs, and planning for when things change You can find Ruby at RubyRoe.co.uk and on TikTok @rubyroeauthor and on Instagram @sachablackauthor Transcript of the interview Joanna: Sacha Black is the author of YA and nonfiction for authors, and previously hosted the Rebel Author podcast. As Ruby Roe, she is a multi-six-figure author of sapphic romance. So welcome back to the show, Sacha. Sacha: Hello. Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to be here. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you today. Now, just for context, for everybody listening, Sacha has a solo episode on her Rebel Author podcast, last week as we record this, which goes into specific lessons around the warehouse in more detail, including financials. So we are going to come at this from a slightly different angle in our discussion today, which is really about two different ways of doing selling direct. I want us to start though, Sacha, in case people don't know your background, in case they've missed out. Can you just give us a quick recap of your indie author journey, because you haven't just come out of nowhere and jumped into this business and done incredibly well? Sacha's Indie Author Journey Sacha: No, I really haven't. Okay. So 2013, I started writing. So 12 years ago I started writing with the intention to publish, because I was writing before, but not with the intention. 2017 I first self-published and then two years after that, in 2019, I quit the day job. But let me be clear, it wasn't because I was rolling in self-published royalties or commissions or whatever you want to call them. I was barely scraping by. And so those are what I like to call my hustle years because I mean, I still hustle, but it was a different kind. It was grind and hustle. So I did a lot of freelance work. I did a lot of VA work for other authors. I did speaking, I was podcasting, teaching courses, and so on and so forth. 2022, in the summer, I made a realisation that I'd created another job for myself rather than a business that I wanted to grow and thrive in and was loving life and all of that stuff. And so I took a huge risk and I slowed down everything, and I do mean everything. I slowed down the speaking, I slowed down the courses, I slowed down the nonfiction, and — I poured everything into writing what became the first Ruby Roe book. I published that in February 2023. In August/September 2023, I stopped all freelance work. And to be clear, at that point, I also wasn't entirely sure if I was going to be able to pay my bills with Ruby, but I could see that she had the potential there and I was making enough to scrape by. And there's nothing if not a little bit of pressure to make you work hard. So that is when I stopped the freelance. And then in November 2023, so two months later, I started TikTok in earnest. And then a month after that, December the eighth, I went viral. And then what's relevant to this is that two days after that, on December the 10th, I had whipped up my minimum viable Shopify, and that went live. Then roll on, I did more of the same, published more Ruby Roe books. I made a big change to my Shopify. So at that point it was still print on demand Shopify, and then February 2025, I took control and took the reins and rented a warehouse and started fulfilling distribution myself. The Ten-Year Overnight Success Joanna: So great. So really good for people to realise that 2013, you started writing with the intention, like, seriously, I want this to be what I do. And it was 2019 when you quit the day job, but really it was 2023 when you actually started making decent money, right? Sacha: Almost like we all need 10 years. Joanna: Yeah. I mean, it definitely takes time. So I wanted just to set that scene there. And also that you did at least a year of print on demand Shopify before getting your own warehouse. Sacha: Yeah, maybe 14 months. Joanna: Yeah, 14 months. Okay. So we are going to revisit some of these, but I also just want as context, what was your day job so people know? Sacha: So I was a project manager in a local government, quite corporate, quite conservative place. And I played the villain. It was great. I would helicopter into departments and fix them up and look at processes that were failing and restructure things and bring in new software and bits and bobs like that. The Importance of Business Skills Joanna: Yeah. So I think that's important too, because your job was fixing things and looking at processes, and I feel like that is a lot of what you've done and we'll revisit that. Sacha: How did I not realise that?! Joanna: I thought you did know that. No. Well, oh my goodness. And let's just put my business background in context. I'm sure most people have heard it before, but I was an IT consultant for about 13 years, but much of my job was going into businesses and doing process mapping and then doing software to fix that. And also I worked, I'm not an accountant, but I worked in financial accounting departments. So I think this is really important context for people to realise that learning the craft is one thing, but learning business is a completely different game, right? Sacha: Oh, it is. I have learnt — it's wild because I always feel like there's no way you can learn more than in your first year of publishing because everything is brand new. But I genuinely feel like this past 18 months I have learnt as much, if not more, because of the business, because of money, because of all of the other legal regulation type changes in the last 18 months. It's just been exhausting in terms of learning. It's great, but also it is a lot to learn. There is just so much to business. Joanna's Attempts to Talk Sacha Out of the Warehouse Joanna: So that's one thing. Now, I also want to say for context, when you decided to start a warehouse, how much effort did I put into trying to persuade you not to do this? Sacha: Oh my goodness, me. I mean a lot. There were probably two dinners, several coffees, a Zoom. It was like, don't do it. Don't do it. You got me halfway there. So for everybody listening, I went big and I was like, oh, I'm going to buy shipping containers and convert them and put them on a plot of land and all of this stuff. And Joanna very sensibly turned around and was like, hmm, why don't you rent somewhere that you can bail out of if it doesn't work? And I was like, oh yeah, that does sound like a good idea. Joanna: Try it, try it before you really commit. Okay. So let's just again take a step back because the whole point of doing this discussion for me is because you are doing really well and it is amazing what you are doing and what some other people are doing with warehouses. But I also sell direct and in the same way as you used to, which is I use Bookfunnel for ebooks and audiobooks and I use BookVault for print on demand books, and people can also use Lulu. That's another option for people. So you don't have to do direct sales in the way that you've done it. And part of the reason to do this episode was to show people that there are gradations of selling direct. Why Sell Direct? Joanna: But I wanted to go back to the basics around this. Why might people consider selling direct, even in a really simple way, for example, just ebooks from their website, or what might be reasons to sell direct rather than just sending everything to Amazon or other stores? Sacha: I think, well, first of all, it depends on what you want as a business model. For me, I have a similar background to you in that I was very vulnerable when I was in corporate because of redundancies, and so that bred a bit of control freakness inside me. And having control of my customers was really important to me. We don't get any data from Amazon or Kobo really, or anywhere, even though all of these distributors are incredible for us in our careers. We don't actually have direct access to readers, and you do with Shopify. You know everything about your reader, and that is priceless. Because once you have that data and you have delivered a product, a book, merchandise, something that that reader values and appreciates, you can then sell to them again and again and again. I have some readers who have been on my website who have spent almost four figures now. I mean, that is just — one person's done that and I have thousands of people who are coming to the website on a regular basis. So definitely that control and access to readers is a huge reason for doing it. Customising the Reader Relationship Sacha: And also I think that you can, depending on how you do this model, there are ways to do some of the things I'm going to talk about digitally as well. But for me, I really like the physical aspect of it. We are able to customise the relationship with our customers. We can give them more because we are in control of delivery. And so by that I mean we could give art prints, which lots of my readers really value. We can do — you could send those digitally if you wanted to, but we can add in extra freebies like our romance pop sockets, that makes them feel like they are part of my reader group. They're part of a community. It creates this belonging. So I think there is just so much more that you can do when you are in control of that relationship and in control of the access to it. Joanna: Yeah. And on that, I mean, one of the reasons we can do really cool print books — and again, we're going to come back to print on demand, but I use print on demand. You don't have to buy pallets of books as Sacha does. You can just do print on demand. Obviously the financials are different, but I can still do foiling and custom end papers and ribbons and all this with print on demand through BookVault custom printing and bespoke printing. The Speed of Money Joanna: But also, I think the other thing with the money — I don't know if you even remember this, because it's very different when you are selling direct — you can set up your system so you get paid like every single day, right? Or every week? Sacha: Yes. Joanna: So the money is faster because with Amazon, with any of these other systems, it can take 30, 60, 90 days for the money to get to you. So faster money, you are in more control of the money. And you can also do a lot more things like bundling and like you mentioned, much higher value that you could offer, but you can also make higher income. Average order value per customer because you have so many things, right? So that speed of money is very different. Sacha: It is, but it's also very dangerous. I know we might talk about cashflow more later, but— Joanna: Let's talk about it now. Managing Cashflow With Multiple Bank Accounts Sacha: Okay, cool. So one of the things that I think is the most valuable thing that I've ever done is, someone who is really clever told me that you're allowed more than one business account. Joanna: Just to be clear, bank accounts? Sacha: Yes, sorry. Yeah. Bank accounts. And one of my banks in particular enables you to have mini banks inside it, mini pots they call it. And what I do with pre-orders is I treat it a bit like Amazon. So that money will come in — you know, I do get paid daily pretty much — but I then siphon it off every week into a pot. So let's just say I've got one book on pre-order. Every week the team tells me how much we've got in pre-orders for that one product and all the shipping money, and I put it into an account and I leave it there. And I do not touch it unless it is to pay for the print run of that book or to pay for the shipping. Because one of the benefits of coming direct to me is that I promise to ship all pre-orders early, so we have to pay the shipping costs before necessarily Amazon might pay for its shipping costs because they only release on the actual release day. But that has enabled me to have a little savings scheme, but also guarantee that I can pay for the print run in advance because I haven't accidentally spent that money on something else or invested it. I've kept it aside and it also helps you track numbers as well, so you know how well that pre-order is doing financially. Understanding Cashflow as an Author Joanna: Yeah. And this cashflow, if people don't really know it, is the difference between when money comes in and when it goes out. So another example, common to many authors, is paying for advertising. So for example, if you run some ads one month, you're going to have to pay, let's say Facebook or BookBub or whoever, that month. You might not get the money from the sale of those books if it's from a store until two months later. In that case, the cash flows the other way. The money is sitting with the store, sitting on Amazon until they pay you later. This idea of cashflow is so important for authors to think about. Another, I guess even more basic example is you are writing your first book and you pay for an editor. Money goes out of your bank account and then hopefully you're going to sell some books, but that might take, let's say six months, and then some money will come back into your bank account. I think this understanding cashflow is so important at a small level because as it gets bigger and bigger — and you are doing these very big print runs now, aren't you? Talk a bit about that. The Risks of Print Runs Sacha: Yeah. So one of the things I was going to say, one of the benefits of your sell direct model is that you don't have to deal with mistakes like this one. So in my recent book, Architecti, that we launched at the end of September, we did a print run of a thousand books, maybe about 3,000 pounds, something like that, 2,000 pounds. And basically we ended up selling all thousand and more. So the pre-orders breached a thousand and we didn't have enough books. But what made that worse is that 20% of the books that arrived were damaged because there had been massive rain. So we then had to do a second print run, which is bad for two reasons. The first reason is that one, that space, two, the time it's going to take to get to you — it's not instant, it's not printed on demand. But also three, I then had to spend the same amount of money again. And actually if we had ordered 2,000 originally, we would've saved a bit more money on it per book. So you don't — if you are doing selling direct with a print on demand model, the number of pre-orders you get is irrelevant because they'll just keep printing, and you just get charged per copy. So there are benefits and disadvantages to doing it each way. Obviously, I'm getting a cheaper price per copy printed, but not if I mess up the order numbers. Is Running a Warehouse Just Another Job? Joanna: So I'm going to come back on something you said earlier, which was in 2022 you said, “I realised I made a job for myself.” Sacha: Yeah. Joanna: And I mean, I've been to your store. You obviously have people to help you. But one of my reservations about this kind of model is that even if you have people to help you, taking on physical book — even though you are not printing them yourself, you're still shipping them all and you're signing them all. And to me it feels like a job. So maybe talk about why you have continued — you have pretty much decided to continue with your warehouse. So why is this not a job? What makes this fun for you? The Joy of Physical Product Creation Sacha: I wish that listeners could see my face because I'm literally glittering. I love it. I literally love it. I love us being able to create cool and wacky things. We can make a decision and we can create that physical product really quickly. We can do all of these quirky things. We can experiment. We can do book boxes. So first of all, it's the creativity in the physical product creation. I had no idea how much I love physical product creation, but there is something extremely satisfying about us coming up with an idea that's so integrated in the book. So for example, one of my characters uses, has a coin, a yes/no coin. She's an assassin and she flips it to decide whether or not she's going to assassinate somebody. We've actually designed and had that coin made, and it's my favourite item in the warehouse. It's such a small little thing, but I love it. And so there is a lot of joy that I derive from us being able to create these items. Sending Book Mail and Building Community Sacha: I think the second thing is I really love book mail. There is no better gift somebody can give me than a book. And so I do get a lot of satisfaction from knowing we're sending out lots and lots of book presents to people and we get to add more to it. So some of the promises that we make are: I sign every book and we give gifts. We have character art and, like I've mentioned before, pop sockets and all these kinds of things. And I get tagged daily in unboxings and stories and things like this where people are like, oh my gosh, I didn't realise I was going to get this, this, and this. And I just — it's like crack to me. I get high off of it. So I can't — this is not for everybody. This is a logistical nightmare. There are so many problems inherent in this business model. I love it. Discovering a Love of Team Building Sacha: And I think the other thing, which is very much not for a lot of authors — I did not realise that I actually really like having a team. And that has been a recent realisation. I really was told that I'm not a team player when I was in corporate, that I work alone, all of this nonsense. And I believed that and taken it on. But finding the right team, the right people who love the jobs that they do inside your business and they're all as passionate as you, is just life changing. And so that also helps me continue because I have a really great team. Joanna: I do have to ask you, what is a pop socket? Sacha: It's a little round disc that has a mechanism that you can pull out and then you — and it has a sticky command strip back and you can pop it on the back of your phone or on the back of a Kindle and it helps you to hold it. I don't know how else to describe it. It just helps you to hold the device easier. Joanna: Okay. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was confused. I'm like, why are you doing electrical socket products? Know What Kind of Person You Are Joanna: But I think this actually does demonstrate another point, and I hope people listening — I hope you can sort of — why we are doing this partly is to help you figure out what kind of person you are as well. Because I can't think of anything worse than having lots of little boxes! And I've been in Sacha's thing and there's all these little stickers and there's lots of boxes of little things that they put in people's packages, which make people happy. And I'm like, oh, I just don't like packages of things. And I mean, you geek out on packaging, don't you as well? Sacha: Oh my goodness. Yeah. One of the first things I did when we got the warehouse was I actually went to a packaging expo in Birmingham. It was like this giant conference place and I just nerded out there. It was so fun. And one of the things that I'm booked to do is an advent calendar. And that was what drove me there in the first place. I was looking for a manufacturer that could create an advent calendar for us. I have two. I'm not — I have two advent calendars this year because I love them so much. But yeah, the other thing that I was going to say to you is I often think that as adults, we can find what we're supposed to do rooted in our childhood. And I was talking the other day and someone said to me, what toy do you remember from your youth? And I was like, oh yeah. The only one that I can remember is that I had a sticker maker. I like — that makes sense. You do like stickers. And I do. Yeah. Digital Minimalism vs Physical Products Joanna: Yeah, I do. And I think this is so important because I love books. I buy a lot of books. I love books, but I also get rid of a lot of books. I know people hate this, but I will just get rid of bags and bags of books. So I value books more for what's inside them than the physical product as such. I mean, I have some big expensive, beautiful books, but mostly I want what's in them. So it's really interesting to me. And I think there's a big difference between us is just how much you like all that stuff. So if you are listening, if you are like a digital minimalist and you don't want to have stuff around your house, you definitely don't want a warehouse. You don't want all the shipping bits and bobs. You are not interested in all that. Or even if you are, you can still do a lot of this print on demand. Then I think that's just so important, isn't it? I mean, did you look at the print on demand merch? Did you find anything you liked? The Draw of Customisation Sacha: Yeah, we did, but I think for me it was that customisation. We are now moving towards — I've just put an order in this morning for 10,000 customised boxes. We've got our own branding on them. We've got a little naughty, cheeky message when they flip up the flap. And it's little things like that that you can't — you know, we wouldn't have control over what was sent. So much of what I wanted, and some of the reasons for me doing it, is that I wanted to be able to sign the books. I was being asked on a daily basis if people could buy signed books from me, and it was driving me bonkers not being able to say yes. But also being able to send a website mailing list sign-up in the box, or being able to give them a discount in the box. I mean, I know you do that, but yeah, there was just a lot more customisation and things that we could do if we were controlling the shipping. Also, I wanted to pack the boxes, the books better. So we wanted to be able to bubble wrap things or we wanted to be able to waterproof things because we had various different issues with deliveries and so we wanted a bit more control over that. So yeah, there were just so many reasons for us to do it. Print on Demand Is Still Fantastic Sacha: Look, don't get me wrong, if I suddenly wanted to go off travelling for a year, then maybe I would shut down the warehouse and go back to print on demand. I think print on demand is fantastic. I did it for 14 months before I decided to open a warehouse. It is the foundation of most authors' models. So it's fantastic. I just want to do more. Joanna: Yeah. You want to do more of it. Life Stage Matters Joanna: We should also, I also wanted to mention your life stage. Because when we did talk about it, your son is just going to secondary school, so we knew that you would be in the same area, right? Sacha: Yeah. Joanna: Because I said to you, you can't just do this and — well, you can, you could ditch it all. But the better decision is to do this for a certain number of years. If you're going to do it, it needs time, right? So you are at that point in your life. Sacha: Yeah, absolutely. We — I mean, we are going to move house, I think, but not that far away. We'll still be in reachable distance of the warehouse. And yeah, the staying power is so important because it's also about raising awareness. You have to train readers to come to you. You have to show them why it's beneficial for them to order directly from you. Growing the Business Year Over Year Sacha: And then you also have to be able to iterate and add more products. Like you were talking earlier about increasing that average order value. And that does come from having more products, but more products does create other issues like space, which may or may not be suffering issues with now. But yeah, so for example, 2024, which was the first real year, I did about 73 and a half thousand British pounds. And then this year, where — as we record this, it's actually the 1st of December — and I'm on 232,000. So from year one to year two, it's a huge difference. And that I do think is about the number of products and the number of things that we have on there. Joanna: And the number of customers. I guess you've also grown your customer base as well. And one of the rules, I guess, in inverted commas, of publishing is that the money is in the backlist. And every time you add to your backlist and every launch, you are selling a lot more of your backlist as well. So I think as time goes on, yeah, you get more books. Kickstarter as an Alternative Joanna: But let's also talk about Kickstarter because I do signed books for my Kickstarters and to me the Kickstarter is like a short-term ability to do the things you are doing regularly. So for example, if you want to do book boxes, you could just do them for a Kickstarter. You don't have to run a warehouse and do it every single day. For example, your last Kickstarter for Ruby Roe made around 150,000 US dollars, which is amazing. Like really fantastic. So just maybe talk about that, any lessons from the Kickstarter specifically, because I feel like most people, for most people listening, they are far more likely to do a Kickstarter than they are to start a warehouse. Pre-Launch Followers Are Critical Sacha: Yeah, so the first thing is even before you start your Kickstarter, the pre-launch follow accounts are critical. So a lot of people think — well, I guess there's a lot of loud noise about all these big numbers about how much people can make on Kickstarter, but actually a lot of it is driven by you, the author, pushing your audience to Kickstarter. So we actually have a formula now. Somebody more intelligent gave this to me, but essentially, based on my own personal campaign data — so this wouldn't necessarily be the same for other people — but based on my campaign data, each pre-launch follower is worth 75 pounds. And then we add on seven grand, for example. So on campaign three, which was the most recent one, I had 1,501 pre-launch followers. And when you times that by 75 and you add on seven grand, it makes more or less exactly what we made on the campaign. And the same formula can be applied to the others. So you need more pre-launch followers than you think you do. And lots of people don't put enough impetus on the marketing beforehand. Almost all of our Kickstarter marketing is beforehand because we drive so many people to that follow button. Early Bird Pricing and Fulfillment Time Sacha: And then the other thing that we do is that we do early bird pricing. So we get the majority of our income on a campaign on day one. I think it was something wild, like 80% this time was on day one, so that's really important. The second thing is it takes so, so very much longer than you think it does to fulfil a campaign, and you must factor in that cost. Because if it's not you fulfilling, you are paying somebody else to fulfil it. And if it is you fulfilling it, you must account for your own time in the pricing of your campaign. And the other thing is that the amount of time it takes to fulfil is directly proportionate to the size of the campaign. That's one thing I did not even compute — the fact that we went from about 56,000 British pounds up to double that, and the time was exponentially more than double. So you do have to think about that. Overseas Printing and Timelines Sacha: The other lesson that we have learned is that overseas printing will drag your timelines out far longer than you think it does. So whatever you think it's going to take you to fulfil, add several months more onto that and put that information in your campaign. And thankfully, we are now only going to be a month delayed, whereas lots of campaigns get up to a year delayed because they don't consider that. Reinvesting Kickstarter Profits Sacha: And then the last thing I think, which was really key for us, is that if you have some profit in the Kickstarter — because not all Kickstarters are actually massively profitable because they either don't account enough for shipping or they don't account enough in the pricing. Thankfully, ours have been profitable, but we've actually reinvested that profit back into buying more stock and more merchandise, which not everybody would want to do if they don't have a warehouse. However, we are stockpiling merchandise and books so that we can do mystery boxes later on down the line. It's probably a year away, but we are buying extra of everything so that we have that in the warehouse. So yeah, depending on what you want to do with your profit, for us it was all about buying more books, basically. Offering Something Exclusive Sacha: I think the other thing to think about is what is it that you are doing that's exclusive to Kickstarter? Because you will get backers on Kickstarter who want that quirky, unique thing that they're not going to be able to get anywhere else. But what about you? Because you've done more Kickstarters than me. What do you think is the biggest lesson you've learned? Reward Tiers and Bundling Joanna: Oh, well I think all of mine together add up to the one you just did. Although I will comment on — you said something like 75 pounds per pre-launch backer. That is obviously dependent on your tiers for the rewards, so most authors won't have that amount. So my average order value, which I know is slightly different, but I don't offer things like book boxes like you have. So a lot of it will depend on the tiers. Some people will do a Kickstarter just with an ebook, just with one ebook and maybe a bundle of ebooks. So you are never going to make it up to that kind of value. So I think this is important too, is have a look at what people offer on their different levels of Kickstarter. And in fact, here's my AI tip for the day. What you can do — what I did with my Buried and the Drowned campaign recently — is I uploaded my book to ChatGPT and said, tell me, what are some ideas for the different reward tiers that I can do on Kickstarter? And it will give you some ideas for what you can do, what kind of bundles you might want to do. So I think bundling your backlist is another thing you can do as upsells, or you can just, for example, for me, when I did Blood Vintage, I did a horror bundle when it was four standalone horror books in one of the upper tiers. So I think bundling is a good way. Also upselling your backlist is a really good way to up things. And also if you do it digitally, so for ebooks and audiobooks, there's a lot less time in fulfillment. Focus on Digital Products Too Joanna: So again, yours — well, you make things hard, but also more fun according to you, because most of it's physical, right? In fact, this is one of the things you haven't done so well, really, is concentrate on the digital side of things. Is that something you are thinking about now? Sacha: Yeah, it is. I mean, we do have our books digitally on the website. So the last — I only had one series in Kindle Unlimited, and I took those out in January. But so we do have all of the digital products on the website, and the novellas that we do, we have in all formats because I narrate the audio for them. So that is something that we're looking at. And since somebody very smart told me to have upsell apps on my website, we now have a full “get the everything bundle” in physical and digital and we are now selling them as well. Surprising. Definitely not you. So yeah, we are looking at it and that's something that we could look at next year as well for advertising because I haven't really done any advertising. I think I've spent about 200 pounds in ads in the last four months or something. It's very, very low level. So that is a way to make a huge amount of profit because the cost is so low. So your return, if you're doing a 40 or 50 pound bundle of ebooks and you are spending, I don't know, four pounds in advertising to get that sale, your return on that investment is enormous for ads. So that is something that we are looking at for next year, but it just hasn't been something that we've done a huge amount of. A Multi-Six-Figure Author With No Ads Joanna: Yeah. Well, just quoting from your solo episode where you say, “I don't have any advertising costs, customers are from my mailing list, TikTok and Instagram.” Now, being as you are a multi-six-figure author with no ads, this is mostly unthinkable for many authors. And so I wonder if, maybe talk about that. How do you think you have done that and can other people potentially emulate it, or do you think it's luck? It's Not Luck, It's Skill Set Sacha: Do you know, this is okay. So I don't think it's luck. I don't believe in luck. I get quite aggressive about people flinging luck around. I know some people are huge supporters of luck. I'm like, no. Do I think anybody can do it? Do you know, I swing so hard on this. Sometimes I say yes, and sometimes I think no. And I think the brutal truth of it is that I know where my skill set lies and I lean extremely heavily into it. So what do I mean by that? TikTok and Instagram are both very visual mediums. It is video footage. It is static images. I am extremely comfortable on camera. I am an ex-theatre kid. I was on TV as a kid. I did voiceover work when I was younger. This is my wheelhouse. So acting a bit like a tit on TikTok on a video, I am very comfortable at doing that, and I think that is reflected in the results. Consistency Without Burnout Sacha: And the other part of it is because I am comfortable at doing it, I enjoy it. It makes me laugh. And therefore it feels easy. And I think because it feels easy, I can do it over and over and over again without burning out. I started posting on TikTok on November the 19th, 2023, and I have posted three times a day every day since. Every single day without stopping, and I do not feel burnt out. And I definitely feel like that is because it's easy for me because I am good at it. Reading the Algorithm Sacha: The other thing that I think goes in here is that I'm very good at reading what's working. So sorry to talk Clifton Strengths, but my number one Clifton Strength is competition. And one of the skills that has is understanding the market. We're very good at having a wide view. So not only do I read the market on Amazon or in bookstores or wherever I can, it's the same skill set but applied to the algorithm. So I am very good at dissecting viral videos and understanding what made it work, in the same way somebody that spends 20,000 pounds a month on Facebook advertising is very good at doing analytics and looking at those numbers. I am useless at that. I just can't do it. I just get complete shutdown. My brain just says no, and I'm incapable of running ads. That's why I don't do it. Not Everyone Can Do This Sacha: So can anybody do this? Maybe. If you are comfortable on camera, if you enjoy it. It's like we've got a mutual friend, Adam Beswick. We call him the QVC Book Bitch because he is a phenomenon on live videos on TikTok and Instagram and wherever he can sell. Anything on those lives. It is astonishing to watch the sales pop in as he's on these lives. I can't think of anything worse. I will do a live, but I'll be signing books and having a good old chitchat. Not like it's — like that hand selling. Another author, Willow Winters, has done like 18 in-person events this year. I literally die on the inside hearing that. But that's what works for them and that's what's helping grow their business models. So ah, honestly, no. I actually don't think anybody can do what I've done. I think if you have a similar skill set to me, then yes you can. But no, and I know that I don't want to crush anybody listening. Do you like social media? I like social media. Do you like being on camera? Then yeah, you can do it. But if you don't, then I just think it's a waste of your time. Find out what you are good at, find out where your skill set is, and then lean in very, very hard. Writing to Your Strengths and Passion Joanna: I also think, because let's be brutal, you had books before and they didn't sell like this. Sacha: Yep. Joanna: So I also think that you leaned into — yes, of course, sapphic romance is a big sub-genre, but you love it. And also it's your lived experience with the sapphic sub-genre. This is not you chasing a trend, right? I think that's important too because too many people are like, oh, well maybe this is the latest trend. And is TikTok a trend? And then try and force them together, whereas I feel like you haven't done that. Sacha: No, and actually I spoke to lots of people who were very knowledgeable on the market and they all said, don't do it. And the reason for this is that there were no adult lesbian sapphic romance books that were selling when I looked at the market and decided that this was what I wanted to write. And I was like, cool, I'm going to do it then. And rightly so, everyone was like, well, there's no evidence to suggest that this is going to make any money. You are taking a huge risk. And I was like, yeah, but I will. I knew from the outset before I even put a word to the page how I was going to market it. And I think that feeling of coming home is what I — I created a home for myself in my books and that is why it's just felt so easy to market. Lean Into What You're Good At Sacha: It's like you, with your podcasting. Nobody can get anywhere near your podcast because you are so good at it. You've got such a history. You are so natural with your podcasting that you are just unbeatable, you know? So it's a natural way for you to market it. Joanna: Many have tried, but no, you're right. It's because I like this. And what's so funny — I'm sure I've mentioned it on the show — but I did call you one day and say, okay, all right, show me how to do this TikTok thing. And you spent like two hours on the phone with me and then I basically said no. Okay. I almost tried and then I just went, no, this is definitely not for me. And I think that this has to be one of the most important things as an author. Maybe some people listening are just geeking out over packaging like you are, and maybe they're the people who might look at this potential business model. Whereas some people are like me and don't want to go anywhere near it. And then other people like you want to do video and maybe other people like me want to do audio. So yeah, it's so important to find, well, like you said, what does not work for you? What is fun for you and when are you having a good time? Because otherwise you would have a job. Like to me, it looks like a job, you having a warehouse. But to you, it's not the same as when you were grinding it out back in 2022. Packing Videos Are Peak Content Sacha: Completely. And I think if you look at my social media feeds, they are disproportionately full of packing videos, which I think tells you something. Joanna: Oh dear. I just literally — I'm just like, oh my, if I never see any more packaging, I'll be happy. Sacha: Yeah. That's good. The One Time Sacha Nearly Burnt It All Down Sacha: I have to say, there was one moment where I doubted everything. And that was at the end — but basically, in about, of really poor timing. I ended up having to fulfil every single pre-order of my latest release and hand packing about a thousand books in two weeks. And I nearly burnt it all to the ground. Joanna: Because you didn't have enough staffing, right? And your mum was sick or something? Sacha: Yeah, exactly that. And I had to do it all by myself, and I was alone in the warehouse and it was just horrendous. So never again. But hey, I learned the lessons and now I'm like, yay, let's do it again. Things Change: Building Resilience Into Your Business Joanna: Yeah. And make sure there's more staffing. Yes, I've talked a lot on this show — things change, right? Things change. And in fact, the episode that just went out today as we record this with Jennifer Probst, which she talked about hitting massive bestseller lists and doing just incredibly well, and then it just dropped off and she had to pivot and change things. And I'm not like Debbie Downer, but I do say things will change. So what are you putting in place to make sure, for example, TikTok finally does disappear or get banned, or that sapphic romance suddenly drops off a cliff? What are you doing to make sure that you can keep going in the future? Managing Cash Flow and Salaries Sacha: Yeah, so I think there's a few things. The first big one is managing cash flow and ensuring that I have three to six months' worth of staff salaries, for want of a better word, in an account. So if the worst thing happens and sales drop off — because I am responsible for other people's income now — that I'm not about to shaft a load of people. So that really helps give you that risk reassurance. Mailing Lists and Marketing Funnels Sacha: The second thing is making sure that we are cultivating our mailing lists, making sure that we are putting in infrastructure, like things like upsell apps. And, okay, so here's a ridiculous lesson that I learned in 2025: an automation sequence, an onboarding automation sequence, is not what people mean when they say you need a marketing funnel. I learned this in Vegas. A marketing funnel will sell your products to your existing readers. So when a customer signs up to your mailing list because they've purchased something, they will be tagged and then your email flow system will then send them a 5% discount on this, or “did you know you could bundle up and get blah?” So putting that kind of stuff in place will mean that we can take more advantage of the customers that we've already got. Standard Operating Procedures Sacha: It's also things like organisational knowledge. My team is big enough now that there are things in my business I don't know how to do. That's quite daunting for somebody who is a control freak. So I visited Vegas in 2025 and I sat in a session all on — this sounds so sexy — but standard operating procedures. And now I've given my team the job of creating a process instruction manual on how they do each of their tasks so that if anybody's sick, somebody else can pick it up. If somebody leaves, we've got that infrastructure in place. And even things down to things like passwords — who, if I unfortunately got hit by a car, who can access my Amazon account? Stuff like that, unfortunately. Joanna: Yeah, I know. Well, I mean, that would be tragic, wouldn't it? Sacha: But it's stuff like that. Building Longer Timelines Sacha: But then also more day-to-day things is putting in infrastructure that pulls me out. So looking more at staffing responsibilities for staffing so that I don't always have to be there, and creating longer timelines. That is probably the most important thing that we can do because we've got a book box launching next summer. And we both had the realisation — I say we, me and my operations manager — had the realisation that actually we ought to be commissioning the cover and the artwork now because of how long those processes take. So I'm a little bit shortsighted on timelines, I think. So putting a bit more rigour in what we do and when. We now have a team-wide heat map where we know when the warehouse is going to be really, really full, when staff are off, when deliveries are coming, and that's projected out a year in advance. So lots and lots of things that are changing. And then I guess also eventually we will do advertising as well. But that is a few months down the line. Personal Financial Resilience Sacha: And then on the more personal side, it's looking at things like not just how you keep the business running, but how do you keep yourself running? How do you make sure that, let's say you have a bad sales month, but you still have to pay your team? How are you going to get paid? So I, as well as having put staff salaries away, I also have my own salary. I've got a few months of my own salary put away. And then investing as well. I know, I am not a financial advisor, but I do invest money. I serve money that I pay myself. You can also do things like having investment vehicles inside your business if you want to deal with extra cash. And then I am taking advice from my accountant and my financial advisor on do I put more money into my pension — because did I say that I also have a pension? So I invest in my future as well. Or do I set up another company and have a property portfolio? Or how do I essentially make the money that is inside the business make more money rather than reinvesting it, spending it, and reinvesting it on things that don't become assets or don't become money generating? What can I do with the cash that's inside the company in order to then make it make more for the long term? Because then if you do have a down six months or worse, a down year, for example, you've got enough cash and equity inside the business to cover you during those lower months or years or weeks — or hopefully just a day. Different Business Models for Different Authors Joanna: Yes, of course. And we all hope it just carries on up and to the right, but sometimes it doesn't work that way. So it's really great that you are doing all those things. And I think what's lovely and why we started off with you giving us that potted history was it hasn't always been this way. So if you are listening to this and you are like, well, I've only got one ebook for sale on Amazon, well that might be all you ever want to do, which is fine. Or you can come to where my business model is, which is mostly even — I use print on demand, but it's mostly digital. It's mostly online. It's got no packaging that I deal with. Or you can go even further like Sacha and Adam Beswick and Willow Winters. But because that is being talked about a lot in the community, that's why we wanted to do this — to really show you that there's different people doing different things and you need to choose what's best for you. What Are You Excited About for 2026? Joanna: But just as we finish, just tell us what are you excited about for 2026? Sacha: Oh my goodness me. I am excited to iterate my craft. And this is completely not related to the warehouse, but I have gotten myself into a position where I get to play with words again. So I'm really excited for the things that I'm going to write. But also in terms of the warehouse, we've got the new packaging, so getting to see those on social media. We are also looking at things like book boxes. So we are doing a set of three book boxes and these are going to be new and bigger and better than anything that we've done before. And custom tailored. Oh, without giving too much away, but items that go inside and also the artwork. I love working with artists and commissioning different art projects. But yeah, basically more of the same, hopefully world domination. Joanna: World domination. Fantastic. So basically more creativity. Sacha: Yeah. Joanna: And also a bigger business. Because I know you are ambitious and I love that. I think it's really good for people to be ambitious. Joanna: Oh, I do have another question. Do you have more sympathy for traditional publishing at this point? Sacha: How dare you? Unfortunately, yeah. I really have learnt the hard way why traditional publishers need the timelines that they need. This latest release was probably the biggest that — so this latest release, which was called Architecting, is the reason that I did the podcast episode, because I learned so many lessons. And in particular about timelines and how tight things get, and it's just not realistic when you are doing this physical business. So that's another thing if you are listening and you are like, oh no, no, no, I like the immediacy of being able to finish, get it back from the editor and hit publish — this ain't for you, honey. This is not for you. Joanna: Yeah. No, that's fantastic. Where to Find Sacha and Ruby Roe Joanna: So where can people find you and your books online? Sacha: For the Ruby Empire, it's RubyRoe.co.uk and RubyRoeAuthor on TikTok if you'd like to see me dancing like a wally. And then Instagram, I'm back as @SachaBlackAuthor on Instagram. Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Sacha. That was great. Sacha: Thank you for having me.The post Two Different Approaches To Selling Books Direct With Sacha Black And Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Why do some romance authors build decades-long careers while others vanish after one breakout book? What really separates a throwaway pen name and rapid release strategy from a legacy brand and a body of work you’re proud of? How can you diversify with trad, indie, non-fiction, and Kickstarter without burning out—or selling out your creative freedom? With Jennifer Probst. In the intro, digital ebook signing [BookFunnel]; how to check terms and conditions; Business for Authors 2026 webinars; Music industry and AI music [BBC; The New Publishing Standard]; The Golden Age of Weird. 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  Jennifer Probst is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over 60 books across different kinds of romance as well as non-fiction for writers. Her latest book is Write Free. 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.  Show Notes How Jennifer started writing at age 12, fell in love with romance, and persisted through decades of rejection A breakout success — and what happened when it moved to a traditional publisher Traditional vs indie publishing, diversification, and building a long-term, legacy-focused writing career Rapid-release pen names vs slow-burn author brands, and why Jennifer chooses quality and longevity Inspirational non-fiction for writers (Write Naked, Write True, Write Free) Using Kickstarter for special editions, re-releases, courses, and what she’s learned from both successes and mistakes – plus what “writing free” really means in practice How can you ‘write free'? You can find Jennifer at JenniferProbst.com. Transcript of interview with Jennifer Probst Jo: Jennifer Probst is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over 60 books across different kinds of romance as well as non-fiction for writers. Her latest book is Write Free. So welcome, Jennifer. Jennifer: Thanks so much, Joanna. I am kind of fangirling. I'm really excited to be on The Creative Penn podcast. It's kind of a bucket list. Jo: Aw, that's exciting. I reached out to you after your recent Kickstarter, and we are going to come back to that in a minute. First up, take us back in time. Tell us a bit more about how you got into writing and publishing. Jennifer: This one is easy for me. I am one of those rarities. I think that I knew when I was seven that I was going to write. I just didn't know what I was going to write. At 12 years old, and now this will kind of date me in dinosaur era here, there was no internet, no information on how to be a writer, no connections out there. The only game in town was Writer’s Digest. I would go to my library and pore over Writer’s Digest to learn how to be a writer. At 12 years old, all I knew was, “Oh, if I want to be a famous writer, I have to write a book.” So I literally sat down at 12 and wrote my first young adult romance. Of course, I was the star, as we all are when we're young, and I have not stopped since. I always knew, since my dad came home from a library with a box of romance novels and got in trouble with my mum and said, basically, “She's reading everything anyway, just let her read these,” I was gone. From that moment on, I knew that my entire life was going to be about that. So for me, it wasn't the writing. I have written non-stop since I was 12 years old. For me, it was more about making this a career where I can make money, because I think there was a good 30 years where I wrote without a penny to my name. So it was more of a different journey for me. It was more about trying to find my way in the writing world, where everybody said it should be just a hobby, and I believed that it should be something more. Jo: I was literally just going back in my head there to the library I used to go to on my way home from school. Similar, probably early teens, maybe age 14. Going to that section and… I think it was Shirley Conran. Was that Lace? Yes, Lace books. That's literally how we all learned about sex back in the day. Jennifer: All from books. You didn't need parents, you didn't need friends. Amazing. Jo: Oh, those were the days. That must have been the eighties, right? Jennifer: It was the eighties. Yes. Seventies, eighties, but mostly right around in the eighties. Oh, it was so… Jo: I got lost about then because I was reminiscing. I was also the same one in the library, and people didn't really see what you were reading in the corner of the library. So I think that's quite funny. Tell us how you got into being an indie. Jennifer: What had happened is I had this manuscript and it had been shopped around New York for agents and for a bunch of publishers. I kept getting the same exact thing: “I love your voice.” I mean, Joanna, when you talk about papering your wall with rejections, I lived that. The only thing I can say is that when I got my first rejection, I looked at it as a rite of passage that created me as a writer, rather than taking the perspective that it meant I failed. To me, perspective is a really big thing in this career, how you look at things. So that really helped me. But after you get like 75 of them, you're like, “I don't know how much longer I can take of this.” What happened is, it was an interesting story, because I had gone to an RWA conference and I had shopped this everywhere, this book that I just kept coming back to. I kept saying, “I feel like this book could be big.” There was an indie publisher there. They had just started out, it was an indie publisher called Entangled. A lot of my friends were like, “What about Entangled? Why don't you try more digital things or more indie publishers coming up rather than the big traditional ones?” Lo and behold, I sent it out. They loved the book. They decided, in February of 2012, to launch it. It was their big debut. They were kind of competing with Harlequin, but it was going to be a new digital line. It was this new cutting-edge thing. The book went crazy. It went viral. The book was called The Marriage Bargain, and it put me on the map. All of a sudden I was inundated with agents, and the traditional publishers came knocking and they wanted to buy the series. It was everywhere. Then it hit USA Today, and then it spent 26 weeks on The New York Times. Everybody was like, “Wow, you're this overnight sensation.” And I'm like, “Not really!” That was kind of my leeway into everything. We ended up selling that series to Simon & Schuster because that was the smart move for then, because it kind of blew up and an indie publisher at that time knew it was a lot to take on. From then on, my goal was always to do both: to have a traditional contract, to work with indie publishers, and to do my own self-pub. I felt, even back then, the more diversified I am, the more control I have. If one bucket goes bad, I have two other buckets. Jo: Yes, I mean, I always say multiple streams of income. It's so surprising to me that people think that whatever it is that hits big is going to continue. So you obviously experienced there a massive high point, but it doesn't continue. You had all those weeks that were amazing, but then it drops off, right? Jennifer: Oh my goodness, yes. Great story about what happened. So 26 weeks on The New York Times, and it was selling like hotcakes. Then Simon & Schuster took it over and they bumped the price to their usual ebook price, which was, what, $12.99 or something? So it's going from $2.99. The day that they did it, I slid off all the bestseller lists. They were gone, and I lost a lot of control too. With indies, you have a little bit more control. But again, that kind of funnels me into a completely different kind of setup. Traditional is very different from indie. What you touched on, I think, is the biggest thing in the industry right now. When things are hot, it feels like forever. I learned a valuable lesson: it doesn't continue. It just doesn't. Maybe someone like Danielle Steel or some of the other big ones never had to pivot, but I feel like in romance it's very fluid. You have genres hitting big, you have niches hitting big, authors hitting big. Yes, I see some of them stay. I see Emily Henry still staying—maybe that will never pause—but I think for the majority, they find themselves saying, “Okay, that's done now. What's next?” It can either hit or not hit. Does that make sense to you? Do you feel the same? Jo: Yes, and I guess it's not just about the book. It's more about the tactic. You mentioned genres, and they do switch a lot in romance, a lot faster than other genres. In terms of how we do marketing… Now, as we record this, TikTok is still a thing, and we can see maybe generative AI search coming on the horizon and agentic buying. A decade ago it might have been different, more Facebook ads or whatever. Then before that it might have been something else. So there's always things changing along the way. Jennifer: Yes, there definitely is. It is a very oversaturated market. They talk about, I don't know, 2010 to 2016 maybe, as the gold rush, because that was where you could make a lot of money as an indie. Then we saw the total fallout of so many different things. I feel like I've gone through so many ups and downs in the industry. I do love it because the longer you're around, the more you learn how to pivot. If you want this career, you learn how to write differently or do whatever you need to do to keep going, in different aspects, with the changes. To me, that makes the industry exciting. Again, perspective is a big thing. But I have had to take a year to kind of rebuild when I was out of contract with a lot of things. I've had to say, “Okay, what do you see on the horizon now? Where is the new foundation? Where do you wanna restart?” Sometimes it takes a year or two of, “Maybe I won't be making big income and I cut back,” but then you're back in it, because it takes a while to write a few new books, or write under a pen name, or however you want to pivot your way back into the industry. Or, like you were saying, diversifying. I did a lot of non-fiction stuff because that's a big calling for me, so I put that into the primary for a while. I think it's important for authors to maybe not just have one thing. When that one thing goes away, you're scrambling. It's good to have a couple of different things like, “Well, okay, this genre is dead or this thing is dead or this isn't making money. Let me go to this for a little while until I see new things on the horizon.” Jo: Yes. There's a couple of things I want to come back to. You mentioned a pen name there, and one of the things I'm seeing a lot right now—I mean, it's always gone on, but it seems to be on overdrive—is people doing rapid-release, throwaway pen names. So there’s a new sub-genre, they write the books really fast, they put them up under whatever pen name, and then when that goes away, they ditch that pen name altogether. Versus growing a name brand more slowly, like I think you and I have done. Under my J.F. Penn fiction brand, I put lots of different sub-genres. What are your thoughts on this throwaway pen name versus growing a name brand more slowly? Jennifer: Well, okay, the first thing I'm goign to say is: if that lights people up, if you love the idea of rapid release and just kind of shedding your skin and going on to the next one, I say go for it. As long as you're not pumping it out with AI so it's a complete AI book, but that's a different topic. I'm not saying using AI tools; I mean a completely AI-written book. That's the difference. If we're talking about an author going in and, every four weeks, writing a book and stuff like that, I do eventually think that anything in life that disturbs you, you're going to burn out eventually. That is a limited-time kind of thing, I believe. I don't know how long you can keep doing that and create decent enough books or make a living on it. But again, I really try not to judge, because I am very open to: if that gives you joy and that's working and it brings your family money, go for it. I have always wanted to be a writer for the long term. I want my work to be my legacy. I don't just pump out books. Every single book is my history. It's a marking of what I thought, what I put out in the world, what my beliefs are, what my story is. It marks different things, and I'm very proud of that. So I want a legacy of quality. As I got older, in my twenties and thirties, I was able to write books a lot faster. Then I had a family with two kids and I had to slow down a little bit. I also think life sometimes drives your career, and that's okay. If you're taking care of a sick parent or there's illness or whatever, maybe you need to slow down. I like the idea of a long-term backlist supporting me when I need to take a back seat and not do frontlist things. So that's how I feel. I will always say: choose a long, organic-growth type of career that will be there for you, where your backlist can support you. I also don't want to trash people who do it differently. If that is how you can do it, if you can write a book in a month and keep doing it and keep it quality, go for it. Jo: I do have the word “legacy” on my board next to me, but I also have “create a body of work I'm proud of.” I have that next to me, and I have “Have you made art today?” So I think about these things too. As you say, people feel differently about work, and I will do other work to make faster cash rather than do that with books. But as we said, that's all good. Interestingly, you mentioned non-fiction there. Write Free is your latest one, but you've got some other writing books. So maybe— Talk about the difference between non-fiction book income and marketing compared to fiction, and why you added that in. Jennifer: Yes, it's completely different. I mean, it's two new dinosaurs. I came to writing non-fiction in a very strange way. Literally, I woke up on New Year’s Day and I was on a romance book deadline. I could not do it. I'll tell you, my brain was filled with passages of teaching writing, of things I wanted to share in my writing career. Because again, I've been writing since I was 12, I've been a non-stop writer for over 30 years. I got to my computer and I wrote like three chapters of Write Naked (which was the first book). It was just pouring out of me. So I contacted my agent and I said, “Look, I don't know, this is what I want to do. I want to write this non-fiction book.” She's like, “What are you talking about? You're a romance author. You're on a romance deadline. What do you want me to do with this?” She was so confused. I said, “Yes, how do you write a non-fiction book proposal?” And she was just like, “This is not good, Jen. What are you doing?” Anyway, the funny story was, she said, “Just send me chapters.” I mean, God bless her, she's this wonderful agent, but I know she didn't get it. So I sent her like four chapters of what I was writing and she called me. I'll never forget it. She called me on the phone and she goes, “This is some of the best stuff I have ever read in my life. It's raw and it's truthful, and we've got to find a publisher for this.” And I was like, “Yay.” What happened was, I believe this was one of the most beautiful full circles in my life: Writer’s Digest actually made me an offer. It was not about the money. I found that non-fiction for me had a much lower advance and a different type of sales. For me, when I was a kid, that is exactly what I was reading in the library, Writer’s Digest. I would save my allowance to get the magazine. I would say to myself, “One day, maybe I will have a book with Writer’s Digest.” So for me, it was one of the biggest full-circle moments. I will never forget it. Being published by them was amazing. Then I thought I was one-and-done, but the book just completely touched so many writers. I have never gotten so many emails: “Thank you for saying the truth,” or “Thank you for being vulnerable.” Right before it published, I had a panic attack. I told my husband, “Now everybody's going to know that I am a mess and I'm not fabulous and the world is going to know my craziness.” By being vulnerable about the career, and also that it was specifically for romance authors, it caused a bond. I think it caused some trust. I had been writing about writing for years. After that, I thought it was one-and-done. Then two or three years later I was like, “No, I have more to say.” So I leaned into my non-fiction. It also gives my fiction brain a rest, because when you're doing non-fiction, you're using a different part of your brain. It's a way for me to cleanse my palate. I gather more experiences about what I want to share, and then that goes into the next book. Jo: Yes, I also use the phrase “palate cleanser” for non-fiction versus fiction. I feel like you write one and then you feel like, “Oh, I really need to write the other now.” Jennifer: Yes! Isn't it wonderful? I love that. I love having the two brains and just giving one a break and totally leaning into it. Again, it's another way of income. It's another way. I also believe that this industry has given me so much that it is automatic that I want to give back. I just want to give as much as possible back because I'm so passionate about writing and the industry field. Jo: Well, interestingly though, Writer’s Digest—the publisher who published that magazine and other things—went bankrupt in 2019. You've been in publishing a long time. It is not uncommon for publishers to go out of business or to get bought. Things happen with publishers, right? Jennifer: Yes. Jo: So what then happened? Jennifer: So Penguin Random House bought it. All the Writer’s Digest authors did not know what they were going to do. Then Penguin Random House bought it and kept Writer’s Digest completely separate, as an imprint under the umbrella. So Writer’s Digest really hasn't changed. They still have the magazine, they still have books. So it ended up being okay. But what I did do is—because I sold Write Naked and I have no regrets about that, it was the best thing for me to do, to go that route—the second and the third books were self-published. I decided I'm going to self-publish. That way I have the rights for audio, I have the rights for myself, I can do a whole bunch of different things. So Write True, the second one, was self-published. Writers Inspiring Writers I paired up with somebody, so we self-published that. And Write Free, my newest one, is self-published. So I've decided to go that route now with my non-fiction. Jo: Well, as I said, I noticed your Kickstarter. I don't write romance, so I'm not really in that community. I had kind of heard your name before, but then I bought the book and joined the Kickstarter. Then I discovered that you've been doing so much and I was like, “Oh, how, why haven't we connected before?” It's very cool. So tell us about the Kickstarters you've done and what you know, because you've done, I think, a fiction one as well. What are your thoughts and tips around Kickstarter? Jennifer: Yes. When I was taking that year, I found myself kind of… let's just say fired from a lot of different publishers at the time. That was okay because I had contracts that ran out, and when I looked to see, “Okay, do we want to go back?” it just wasn't looking good. I was like, “Well, I don't want to spend a year if I'm not gonna be making the money anyway.” So I looked at the landscape and I said, “It's time to really pull in and do a lot more things on my own, but I've got to build foundations.” Kickstarter was one of them. I took a course with Russell Nohelty and Monica Leonelle. They did a big course for Kickstarter, and they were really the ones going around to all the conferences and basically saying, “Hey guys, you're missing out on a lot of publishing opportunities here,” because Kickstarter publishing was getting good. I took the course because I like to dive into things, but I also want to know the foundation of it. I want to know what I'm doing. I'm not one to just wing it when it comes to tech. So what happened is, the first one, I had rights coming back from a book. After 10 years, my rights came back. It was an older book and I said, “You know what? I am going to dip my foot in and see what kind of base I can grow there. What can I do?” I was going to get a new cover, add new scenes, re-release it anyway, right? So I said, “Let's do a Kickstarter for it, because then I can get paid for all of that work.” It worked out so fantastically. It made just enough for my goal. I knew I didn't want to make a killing; I knew I wanted to make a fund. I made my $5,000, which I thought was wonderful, and I was able to re-release it with a new cover, a large print hardback, and I added some scenes. I did a 10-year anniversary re-release for my fans. So I made it very fan-friendly, grew my audience, and I was like, “This was great.” The next year, I did something completely different. I was doing Kindle Vella back in the day. That was where you dropped a chapter at a time. I said, “I want to do this completely different kind of thing.” It was very not my brand at all. It was very reality TV-ish: young college students living in the city, very sexy, very angsty, love triangles, messy—everything I was not known for. Again, I was like, “I'm not doing a pen name because this is just me,” and I funnelled my audience. I said, “What I'm going to do is I'm going to start doing a chapter a week through Kindle Vella and make money there. Then when it's done, I'm going to bundle it all up and make a book out of it.” So I did a year of Kindle Vella. It was the best decision I made because I just did two chapters a week, which I was able to do. By one year I had like 180,000 words. I had two to three books in there. I did it as a hardback deluxe—the only place you could get it in print. Then Vella closed, or at least it went way down. So I was like, “Great, I'm going to do this Kickstarter for this entire new thing.” I partnered with a company that helps with special editions, because that was a whole other… oh Joanna, that was a whole other thing you have to go into. Getting the books, getting the art, getting the swag. I felt like I needed some help for that. Again, I went in, I funded. I did not make a killing on that, but that was okay. I learned some things that I would have changed with my Kickstarter and I also built a new audience for that. I had a lot of extra books that I then sold in my store, and it was another place to make money. The third Kickstarter I used specifically because I had always wanted to do a writing course. I go all over the world, I do keynotes, I do workshops, I've done books, and I wanted to reach new writers, but I don't travel a lot anymore. So I came up with the concept that I was going to do my very first course, and it was going to be very personal, kind of like me talking to them almost like in a keynote, like you're in a room with me. I gathered a whole bunch of stuff and I used Kickstarter to help me A) fund it and B) make myself do it, because it was two years in the making and I always had, “Oh, I've got this other thing to do,” you know how we do that, right? We have big projects. So I used Kickstarter as a deadline and I decided to launch it in the summer. In addition to that, I took years of my posts from all over. I copied and pasted, did new posts, and I created Write Free, which was a very personal, essay-driven book. I took it all together. I took a couple of months to do this, filmed the course, and the Kickstarter did better than I had ever imagined. I got quadruple what I wanted, and it literally financed all the video editing, the books, everything that I needed, plus extra. I feel like I'm growing in Kickstarter. I hope I'm not ranting. I'm trying to go over things that can help people. Jo: Oh no, that is super useful. Jennifer: So you don't have to go all in and say, “If it doesn't fund it's over,” or “I need to make $20,000.” There are people making so much money, and there are people that will do a project a year or two projects a year and just get enough to fund a new thing that they want to do. So that's how I've done it. Jo: I've done quite a few now, and my non-fiction ones have been a lot bigger—I have a big audience there—and my fiction have been all over the place. What I like about Kickstarter is that you can do these different things. We can do these special editions. I've just done a sprayed-edge short story collection. Short story collections are not the biggest genre. Jennifer: Yes. I love short stories too. I've always wanted to do an anthology of all my short stories. Jo: There you go. Jennifer: Yes, I love that for your Kickstarter. Love it. Jo: When I turned 50 earlier this year, I realised the thing that isn't in print is my short stories. They are out there digitally, and that's why I wanted to do it. I feel like Kickstarter is a really good way to do these creative projects. As you say, you don't have to make a ton of money, but at the end of the day, the definition of success for us, I think for both of us, is just being able to continue doing this, right? Jennifer: Absolutely. This is funding a creative full-time career, and every single thing that you do with your content is like a funnel. The more funnels that you have, the bigger your base. Especially if you love it. It would be different if I was struggling and thinking, “Do I get an editor job?” I would hate being an editor. But if you look at something else like, “Oh yes, I could do this and that would light me up, like doing a course—wow, that sounds amazing,” then that's different. It's kind of finding your alternates that also light you up. Jo: Hmm. So were there any mistakes in your Kickstarters that you think are worth sharing? In case people are thinking about it. Jennifer: Oh my God, yes. So many. One big thing was that I felt like I was a failure if I didn't make a certain amount of money because my name is pretty well known. It's not like I'm brand new and looking. One of the big things was that I could not understand and I felt like I was banging my head against the wall about why my newsletter subscribers wouldn't support the Kickstarter. I'm like, “Why aren't you doing this? I'm supposed to have thousands of people that just back.” Your expectations can really mess with you. Then I started to learn, “Oh my God, my newsletter audience wants nothing to do with my Kickstarter.” Maybe I had a handful. So then I learned that I needed longer tails, like putting it up for pre-order way ahead of time, and also that you can't just announce it in your newsletter and feel like everybody's going to go there. You need to find your streams, your Kickstarter audience, which includes ads. I had never done ads either and I didn't know how to do that, so I did that all wrong. I joined the Facebook group for Kickstarter authors. I didn't do that for the first one and then I learned about it. You share backer updates, so every time you go into your audience with a backer update, there's this whole community where you can share with like-minded people with their projects, and you post it under your updates. It does cross-networking and sharing with a lot of authors in their newsletters. For the Write Free one, I leaned into my networking a lot, using my connections. I used other authors' newsletters and people in the industry to share my Kickstarter. That was better for me than just relying on my own fanbase. So definitely more networking, more sharing, getting it out on different platforms rather than just doing your own narrow channel. Because a lot of the time, you think your audience will follow you into certain things and they don't, and that needs to be okay. The other thing was the time and the backend. I think a lot of authors can get super excited about swag. I love that, but I learned that I could have pulled back a little bit and been smarter with my financials. I did things I was passionate about, but I probably spent much more money on swag than I needed to. So looking at different aspects to make it more efficient. I think each time you do one, you learn what works best. As usual, I try to be patient with myself. I don't get mad at myself for trying things and failing. I think failing is spectacular because I learn something. I know: do I want to do this again? Do I want to do it differently? If we weren't so afraid of failingqu “in public”, I think we would do more things. I'm not saying I never think, “Oh my God, that was so embarrassing, I barely funded and this person is getting a hundred thousand.” We're human. We compare. I have my own reset that I do, but I really try to say, “But no, for me, maybe I'll do this, and if it doesn't work, that's okay.” Jo: I really like that you shared about the email list there because I feel like too many people have spent years driving people to Kindle or KU, and they have built an email list of readers who like a particular format at a particular price. Then we are saying, “Oh, now come over here and buy a beautiful hardback that's like ten times the price.” And we're surprised when nobody does it. Is that what happened? Jennifer: Exactly. Also, that list was for a non-fiction project. So I had to funnel where my writers were in my newsletter, and I have mostly readers. So I was like, “Okay…” But I think you're exactly right. First of all, it's the platform. When you ask anybody to go off a platform, whether it's buy direct at your Shopify store or go to Kickstarter, you are going to lose the majority right there. People are like, “No, I want to click a button from your newsletter and go to a site that I know.” So you've got that, and you've got to train them. That can take some time. Then you've got this project where people are like, “I don't understand.” Even my mum was like, “I would love to support you, honey, but what the heck is this? Where's the buy button and where's my book?” My women's fiction books tend to have some older readers who are like, “Hell no, I don't know what this is.” So you have to know your audience. If it's not translating, train them. I did a couple of videos where I said, “Look, I want to show you how easy this is,” and I showed them directly how to go in and how to back. I did that with Kindle Vella too. I did a video from my newsletter and on social: “Hey, do you not know how to read this chapter? Here's how.” Sometimes there's a barrier. Like you said, Joanna, if I have a majority that just want sexy contemporary, and I'm dropping angsty, cheating, forbidden love, they're like, “Oh no, that's not for me.” So you have to know whether there's a crossover. I go into my business with that already baked into my expectations. I don't go in thinking I'm going to make a killing. Then I'm more surprised when it does well, and then I can build it. Jo: Yes, exactly. Also if you are, like both of us, writing across genres, then you are always going to split your audience. People do not necessarily buy everything because they have their preferences. So I think that's great. Now we are almost out of time, but this latest book is Write Free. I wondered if you would maybe say— What does Write Free mean to you, and what might it help the listeners with? Jennifer: Write Free is an extremely personal book for me, and the title was really important because it goes with Write Naked, Write True, and Write Free. These are the ways that I believe a writer should always show up to the page. Freedom is being able to write your truth in whatever day that is. You're going to be a different writer when you're young and maybe hormonal and passionate and having love affairs. You're going to write differently when you're a mum with kids in nappies. You're going to write differently when you are maybe in your forties and you're killing your career. Your perspective changes, your life changes. Write Free is literally a collection of essays all through my 30 years of life. It's very personal. There are essays like, “I'm writing my 53rd book right now,” and essays like, “My kids are in front of SpongeBob and I'm trying to write right now,” and “I got another rejection letter and I don't know how to survive.” It is literally an imprint of essays that you can dip in and dip out of. It's easy, short, inspirational, and it's just me showing up for my writing life. That's what I wish for everybody: that they can show up for their writing life in the best way that they can at the time, because that changes all the time. Jo: We can say “write free” because we've got a lot of experience at writing. I feel like when I started writing—I was an IT consultant—I literally couldn't write anything creative. I didn't believe I could. There'll be people listening who are just like, “Well, Jennifer, I can't write free. I'm not free. My mind is shackled by all these expectations and everything.” How can they release that and aim for more freedom? Jennifer: I love that question so much. The thing is, I've spent so many years working on that part. That doesn't come overnight. I think sometimes when you have more clarification of, “Okay, this is really limiting me,” then when you can see where something is limiting you, at least you can look for answers. My answers came in the form of meditation. Meditation is a very big thing in my life. Changing my perspective. Learning life mottos to help me deal with those kinds of limitations. Learning that when I write a sex scene, I can't care about my elderly aunt who tells my mother, “Dear God, she ruined the family name.” It is your responsibility to figure out where these limitations are, and then slowly see how you can remove them. I've been in therapy. I have read hundreds of self-help books. I take meditation courses. I take workshop courses. I've done CliftonStrengths with Becca Syme. I don't even know if that's therapy, but it feels like therapy to me as a writer. Knowing my personality traits. I've done Enneagram work with Claire Taylor, which has been huge. The more you know yourself and how your brain is showing up for yourself, the more you can grab tools to use. I wish I could say, “Yes, if everybody meditates 30 minutes a day, you're going to have all blocks removed,” but it's so personal that it's a trick question. If everybody started today and said, “Where is my biggest limitation?” and be real with yourself, there are answers out there. You just have to go slowly and find them, and then the writing more free will come. I hope that wasn't one of those woo-woo answers, but I really do believe it. Jo: I agree. It just takes time. Like our writing career, it just takes time. Keep working on it, keep writing. Jennifer: Yes. And bravery, right? A lot of bravery. Just show up for yourself however you can. If “write free” feels too big, journal for yourself and put it in a locked drawer. Any kind of writing, I think, is therapeutic too. Jo: Brilliant. So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Jennifer: The best place to go is my website. I treat it like my home. It's www.JenniferProbst.com. There is so much on it. Not just books, not just free content and free stories. There's an entire section just for writers. There are videos on there. There are a lot of resources. I keep it up to date and it is the place where you can find me. Of course I'm everywhere on social media as Author Jennifer Probst. You can find me anywhere. I always tell everybody: I answer my messages, I answer my emails. That is really important to me. So if you heard this podcast and you want to reach out on anything, please do. I will answer. Jo: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Jennifer. That was great. Jennifer: Thanks for having me, Joanna.The post Writing Free: Romance Author Jennifer Probst On A Long-Term Author Career first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you write science-based fiction without info-dumping your research? How can you use AI tools in a creative way, while still focusing on a human-first approach? Why is adapting to the fast pace of change so difficult and how can we make the most of this time? Jamie Metzl talks about Superconvergence and more. In the intro, How to avoid author scams [Written Word Media]; Spotify vs Audible audiobook strategy [The New Publishing Standard]; Thoughts on Author Nation and why constraints are important in your author life [Self-Publishing with ALLi]; Alchemical History And Beautiful Architecture: Prague with Lisa M Lilly on my Books and Travel Podcast. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn  Jamie Metzl is a technology futurist, professional speaker, entrepreneur, and the author of sci-fi thrillers and futurist nonfiction books, including the revised and updated edition of Superconvergence: How the Genetics, Biotech, and AI Revolutions Will Transform Our Lives, Work, and World. 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.  Show Notes How personal history shaped Jamie's fiction writing Writing science-based fiction without info-dumping The super convergence of three revolutions (genetics, biotech, AI) and why we need to understand them holistically Using fiction to explore the human side of genetic engineering, life extension, and robotics Collaborating with GPT-5 as a named co-author How to be a first-rate human rather than a second-rate machine You can find Jamie at JamieMetzl.com. Transcript of interview with Jamie Metzl Jo: Jamie Metzl is a technology futurist, professional speaker, entrepreneur, and the author of sci-fi thrillers and futurist nonfiction books, including the revised and updated edition of Superconvergence: How the Genetics, Biotech, and AI Revolutions Will Transform Our Lives, Work, and World. So welcome, Jamie. Jamie: Thank you so much, Jo. Very happy to be here with you. Jo: There is so much we could talk about, but let's start with you telling us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. From History PhD to First Novel Jamie: Well, I think like a lot of writers, I didn't know I was a writer. I was just a kid who loved writing. Actually, just last week I was going through a bunch of boxes from my parents' house and I found my autobiography, which I wrote when I was nine years old. So I've been writing my whole life and loving it. It was always something that was very important to me. When I finished my DPhil, my PhD at Oxford, and my dissertation came out, it just got scooped up by Macmillan in like two minutes. And I thought, “God, that was easy.” That got me started thinking about writing books. I wanted to write a novel based on the same historical period – my PhD was in Southeast Asian history – and I wanted to write a historical novel set in the same period as my dissertation, because I felt like the dissertation had missed the human element of the story I was telling, which was related to the Cambodian genocide and its aftermath. So I wrote what became my first novel, and I thought, “Wow, now I'm a writer.” I thought, “All right, I've already published one book. I'm gonna get this other book out into the world.” And then I ran into the brick wall of: it's really hard to be a writer. It's almost easier to write something than to get it published. I had to learn a ton, and it took nine years from when I started writing that first novel, The Depths of the Sea, to when it finally came out. But it was such a positive experience, especially to have something so personal to me as that story. I'd lived in Cambodia for two years, I’d worked on the Thai-Cambodian border, and I'm the child of a Holocaust survivor. So there was a whole lot that was very emotional for me. That set a pattern for the rest of my life as a writer, at least where, in my nonfiction books, I'm thinking about whatever the issues are that are most important to me. Whether it was that historical book, which was my first book, or Hacking Darwin on the future of human genetic engineering, which was my last book, or Superconvergence, which, as you mentioned in the intro, is my current book. But in every one of those stories, the human element is so deep and so profound. You can get at some of that in nonfiction, but I've also loved exploring those issues in deeper ways in my fiction. So in my more recent novels, Genesis Code and Eternal Sonata, I've looked at the human side of the story of genetic engineering and human life extension. And now my agent has just submitted my new novel, Virtuoso, about the intersection of AI, robotics, and classical music. With all of this, who knows what's the real difference between fiction and nonfiction? We're all humans trying to figure things out on many different levels. Shifting from History to Future Tech Jo: I knew that you were a polymath, someone who's interested in so many things, but the music angle with robotics and AI is fascinating. I do just want to ask you, because I was also at Oxford – what college were you at? Jamie: I was in St. Antony's. Jo: I was at Mansfield, so we were in that slightly smaller, less famous college group, if people don't know. Jamie: You know, but we're small but proud. Jo: Exactly. That's fantastic. You mentioned that you were on the historical side of things at the beginning and now you've moved into technology and also science, because this book Superconvergence has a lot of science. So how did you go from history and the past into science and the future? Biology and Seeing the Future Coming Jamie: It's a great question. I'll start at the end and then back up. A few years ago I was speaking at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is one of the big scientific labs here in the United States. I was a guest of the director and I was speaking to their 300 top scientists. I said to them, “I'm here to speak with you about the future of biology at the invitation of your director, and I'm really excited. But if you hear something wrong, please raise your hand and let me know, because I'm entirely self-taught. The last biology course I took was in 11th grade of high school in Kansas City.” Of course I wouldn't say that if I didn't have a lot of confidence in my process. But in many ways I'm self-taught in the sciences. As you know, Jo, and as all of your listeners know, the foundation of everything is curiosity and then a disciplined process for learning. Even our greatest super-specialists in the world now – whatever their background – the world is changing so fast that if anyone says, “Oh, I have a PhD in physics/chemistry/biology from 30 years ago,” the exact topic they learned 30 years ago is less significant than their process for continuous learning. More specifically, in the 1990s I was working on the National Security Council for President Clinton, which is the president’s foreign policy staff. My then boss and now close friend, Richard Clarke – who became famous as the guy who had tragically predicted 9/11 – used to say that the key to efficacy in Washington and in life is to try to solve problems that other people can't see. For me, almost 30 years ago, I felt to my bones that this intersection of what we now call AI and the nascent genetics revolution and the nascent biotechnology revolution was going to have profound implications for humanity. So I just started obsessively educating myself. When I was ready, I started writing obscure national security articles. Those got a decent amount of attention, so I was invited to testify before the United States Congress. I was speaking out a lot, saying, “Hey, this is a really important story. A lot of people are missing it. Here are the things we should be thinking about for the future.” I wasn't getting the kind of traction that I wanted. I mentioned before that my first book had been this dry Oxford PhD dissertation, and that had led to my first novel. So I thought, why don't I try the same approach again – writing novels to tell this story about the genetics, biotech, and what later became known popularly as the AI revolution? That led to my two near-term sci-fi novels, Genesis Code and Eternal Sonata. On my book tours for those novels, when I explained the underlying science to people in my way, as someone who taught myself, I could see in their eyes that they were recognizing not just that something big was happening, but that they could understand it and feel like they were part of that story. That's what led me to write Hacking Darwin, as I mentioned. That book really unlocked a lot of things. I had essentially predicted the CRISPR babies that were born in China before it happened – down to the specific gene I thought would be targeted, which in fact was the case. After that book was published, Dr. Tedros, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, invited me to join the WHO Expert Advisory Committee on Human Genome Editing, which I did. It was a really great experience and got me thinking a lot about the upside of this revolution and the downside. The Birth of Superconvergence Jamie: I get a lot of wonderful invitations to speak, and I have two basic rules for speaking: Never use notes. Never ever. Never stand behind a podium. Never ever. Because of that, when I speak, my talks tend to migrate. I’d be speaking with people about the genetics revolution as it applied to humans, and I'd say, “Well, this is just a little piece of a much bigger story.” The bigger story is that after nearly four billion years of life on Earth, our one species has the increasing ability to engineer novel intelligence and re-engineer life. The big question for us, and frankly for the world, is whether we're going to be able to use that almost godlike superpower wisely. As that idea got bigger and bigger, it became this inevitable force. You write so many books, Jo, that I think it's second nature for you. Every time I finish a book, I think, “Wow, that was really hard. I'm never doing that again.” And then the books creep up on you. They call to you. At some point you say, “All right, now I'm going to do it.” So that was my current book, Superconvergence. Like everything, every journey you take a step, and that step inspires another step and another. That's why writing and living creatively is such a wonderfully exciting thing – there's always more to learn and always great opportunities to push ourselves in new ways. Balancing Deep Research with Good Storytelling Jo: Yeah, absolutely. I love that you've followed your curiosity and then done this disciplined process for learning. I completely understand that. But one of the big issues with people like us who love the research – and having read your Superconvergence, I know how deeply you go into this and how deeply you care that it's correct – is that with fiction, one of the big problems with too much research is the danger of brain-dumping. Readers go to fiction for escapism. They want the interesting side of it, but they want a story first. What are your tips for authors who might feel like, “Where's the line between putting in my research so that it's interesting for readers, but not going too far and turning it into a textbook?” How do you find that balance? Jamie: It's such a great question. I live in New York now, but I used to live in Washington when I was working for the U.S. government, and there were a number of people I served with who later wrote novels. Some of those novels felt like policy memos with a few sex scenes – and that's not what to do. To write something that's informed by science or really by anything, everything needs to be subservient to the story and the characters. The question is: what is the essential piece of information that can convey something that's both important to your story and your character development, and is also an accurate representation of the world as you want it to be? I certainly write novels that are set in the future – although some of them were a future that's now already happened because I wrote them a long time ago. You can make stuff up, but as an author you have to decide what your connection to existing science and existing technology and the existing world is going to be. I come at it from two angles. One: I read a huge number of scientific papers and think, “What does this mean for now, and if you extrapolate into the future, where might that go?” Two: I think about how to condense things. We've all read books where you're humming along because people read fiction for story and emotional connection, and then you hit a bit like: “I sat down in front of the president, and the president said, ‘Tell me what I need to know about the nuclear threat.'” And then it’s like: insert memo. That's a deal-killer. It's like all things – how do you have a meaningful relationship with another person? It's not by just telling them your story. Even when you're telling them something about you, you need to be imagining yourself sitting in their shoes, hearing you. These are very different disciplines, fiction and nonfiction. But for the speculative nonfiction I write – “here's where things are now, and here's where the world is heading” – there's a lot of imagination that goes into that too. It feels in many ways like we're living in a sci-fi world because the rate of technological change has been accelerating continuously, certainly for the last 12,000 years since the dawn of agriculture. It's a balance. For me, I feel like I'm a better fiction writer because I write nonfiction, and I'm a better nonfiction writer because I write fiction. When I'm writing nonfiction, I don't want it to be boring either – I want people to feel like there's a story and characters and that they can feel themselves inside that story. Jo: Yeah, definitely. I think having some distance helps as well. If you're really deep into your topics, as you are, you have to leave that manuscript a little bit so you can go back with the eyes of the reader as opposed to your eyes as the expert. Then you can get their experience, which is great. Looking Beyond Author-Focused AI Fears Jo: I want to come to your technical knowledge, because AI is a big thing in the author and creative community, like everywhere else. One of the issues is that creators are focusing on just this tiny part of the impact of AI, and there's a much bigger picture. For example, in 2024, Demis Hassabis from Google DeepMind and his collaborative partner John Jumper won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with AlphaFold. It feels to me like there's this massive world of what's happening with AI in health, climate, and other areas, and yet we are so focused on a lot of the negative stuff. Maybe you could give us a couple of things about what there is to be excited and optimistic about in terms of AI-powered science? Jamie: Sure. I'm so excited about all of the new opportunities that AI creates. But I also think there's a reason why evolution has preserved this very human feeling of anxiety: because there are real dangers. Anybody who's Pollyanna-ish and says, “Oh, the AI story is inevitably positive,” I’d be distrustful. And anyone who says, “We're absolutely doomed, this is the end of humanity,” I'd also be distrustful. So let me tell you the positives and the negatives, and maybe some thoughts about how we navigate toward the former and away from the latter. AI as the New Electricity Jamie: When people think of AI right now, they’re thinking very narrowly about these AI tools and ChatGPT. But we don't think of electricity that way. Nobody says, “I know electricity – electricity is what happens at the power station.” We've internalised the idea that electricity is woven into not just our communication systems or our houses, but into our clothes, our glasses – it's woven into everything and has super-empowered almost everything in our modern lives. That's what AI is. In Superconvergence, the majority of the book is about positive opportunities: In healthcare, moving from generalised healthcare based on population averages to personalised or precision healthcare based on a molecular understanding of each person's individual biology. As we build these massive datasets like the UK Biobank, we can take a next jump toward predictive and preventive healthcare, where we're able to address health issues far earlier in the process, when interventions can be far more benign. I'm really excited about that, not to mention the incredible new kinds of treatments – gene therapies, or pharmaceuticals based on genetics and systems-biology analyses of patients. Then there's agriculture. Over the last hundred years, because of the technologies of the Green Revolution and synthetic fertilisers, we've had an incredible increase in agricultural productivity. That's what's allowed us to quadruple the global population. But if we just continue agriculture as it is, as we get towards ten billion wealthier, more empowered people wanting to eat like we eat, we're going to have to wipe out all the wild spaces on Earth to feed them. These technologies help provide different paths toward increasing agricultural productivity with fewer inputs of land, water, fertiliser, insecticides, and pesticides. That's really positive. I could go on and on about these positives – and I do – but there are very real negatives. I was a member of the WHO Expert Advisory Committee on Human Genome Editing after the first CRISPR babies were very unethically created in China. I'm extremely aware that these same capabilities have potentially incredible upsides and very real downsides. That's the same as every technology in the past, but this is happening so quickly that it's triggering a lot of anxieties. Governance, Responsibility, and Why Everyone Has a Role Jamie: The question now is: how do we optimise the benefits and minimise the harms? The short, unsexy word for that is governance. Governance is not just what governments do; it's what all of us do. That's why I try to write books, both fiction and nonfiction, to bring people into this story. If people “other” this story – if they say, “There's a technology revolution, it has nothing to do with me, I'm going to keep my head down” – I think that's dangerous. The way we're going to handle this as responsibly as possible is if everybody says, “I have some role. Maybe it's small, maybe it's big. The first step is I need to educate myself. Then I need to have conversations with people around me. I need to express my desires, wishes, and thoughts – with political leaders, organisations I’m part of, businesses.” That has to happen at every level. You're in the UK – you know the anti-slavery movement started with a handful of people in Cambridge and grew into a global movement. I really believe in the power of ideas, but ideas don't spread on their own. These are very human networks, and that's why writing, speaking, communicating – probably for every single person listening to this podcast – is so important. Jo: Mm, yeah. Fiction Like AI 2041 and Thinking Through the Issues Jo: Have you read AI 2041 by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan? Jamie: No. I heard a bunch of their interviews when the book came out, but I haven't read it. Jo: I think that's another good one because it's fiction – a whole load of short stories. It came out a few years ago now, but the issues they cover in the stories, about different people in different countries – I remember one about deepfakes – make you think more about the topics and help you figure out where you stand. I think that's the issue right now: it's so complex, there are so many things. I'm generally positive about AI, but of course I don't want autonomous drone weapons, you know? The Messy Reality of “Bad” Technologies Jamie: Can I ask you about that? Because this is why it's so complicated. Like you, I think nobody wants autonomous killer drones anywhere in the world. But if you right now were the defence minister of Ukraine, and your children are being kidnapped, your country is being destroyed, you're fighting for your survival, you're getting attacked every night – and you're getting attacked by the Russians, who are investing more and more in autonomous killer robots – you kind of have two choices. You can say, “I'm going to surrender,” or, “I'm going to use what technology I have available to defend myself, and hopefully fight to either victory or some kind of stand-off.” That's what our societies did with nuclear weapons. Maybe not every American recognises that Churchill gave Britain's nuclear secrets to America as a way of greasing the wheels of the Anglo-American alliance during the Second World War – but that was our programme: we couldn't afford to lose that war, and we couldn't afford to let the Nazis get nuclear weapons before we did. So there's the abstract feeling of, “I'm against all war in the abstract. I'm against autonomous killer robots in the abstract.” But if I were the defence minister of Ukraine, I would say, “What will it take for us to build the weapons we can use to defend ourselves?” That's why all this stuff gets so complicated. And frankly, it's why the relationship between fiction and nonfiction is so important. If every novel had a situation where every character said, “Oh, I know exactly the right answer,” and then they just did the right answer and it was obviously right, it wouldn't make for great fiction. We're dealing with really complex humans. We have conflicting impulses. We're not perfect. Maybe there are no perfect answers – but how do we strive toward better rather than worse? That’s the question. Jo: Absolutely. I don't want to get too political on things. How AI Is Changing the Writing Life Jo: Let's come back to authors. In terms of the creative process, the writing process, the research process, and the business of being an author – what are some of the ways that you already use AI tools, and some of the ways, given your futurist brain, that you think things are going to change for us? Jamie: Great question. I'll start with a little middle piece. I found you, Jo, through GPT-5. I asked ChatGPT, “I'm coming out with this book and I want to connect with podcasters who are a little different from the ones I've done in the past. I've been a guest on Joe Rogan twice and some of the bigger podcasts. Make me a list of really interesting people I can have great conversations with.” That's how I found you. So this is one reward of that process. Let me say that in the last year I've worked on three books, and I'll explain how my relationship with AI has changed over those books. Cleaning Up Citations (and Getting Burned) Jamie: First is the highly revised paperback edition of Superconvergence. When the hardback came out, I had – I don't normally work with research assistants because I like to dig into everything myself – but the one thing I do use a research assistant for is that I can't be bothered, when I'm writing something, to do the full Chicago-style footnote if I'm already referencing an academic paper. So I'd just put the URL as the footnote and then hire a research assistant and say, “Go to this URL and change it into a Chicago-style citation. That's it.” Unfortunately, my research assistant on the hardback used early-days ChatGPT for that work. He did the whole thing, came back, everything looked perfect. I said, “Wow, amazing job.” It was only later, as I was going through them, that I realised something like 50% of them were invented footnotes. It was very painful to go back and fix, and it took ten times more time. With the paperback edition, I didn't use AI that much, but I did say things like, “Here's all the information – generate a Chicago-style citation.” That was better. I noticed there were a few things where I stopped using the thesaurus function on Microsoft Word because I'd just put the whole paragraph into the AI and say, “Give me ten other options for this one word,” and it would be like a contextual thesaurus. That was pretty good. Talking to a Robot Pianist Character Jamie: Then, for my new novel Virtuoso, I was writing a character who is a futurist robot that plays the piano very beautifully – not just humanly, but almost finding new things in the music we've written and composing music that resonates with us. I described the actions of that robot in the novel, but I didn't describe the inner workings of the robot’s mind. In thinking about that character, I realised I was the first science-fiction writer in history who could interrogate a machine about what it was “thinking” in a particular context. I had the most beautiful conversations with ChatGPT, where I would give scenarios and ask, “What are you thinking? What are you feeling in this context?” It was all background for that character, but it was truly profound. Co-Authoring The AI Ten Commandments with GPT-5 Jamie: Third, I have another book coming out in May in the United States. I gave a talk this summer at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York about AI and spirituality. I talked about the history of our human relationship with our technology, about how all our religious and spiritual traditions have deep technological underpinnings – certainly our Abrahamic religions are deeply connected to farming, and Protestantism to the printing press. Then I had a section about the role of AI in generating moral codes that would resonate with humans. Everybody went nuts for this talk, and I thought, “I think I'm going to write a book.” I decided to write it differently, with GPT-5 as my named co-author. The first thing I did was outline the entire book based on the talk, which I’d already spent a huge amount of time thinking about and organising. Then I did a full outline of the arguments and structures. Then I trained GPT-5 on my writing style. The way I did it – which I fully describe in the introduction to the book – was that I'd handle all the framing: the full introduction, the argument, the structure. But if there was a section where, for a few paragraphs, I was summarising a huge field of data, even something I knew well, I'd give GPT-5 the intro sentence and say, “In my writing style, prepare four paragraphs on this.” For example, I might write: “AI has the potential to see us humans like we humans see ant colonies.” Then I’d say, “Give me four paragraphs on the relationship between the individual and the collective in ant colonies.” I could have written those four paragraphs myself, but it would’ve taken a month to read the life’s work of E.O. Wilson and then write them. GPT-5 wrote them in seconds or minutes, in its thinking mode. I'd then say, “It's not quite right – change this, change that,” and we'd go back and forth three or four times. Then I’d edit the whole thing and put it into the text. So this book that I could have written on my own in a year, I wrote a first draft of with GPT-5 as my named co-author in two days. The whole project will take about six months from start to finish, and I'm having massive human editing – multiple edits from me, plus a professional editor. It's not a magic AI button. But I feel strongly about listing GPT-5 as a co-author because I've written it differently than previous books. I'm a huge believer in the old-fashioned lone author struggling and suffering – that’s in my novels, and in Virtuoso I explore that. But other forms are going to emerge, just like video games are a creative, artistic form deeply connected to technology. The novel hasn’t been around forever – the current format is only a few centuries old – and forms are always changing. There are real opportunities for authors, and there will be so much crap flooding the market because everybody can write something and put it up on Amazon. But I think there will be a very special place for thoughtful human authors who have an idea of what humans do at our best, and who translate that into content other humans can enjoy. Traditional vs Indie: Why This Book Will Be Self-Published Jo: I'm interested – you mentioned that it's your named co-author. Is this book going through a traditional publisher, and what do they think about that? Or are you going to publish it yourself? Jamie: It's such a smart question. What I found quickly is that when you get to be an author later in your career, you have all the infrastructure – a track record, a fantastic agent, all of that. But there were two things that were really important to me here: I wanted to get this book out really fast – six months instead of a year and a half. It was essential to me to have GPT-5 listed as my co-author, because if it were just my name, I feel like it would be dishonest. Readers who are used to reading my books – I didn't want to present something different than what it was. I spoke with my agent, who I absolutely love, and she said that for this particular project it was going to be really hard in traditional publishing. So I did a huge amount of research, because I'd never done anything in the self-publishing world before. I looked at different models. There was one hybrid model that's basically the same as traditional, but you pay for the things the publisher would normally pay for. I ended up not doing that. Instead, I decided on a self-publishing route where I disaggregated the publishing process. I found three teams: one for producing the book, one for getting the book out into the world, and a smaller one for the audiobook. I still believe in traditional publishing – there's a lot of wonderful human value-add. But some works just don't lend themselves to traditional publishing. For this book, which is called The AI Ten Commandments, that's the path I've chosen. Jo: And when's that out? I think people will be interested. Jamie: April 26th. Those of us used to traditional publishing think, “I've finished the book, sold the proposal, it’ll be out any day now,” and then it can be a year and a half. It's frustrating. With this, the process can be much faster because it's possible to control more of the variables. But the key – as I was saying – is to make sure it's as good a book as everything else you've written. It's great to speed up, but you don't want to compromise on quality. The Coming Flood of Excellent AI-Generated Work Jo: Yeah, absolutely. We're almost out of time, but I want to come back to your “flood of crap” and the “AI slop” idea that's going around. Because you are working with GPT-5 – and I do as well, and I work with Claude and Gemini – and right now there are still issues. Like you said about referencing, there are still hallucinations, though fewer. But fast-forward two, five years: it's not a flood of crap. It's a flood of excellent. It's a flood of stuff that's better than us. Jamie: We're humans. It's better than us in certain ways. If you have farm machinery, it's better than us at certain aspects of farming. I'm a true humanist. I think there will be lots of things machines do better than us, but there will be tons of things we do better than them. There's a reason humans still care about chess, even though machines can beat humans at chess. Some people are saying things I fully disagree with, like this concept of AGI – artificial general intelligence – where machines do everything better than humans. I've summarised my position in seven letters: “AGI is BS.” The only way you can believe in AGI in that sense is if your concept of what a human is and what a human mind is is so narrow that you think it's just a narrow range of analytical skills. We are so much more than that. Humans represent almost four billion years of embodied evolution. There's so much about ourselves that we don't know. As incredible as these machines are and will become, there will always be wonderful things humans can do that are different from machines. What I always tell people is: whatever you're doing, don't be a second-rate machine. Be a first-rate human. If you're doing something and a machine is doing that thing much better than you, then shift to something where your unique capacities as a human give you the opportunity to do something better. So yes, I totally agree that the quality of AI-generated stuff will get better. But I think the most creative and successful humans will be the ones who say, “I recognise that this is creating new opportunities, and I'm going to insert my core humanity to do something magical and new.” People are “othering” these technologies, but the technologies themselves are magnificent human-generated artefacts. They're not alien UFOs that landed here. It's a scary moment for creatives, no doubt, because there are things all of us did in the past that machines can now do really well. But this is the moment where the most creative people ask themselves, “What does it mean for me to be a great human?” The pat answers won't apply. In my Virtuoso novel I explore that a lot. The idea that “machines don't do creativity” – they will do incredible creativity; it just won't be exactly human creativity. We will be potentially huge beneficiaries of these capabilities, but we really have to believe in and invest in the magic of our core humanity. Where to Find Jamie and His Books Jo: Brilliant. So where can people find you and your books online? Jamie: Thank you so much for asking. My website is jamiemetzl.com – and my books are available everywhere. Jo: Fantastic. Thanks so much for your time, Jamie. That was great. Jamie: Thank you, Joanna.The post Writing The Future, And Being More Human In An Age of AI With Jamie Metzl first appeared on The Creative Penn.

In early November 2025, I attended and spoke at Author Nation in Las Vegas. It was a fantastic conference for authors at all levels, and in this episode, I share my lessons learned and tips from reflecting on the event. In the intro, scam emails and what to watch out for; Spotify launches Recaps, and how I currently self-publish audiobooks; Successful Self-Publishing 4th Edition free audiobook; My audiobooks on YouTube The Creative Penn / Fiction/memoir audiobooks on JFPennAuthor; 22 ways to grow your author email list [BookBub]; Author Nation with the Wish I’d Known Then Podcast; and Your Author Business Plan on special. Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business, sponsors today's show. Whether it’s delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, and memoir as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. Double down on being human and the importance of connection in person (if possible) Constraints breed creativity What do you need for a long-term sustainable career as an author? How do you want your author business to run? What are your contingency plans for when things don’t go as planned? Money management tips — books and resources here How do you know when to work with a company as part of your author business? How to assess vendors and services. Thoughts from others You can find Author Nation at AuthorNation.live. You can find my books on writing craft and author business in all formats at CreativePennBooks.com, or on your favourite online store, or request at your local bookstore or library. Jo Penn walking the strip, by the luxor; with Mark lefebvre, johnny B. truant & dan wood (d2d), and with sacha black and orna ross, las vegas, nov 2025 Lessons Learned from Author Nation 2025 In early November 2025, I attended Author Nation in Las Vegas along with around 1500 other authors, and lots of vendors. There were about 80 different sessions over four days and a Reader Nation signing and book sales event. The sessions were on different tracks so you could go to basic craft and self-publishing things, or more advanced sessions on author business and mindset. I spoke several times, once as part of a panel on long-term career strategies, once in my own solo session on collaboration with AI, all the things you can use AI for that are not writing, and once in a private meet up for my Patrons.  Congratulations to the Author Nation team for delivering such a fantastic conference! I know how hard everyone worked and it went super well from what I could see. If you’re interested in learning more, just go to https://www.authornation.live/ Here are some of my thoughts from the 2025 conference, but of course, remember, I am a writing conference veteran and have been an author entrepreneur for a long time, so my takeaways will be different to someone who is at a different place in their career.   (1) Double down on being human, and the importance of connection in person (if possible) To be clear, I know this isn’t possible for everyone, because of time or money or health reasons, or caring responsibilities, as Donn’s recent interview illustrated. But if you can, it’s always worth going to conferences in person.  If you attend, organise well in advance. Schedule meetings early, but also leave room for serendipity. Make the most of meeting people at your level; build your network. There were people I hadn’t seen for years at Author Nation, so much elbow bumping, human connection — and LOTS of coffee.While I attended a few sessions, most of my time was back-to-back meetings and chats with other authors and vendors, and we had a great Patreon meet-up with over 100 people.Author conferences are a great way to build relationships, and if you start with people at your level now, over time, you will all grow and change, and people will become successful in different ways, or disappear sometimes. The longer you are in this business, and the more you join in and help others, the more people you get to know and social karma kicks in. Some of those relationships naturally turn into business opportunities, and other author friends will be your support crew over the inevitable challenging years ahead.So if you feel like you don’t have any author friends, or know enough people at your level, then consider booking an in-person conference for 2026. It could be a genre conference, or a broader overall conference like Author Nation, but get away from your screen and do some peopling! As hard as it is, it’s worth it. (2) Constraints breed creativity Drew Davies did the opening keynote, and if you want to be a keynote speaker and get paid the big bucks, then it was a masterclass in professional speaking. I’ve done a lot of speaker training and it was inspiring to watch Drew’s presentation and consider how he used multimedia, how he engaged with different mediums, how he made people laugh, and brought emotion in, as well as deliver a message.If you’re ever in sessions or at events and you want to learn on a different level, consider the person and their skill — or lack of it — instead of the content. You can learn a lot from watching or listening to the person delivering, and how they speak or teach or react to the room.Drew’s content was great too, and he spoke on the Cube of Constraints which can be the catalyst for supercharging your creativity. He had an actual cube too, which he built into a sculpture later, part of his multi-faceted teaching style.In a world of unlimited possibilities, it’s hard to stick to one choice, and especially if you listen to author podcasts like this one, or go to conferences where you ingest a ton of sessions like Author Nation, you will have hundreds of ideas, and you can have popcorn brain with things firing off everywhere.But if you don’t settle into one thing and focus, you might not achieve much, so Drew recommended deliberately constraining your work in 4 ways.  (a) Eliminate the unnecessary What can you stop doing in order to pursue the new thing? If you start something new, kill two things. Kill the easy one, then kill the hard one.When I was writing my first book and trying to exit my day job to become a full-time author, I gave up TV and this was before smartphones and social media, so that wasn’t even a distraction. Giving up TV in the evenings gave me the time I needed to build a new direction. You have to make the time somehow.   (b) Define the outcome What single result defines success? For example, with my first novel, Pentecost, which became Stone of Fire, the goal was to publish it on Amazon by my birthday. I ended up falling short by about a month, but a birthday-related goal is always a good one as it’s so memorable and clear.  (c) Limit your options What unreasonable limitations can you apply to your project? Give it a time limit, and a creative limit. That creative limit is a good one, for example, if you constrain the genre or the number of POV characters in your book, it will make it easier to achieve your goal. (d) Raise the stakes What specifically will happen if you fail? This is a tough one, as it’s so personal. For me, I like achieving goals, and so failing a goal is a big enough stake for me. Some people talk about signing a cheque to a charity they hate or something and sending it off if they fail, but that doesn't motivate me. Whatever floats your boat, but decide what the stakes are. As we know with writing fiction, high stakes are important to keep things moving!  Drew also talked about turning constraints you already have, like time and budget, into positives. This kind of reframing can help you embrace your situation. For example, if you only have 30 minutes per day to write while commuting, well, so be it. Try dictating or typing on your phone, and I know several authors who have written many books during a work commute. Or busy mums who dictate while doing chores. Or again, coming back to Donn’s interview, if you’re a carer, raging against it may not help as much as adapting and changing your creative goals and being more relaxed about time. I’ve embraced my constraints recently as I’m doing this Masters in Death, Religion, and Culture. It’s full-time, so I am doing at least 20 hours a week of study and online lectures and reading on some really interesting topics. I’m writing essays, so I don’t have time or the headspace to write books, too. I’m currently working on three essays — one on natural burial, one on the ethics of using dead bodies to inspire commercial fiction, and one on the depiction of hell in an area of art history. I am clearly collecting ideas for when I am ready to write fiction again, but the constraint of study is focusing my mind on the bare minimum I need to do to keep my author business running and the money coming in. My Books and Travel Podcast is going on hiatus again soon, and I’m going to do fewer interviews here in 2026.  What constraints do you have, and how can you reframe them? Or how can you add constraints rather than giving yourself unlimited possibilities?  (3) What do you need for a long-term sustainable career?  Becca Syme did a talk on sustainability for a long-term career, which tied into the theme of Author Nation, which was ‘Build your best life through writing.’ Becca was on the show recently – Loki is in charge – and she is always worth listening to as she will definitely say something challenging in any session. Becca started with a need for basic self-knowledge. Do you know yourself well enough to understand what works for you, and what you’re capable of doing? Do you know what to say yes to and what to say no to? How are you learning more about yourself and your personality? There’s always a lot of talk about the Clifton Strengths Assessment as that’s what Becca specialises in, and I have found that very useful. I also love Myers Briggs. I’m INFJ, which is uncommon in the wider population but very common in the author community.  Some of the other things Becca talked about included understanding the limits of your energy so you don’t burn out, and making sure you reflect on and audit tasks so you know what to do more of and what to get rid of. For example, it’s more common now to find some authors who are not doing social media at all, or are reducing it because it doesn’t feed them, whereas others love it as the basis of their business.  Becca also talked about the need for a ‘personal growth stimulator,’ a way to make sure you’re always learning and growing and finding community. For me, that’s mostly listening to podcasts and reading books, and at the moment, my Masters course, which is mostly reading a lot of sources and then writing essays on diverse topics.   Becca also said you need to do a business edit and/or a persona edit every now and then, as — You are likely over-committed, either personally or in business. You need to take things OFF your plate, not keep adding more. She said, “When you prune a tree, it grows more.” Also, one very key point:  If you can’t tell whether something is working or not, it’s not working.  My take on this is about understanding ‘ease.’ What is easy for you? What do you love that other people think is hard?  For example, people often ask me, how do I find time to learn so much about what’s going on, and input so much, so I can share with you every week? Well, my top 5 Clifton Strengths are Learner, Intellection, Strategic, Input, and Futuristic. By my very nature, I am constantly inputting and learning and thinking, and considering the impact on the future. It’s easy and fun for me as I live in the stream of input and I love it! However, my bottom ‘strengths’ i.e. my weaknesses, mean that hard things include peopling and crowds, social energy in person or online, and doing things off the cuff (as I need to plan way in advance).  If you do Clifton Strengths or any of the personality tests, it might help you figure things out, but you can also just pay more attention to what is easy for you, what brings you joy and energy and fun, versus what drains you and makes you unhappy.  Becca also said that you need the ability to set boundaries and understand who to say yes to, and who to say no to. You also need a community for support, care for your physical body, and a source of hope for the future.  I hope I can remain a part of that for you, as I remain hopeful and excited about so many things. Change will continue as ever, but there are more opportunities ahead. What do you need to have in place if you want a long-term sustainable career?  You can find many more of Becca’s wise words in her books and also on her QuitCast and on her Patreon.  (4) How do you want your author business to run?  Katie Cross did a great session on SOPs, Standard Operating Procedures, which are just documents or spreadsheets with step-by-step instructions on specific tasks. They also include sections on WHY things are done and why they are important to your business, and I feel like many people miss out on these important aspects, preferring to focus on the ‘how to’ rather than the ‘why’ which is more critical. For example, selling direct is trendy in the indie author community, and some of the numbers thrown around are inspiring, but also need to be questioned, since it is not for everyone, at every stage. I love selling direct through Kickstarter and Shopify in my limited way, but I don’t want a warehouse like Sacha Black or Adam Beswick or David Viergutz. I also don’t recommend selling direct if you don’t have an audience or a budget or a marketing funnel, or time to set up and/or test the technical side of it. Selling direct is not a silver bullet to becoming a successful indie author. It’s also a lot of work, so you need a good reason to commit to it for the long term, and it needs to be part of a considered author business plan. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what platform you put your book/s on. You won’t sell any copies if you don’t do any marketing, and that is often the side of the author business that is missing. Back to Katie’s talk, I went along because I’m interested in how we will work with AI agents in the coming years, and I want to have SOPs so I can give them to my AI partners, rather than human assistants. Katie didn’t even mention AI as she is a superstar at working with other humans, but the processes can be used for either/both.  She also mentioned that “some SOPs are just for me,” which is a really good point. You can document your own processes, and put at the top: Why am I doing this? Why is this important to my author business? If you can’t answer the question, maybe you need to eliminate that task altogether. (5) What are your contingency plans for when things don’t go to plan?  The team at Author Nation had to deal with lots of challenges. It’s extremely hard to run any conference, let alone a big conference, so congratulations to Joe and Suze, and Chelle, Jamie, Isabella, and the team for pulling it off and doing an amazing job. It went incredibly well, and it is a great conference that I highly recommend for authors. But what happened on the last few days was also a good lesson for all of us in business. James Patterson was meant to be the closing keynote speaker, and do a VIP evening thing, and then sign at Reader Nation the next day, and his attendance in person was a draw card for many. But he got sick and pulled out, only appearing on zoom for a short time instead.  On top of that challenge, the government shutdown impacted flights, so many people changed their flights to leave early rather than get caught up in the expected delays.  But the Author Nation team did a great job of “the show must go on,” bringing in James Patterson by zoom and then interviewing other successful authors, and the pivot in such a short time was impressive — but it also made me want to reflect on the bigger lesson. Things will not always go to plan.  People will disappoint you. So will publishers, so will your own marketing attempts.  Readers will leave you one star reviews.  People will say things about you that are not true.  People will judge you — and that has always been my biggest fear, and yet, it continues to happen.  If you are out in the world in public in any way, you will get criticism and rejection, and yes, there will be haters.  If you hide and try not to attract any attention at all, no one will find your books, and you won’t sell anything, and you will moan about not selling instead. This is the reality of the author life, so you have to accept that.  You can’t let these things stop you. The writing life show must go on. Even if you have everything sorted, something may happen that is outside your control.  Like James Patterson cancelling and flights being disrupted, and a political situation that makes people not want to travel, anyway. Like the pandemic.  Like the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).  Like the dot com crash.  All of which I have been through in my working adult life, as will many of you listening. These will not be the only large-scale disruptions in our lifetime, and there will, of course, be personal disruptions that will blindside you too. So what do we do — in addition to keep creating?    I talked on the long-term success panel about the biggest mistake I’ve seen authors make, and that is bad financial management.  It’s the thing that destroys businesses regardless of what kind of business you run, or what job you have. I have seen many authors hit it big and then spend it all without saving for the inevitable down times, or who take on too much debt, or over-expose themselves to risk. Or those who have one stream of income instead of many, and when that one stream dries up, they have to start again.  That’s what happened to me in the GFC. I had one stream of income — my job. Then we all got laid off in one day and none of us had work, and that day, back in 2008, was the day I said I would build multiple streams and that no single company would ever be able to take away all my income in one fell swoop again. I now have so many streams of income, I need a pretty developed accounting system to keep track!  Hard times will come; they inevitably do, so make sure you have a buffer to weather the storm.  To be clear, this is not about the conference business of Author Nation, as Joe and Suze Solari are experienced business people and they know about managing risk and cash flow and all that. Joe has a consulting business that helps authors in that specific way. But many authors are not so experienced in business or money management.  If you don’t feel confident in this area, check out my list of resources at www.thecreativepenn.com/moneybooks   So the question for you here is, how exposed is your author business — or just your life and job in general — to disruption if it’s out of your control? What’s the worst that can happen? Can you build multiple streams of income? Can you make contingency plans?  What can you do to de-risk? Within reason of course, but you need to have plans for when things go right, and when things go wrong. (6) How do you know when to work with a company as part of your author business?  We use the term ‘self-publishing’ alongside being an ‘indie author,’ but of course, we are not truly independent and you can’t be a successful author on your own. We need service providers and software vendors and publishing partners, and there are many of them trying to catch your attention.  It’s always lovely to catch up with various vendors I’ve been working with for years, many of whom I consider friends now, and at Author Nation I spoke to people from Draft2Digital, Bookfunnel, Kickstarter, ProWritingAid, Reedsy, and BookVault, as well as my editor Kristen Tate, and others.  There were LOTS of vendors at Author Nation, some with brand new businesses, many I had never heard of, and I wanted to give you some advice about deciding which companies to work with. There are so many these days online and at conferences, and I thought it might be useful to give you a framework. Many of the companies are wonderful, but not all are worth it. Only you can decide for your situation, and it will differ depending on where you are in the author journey. For example, it makes sense for an author working on their first book to spend money on editing, but to avoid vendors who want to help you sell direct as it is way too early for that.  Here are some questions I consider when weighing up new vendors or services, or reconsidering them over time, as the industry changes, and my needs change, too.  You could always paste these into ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini and ask it to help you evaluate a service if you don’t want to ask the vendor directly.  What purpose does this serve in helping me write, publish, or market my books, or as part of running my author business? What is the cost versus the return on investment? How do I make money with this? How quickly might I get my money back if that is a consideration? Are they asking for a one-off payment, or a subscription? (If you sign up for subscriptions, I recommend paying monthly, even if it is more expensive, so you can reconsider every month and change your mind if necessary).  How does the company make money? Remember, if it is free, you are the product in some way, often through advertising. A company that lasts needs sustainable revenue streams, and it might run out of funding at some point and need to change the terms in order to make money. Does the business have a sustainable business model? Do they understand their competitors in the market — and how do they compare with them?  Who are the team behind the company? How long have they been in business? Do I trust that they will be around for the long term? Why do they care about authors? If in doubt, are they a Partner Member of the Alliance of Independent Authors, which vets terms and conditions and contracts so we know companies can be trusted.  Once you have all this information, you can make a more informed decision as to whether to sign up. And of course, I say all this as I see authors getting excited and making emotional choices without considering their author business plan for the years ahead! Or signing up for so many things, they are overwhelmed. As an example, let’s take BookFunnel — and full disclosure, Bookfunnel was a primary sponsor of AuthorNation, and they sponsor my podcast, and I am an affiliate — because I am a happy user of the service since the beginning and believe it is a great company and useful product (for many authors, but not all.)  I’ve used BookFunnel for years to give away my free books, which was primarily a way of marketing to bring people into my ecosystem so they would buy other books, and now I also use them for direct sales of ebooks and audiobooks. I would struggle to make money selling direct without BookFunnel, so yes, they make me money and they are worth the cost. Of course, if you are just writing your first book, you don’t need them yet, so don’t sign up!  I pay an annual subscription to use Bookfunnel, as do many thousands of other authors worldwide, so they have consistent cash flow. Damon Courtney, a wonderful coder and fantasy author, founded Bookfunnel a decade ago when he recognised the need in the author community for an easy way to deliver ebooks directly.  Every year since, Damon has expanded the offerings, and I know he cares about authors because he IS an author. He also understands his responsibility to the community, and his business has already lasted more than 8 years. Considering most businesses fail within 5 years, any company that has managed for longer is doing well. They also have a succession plan in case anything happens to Damon, and I know this, because I asked him specifically! I’m always thinking about death as you know!  I also wanted to mention BookFunnel as they launched personalised, signed ebooks at Author Nation, which is a fantastic feature where you can sign a copy of an ebook for a fan, or personalise it with a message. Of course, I asked about personalised audiobooks which will hopefully come in 2026, as I definitely want to do both of those. Again, this is something for authors with an existing fan base, not brand new authors with no readers yet. I wanted to talk about this kind of financial and market analysis of vendors since — A big mistake of many new authors is getting ahead of themselves For example, going to sessions on advertising or Kickstarter when they haven’t even finished a first draft of their first book, or signing up with a vendor or a service too early, and spending money too soon. The industry changes fast, so finish that book first!  The biggest mistake of authors at my level is thinking that things will stay the same, that the way of making money that worked so well 5 or 10 or 20 years ago will still work today.  The industry changes fast, so you will need to keep adapting, and keep letting go of things that don’t work anymore. Either they don’t work anymore because they don’t work for everyone i.e. the industry or the market has changed, or they don’t work for you personally because your life has changed. I certainly have different goals at 50 than I did at 30, and back then, I hustled so much more than I am willing to do now. I am in a different life stage and my author business is mature and stable, so I can do things differently than I did when I was starting out. I started writing seriously for publication in 2005, 20 years ago. I was 30, living in New Zealand and then Australia, and I had just met Jonathan. There was no iPhone, no Kindle or Amazon KDP, no TikTok, no mobile commerce. Ebooks were downloadable PDFs. Audiobooks were still mostly on tape or CD, or they were downloadable MP3s. There was no real infrastructure for an indie author business. The term ‘indie author’ was only starting to be used as a term to be proud of. It was a different world.  We are so lucky now to have such a fantastic ecosystem for indie authors, to have so many companies who help us with our writing craft and our author business, and also our community and finding friends along the way. Author conferences are certainly an important part of this, so a big thank you to Joe and Suze Solari and the Author Nation team and all the vendors who supported the show, and all the authors who attended.   7) Thoughts from other people  My perspective is only one view, and I attended Author Nation primarily as a speaker and also as a Patreon host, and of course, as a podcaster, author of several decades, and veteran of many, many author conferences all over the world. I didn’t go to many sessions or take many photos, I didn’t keep a daily log, and most of my interactions were private one-on-one meetings, so I wanted to share a couple of other perspectives, and these people might be listening so hello to —  Amber Field, who did a post on 5 overarching themes of Author Nation said, “My hope was to meet other authors like me and to get inspired to do more book promotion — a task I hate and procrastinate on…badly. I’ve been a published author since 2023, but this was my first writing conference. It really paid off for me! I met amazing authors, got tips for every part of my author business, and just plain had a lot of fun.” The themes she identified were: AI is changing how we work but not necessarily how we write. Absolutely, you can use it for so many things without ever using it for writing, and Amber shared how she got ideas about using AI in marketing from my session and others (and thanks for sharing the lovely picture of us, Amber!)Some of her other themes: When it comes to marketing, you don’t have to do everything; as well as Be yourself. She says,  “None of the most successful authors at the conference followed in another author’s footprints exactly. 100% of them followed a path that can only be described as “doing what they liked”, which often included hopping genres and doing side projects that they found fulfilling.” So true, and this year, my short story collection and my Masters in Death and certainly evidence of that! Lots more detail and photos at Amber’s Medium post here.  Pamela Hines, posted on Substack every day, and in her round-up piece with links to all the daily posts, she says, “I went to Author Nation as an editor and coach, but also as a writer in need of reconnection. I wanted to learn, recharge, and see where this rapidly evolving publishing world is headed. I came home with a clearer vision for my work and a renewed faith in what happens when we gather.” She also noted, “The first day of any conference begins long before the first keynote. It starts with a decision: to show up. [It’s] the power of presence — of choosing to step back into community even when it feels easier to stay home. For many writers, the hardest part isn’t pitching or networking. It’s walking into the room in the first place. Las Vegas may not sound like a literary destination, but Author Nation (following the tradition of 20BooksVegas) transforms it into one. Between the hotels, neon, and laughter, I found my people — fellow professionals determined to grow, learn, and connect. The first handshake, the first panel, the first “Oh, you too?” moment reminded me that creativity expands in the presence of others.” At the end of the week, she says, “This conference has reminded me never to forget that the thing I work on alone in my writing space is part of a larger whole. That whole includes small entrepreneurs, big corporations, innovative idealists, editors, consultants, and, most importantly, readers. We write to share something meaningful. All of it exists to serve a single, simple act—someone reading a story and being changed by it. This conference allowed me to connect directly with that meaning and those individuals. As an editor, book coach, and writer, I’m leaving with sharper tools and deeper clarity. But more than that, I’m leaving with gratitude—for the people who read, who believe in story, and who remind me that art isn’t finished until it’s received.” Wonderful posts, Pamela, and I know how much work you put into all that, so thanks for sharing! If you want to get a sense of what happened as well as notes on many of the sessions, and photos, check out Pamela’s Substack, or her main site with links here.  As an aside, I asked ChatGPT to find me posts about Author Nation 2025, and both of these showed up, so Pamela and Amber, congratulations, you are discoverable!  Conclusion Author Nation is a fantastic conference, and I highly recommend the show whether you are just starting out, or whether you are a more experienced author.  However, I won’t be attending in 2026 as I need a year off Las Vegas. I’ve done three years in a row, and I want to make room for other travel and other possibilities. I’m also doing this full-time Masters which goes through to next autumn, and I don’t know what conferences, if any, I will do in 2026. But as I said, I highly recommend Author Nation, and you never know, I might be back in 2027! The post Lessons Learned From Author Nation 2025 With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Why do so many memoir manuscripts fail to engage readers, even when the writer has lived through extraordinary experiences? What's the hidden code that separates a chronological account of events from a compelling memoir that readers can't put down? How do you know when you're ready to write about trauma, and where's the ethical line between truth and storytelling? With Wendy Dale In the intro, Amazon Kindle Translate, and the Writing Storybundle. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn  Wendy Dale is a memoir author and teacher, as well as a screenwriter. Today we are talking about The Memoir Engineering System: Make Your First Draft Your Final Draft. 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.  Show Notes Why memoir is about connected events, not chronological storytelling—and how to transform random experiences into compelling plot The difference between scenes and transitions, and why structure matters in every sentence of your book How to write about trauma and family without crossing ethical lines or damaging relationships Why character arc is actually the easiest part of memoir writing (and what's really difficult) The truth about dialogue, memory, and where to draw the line on fabrication — plus reflections on The Salt Path controversy Whether you can make money from memoir and why marketing matters as much as writing You can find Wendy at GeniusMemoirWriting.com. Transcript of interview with Wendy Dale Joanna: Wendy Dale is a memoir author and teacher, as well as a screenwriter. Today we are talking about The Memoir Engineering System: Make Your First Draft Your Final Draft. So welcome to the show, Wendy. Wendy: Thank you so much for inviting me, Joanna. It's exciting to talk about this topic. Joanna: First up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Wendy: I think I grew up loving books and I always wanted to be a writer when I was a little girl. I really dreamed of being a writer. My mother said, “No, it's just way too hard. So few people have success. Why don't you become an actress?” So I actually moved to Los Angeles when I was 17 to become an actress. I really did not like the film industry at all from an acting perspective. I was studying acting at UCLA and decided I was really going to be a writer. That was when I changed and really felt like I'd found my calling. That was always what I'd wanted to do. So I tried writing a novel at 19 that didn't go so well. But when I was 23 I started working on a memoir. From there, I have worked in writing in all different aspects, but really my first love will always be books. Now having made that decision, I haven't always done the kind of writing that I would always want to do, right? So sometimes I've done ad copywriting, which actually I did rather love. I've done screenwriting, I've done all kinds of writing, not always my first choice of the type of writing I was doing. For the most part, I have made it work though. So being flexible, you can't always get exactly what you want. I didn't say I'm going to only earn my living publishing books. I don't know if that would've been possible, but I have, for the most part, managed to earn my living as a writer. Joanna: How did you get into memoir specifically? Wendy: So I started trying to write this novel at 19, and it was very difficult and I didn't know what I was doing. I thought, well, it would be so much easier to write about my life. Are you laughing, Joanna? Joanna: Yes, sure. Writing a memoir, right? Wendy: So another misguided idea. I thought, oh, memoir would be easy because you don't even have to come up with the plot. You just write down what you lived through. Lots of misconceptions in everything I just said, but that was how I started writing a memoir. Around this time my parents also made this decision that they were going to retire in their forties and take their life savings and move to a developing country. They sold everything. I mean, they really just fled the United States and moved to Honduras with the idea of retiring early. So I went to visit them and I was like, well, this could be something to write about. So that actually wound up being the first chapter of my memoir. Joanna: And you were telling me before you live in Peru, right? Wendy: I do, yes. I've lived in Peru for almost six years now. Joanna: Oh, right. So, why do that? I mean, a lot of people want to travel. What is it that brought you to Peru? Wendy: I lived in Peru when I was a child and really, it sounds kind of strange, but I think deep down I've always had this identity of feeling Peruvian, right? You look at me and Peruvians don't think I am Peruvian, but really, my first memories as a child were growing up in Peru. Coming back here has been really incredible. So I feel very much at home. I've actually lived by this point, almost half my life in Latin America. Not just Peru—Bolivia, other Latin American countries. So, yes, I've lived half my life in the United States, the other half in Latin America. So I really do feel at home here, partly because my first memories were growing up in Peru. Joanna: Well, I think this might segue into why writing memoir is not just “this is what happened,” because I feel like, as you mentioned, one of the misconceptions is almost that it's just an autobiography. Like, this happened, this happened, this happened. As you said there, for example, the fact that you spent half your life in Latin America, half in the USA, to me is immediately like a potential hook into stories about your life that aren't necessarily in order. Talk a bit about that issue of it's not just “this happened, this happened” and how to think about memoir. Wendy: Oh, I'm going to take a deep sigh here because I just think back to writing this memoir and all of the misconceptions I had. Now, I love prose. I just love prose. I love putting words on the page. I think words are so beautiful. Sometimes I just want to eat them. I'm a prose writer. I don't like structure, I don't like plot, and I didn't even realize the importance of plot until I thought I had finished this memoir. So first chapter starts in Honduras. The last chapter ends in Bolivia because by this point my parents had moved to Bolivia, and all the chapters in between are all these different countries that I went to on my own. I'd finished the book, or so I thought, and I started sending it out to agents and really wasn't getting the response I had hoped for. Then finally I got an agent who called me up, and that was really good news, and she said, “You're a really good prose writer.” I was like, yes, I love writing prose. And she says, “But you know nothing about structure.” And I honestly—are you laughing? Joanna: Yes. Wendy: Right, and I remember the words that went through my head. I was like, what is this structure thing she's talking about? I'd never heard the word. So obviously I knew nothing about structure, and that was kind of the beginning of what I guess would become my life's work—really comprehending memoir structure. So that was a long time ago. That was the beginning of the process, but I didn't even understand that plot plays such a huge role in memoir. I just thought you wrote about your life, and I think that is what a lot of people don't understand, right? It's really easy to confuse the memories of your life with thinking that it's plot, and it just isn't. So one thing I tell my clients is you are not writing a chronicle of what you've lived through. You are taking true stories from your life and turning them into art. This is an art form for other people to enjoy. It's true, but you are creating art. It's very different than chronicling your life. It took me a long time to learn that. Joanna: Yes. Let's come back to this word “art,” but first of all, I want us to tackle structure because, okay, I also learned this the hard way. When I wrote my travel memoir, Pilgrimage, I had like over a hundred thousand words of writing, and I just couldn't figure out how the structure of the book could work until I found another book that helped me figure out the structure. Like, there are lots of different types of memoir structures and mine I found a sort of model and then I was like, oh, okay, this is how it works. Talk us through how we can potentially structure a memoir. Even if we're someone like me who might be a discovery writer first, or like you by the sound of it. Wendy: Oh, well, absolutely. So I hate structure, right? And that's why I became an expert in it—in order to make it a lot easier for me to understand. So I am not a planner, right? In fact, there's a line in my memoir about there are two different kinds of travelers. There are planners and there are fun people, right? So I've never been a planner in any aspect of my life. So the fact that I would become this expert in structure is kind of ironic. Let me go back to this idea of structure. So I think when people talk about structure, their first thought is three acts. Or are you doing a dual timeline? How is the big picture? How is your book going to play out? When I use the word structure, I am referring to how structure plays itself out in every sentence of your book. I mean, it's such a critical part of your story. So there's global structure, which is really referring to how you're going to use chronology in your book, how you're going to tell this story, and then there is structure on every page of your book. So what happened is I actually started teaching after my memoir got published. Several years later, I started teaching memoir writing, and teaching is very different than doing, right? I wrote my memoir by a process of trial and error. Eventually, this agent did sign me and kind of helped me understand what wasn't working in the manuscript that I'd submitted, and I spent a year rewriting it. It eventually got published. When I started teaching memoir writing, it was different because teaching someone how to do this is very different than this trial and error of doing it yourself. So as time went on, I would see the same mistakes over and over again. I started to say, well, there are these categories of mistakes, and what if I reverse engineered this and kept people from making these mistakes? So in order to not make the mistake, there must be a principle that people need to follow. So that was the beginning of The Memoir Engineering System. It took me 15 years to understand that —  Plot can be summed up in two words and it's connected events. Now, why do I say that? Well, the problem with memoir writing is that it's very tempting to feel like the things that you did—the things that you're including in your memoir—let's say it's a travel memoir. So arriving in Paris and then going out to eat for the first time, and then walking down the Champs-Élysées, and then going to the Louvre. So I just mentioned several things that you might have done, that a person might have theoretically done in this memoir on Paris. The problem with this from a reader's perspective is that this is not plot, and the reason it's not plot is that these things are not related to one another. So by relating them, it could be with an idea. What do all of these things have in common other than they are things that you did in Paris? You need something a little deeper than that. You take these disconnected events—I went to the restaurant, I walked down the Champs-Élysées, I went to the Louvre—and you turn them into plot. So that really is the basis of everything I teach is that connected events equal plot. A memoir writer's biggest challenge is taking all these things that they lived through, whether it's a travel narrative or different kind of narrative. It's a bunch of stuff that happened to you, and that's not plot. How do you take a bunch of stuff that happened to you and turn it into plot? You let your reader know how these events are connected. So that's really the basis of what I teach. Does that make sense? Joanna: Yes. Well, maybe give us a concrete example with your own memoir, Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals: Adventures in Love and Danger, which obviously are connected events. They would be vignettes, I imagine, about these different adventures. What is the connected event? Is that more about you as the character or is it the theme? Wendy: So this is called The Memoir Engineering System, right? I really believe that there was this hidden code underlying memoir. I promise I'm not avoiding the question, Joanna. I'm going to get to it in a second. In order to explain how this works, what took me 15 years of reading over a thousand manuscripts to understand about how memoir actually is doing, how it actually works, is that there are two different components in your book. You have scenes and you have transitions. In your scene, you have the building blocks of plot and something must happen. In your transition you have an idea that shows what happens in one scene is related to what happens in the next. So in my own book, I didn't know this because I wrote this as a process of trial and error. If I were to go back to my made up example of, you know, I go out to eat on the Champs-Élysées and then I go to the Louvre, what do those things have to do with each other? Absolutely nothing. They're not related in any way. But you can ask yourself is, what was I doing in Paris? What was I searching for? Maybe I was searching for a sense of understanding myself. I don't know, there's no one right answer, right? It's a fictitious example. So in your transitions between your scenes, maybe this is a search for identity, maybe when you're outside of your own country, you understand yourself better. So the transitions in that chapter would all be about identity and this idea of identity would infuse itself through your chapter and it would take these disconnected things you did and it would turn them into a story. Does that make more sense? Joanna: Yes. I mean, I know what you mean because I think this is where people need to get more personal. I feel like you can write a travel guide, and when I started writing my pilgrimage books, I thought I was writing travel guides. Then I realized I actually had a deeper sense of the whole thing. I was lost and I was trying to find myself and all that like you do at midlife. Seeking faith and all of that. I think memoir only really happens when you get a lot more personal. So as you mentioned there, sort of the idea that something happens, but it's your personal reflection and how your own personal transformation happens through the course of the book. So you have to write at a much deeper level than you would if it was, say, just a travel guide about Paris. Wendy: Oh, I think all memoir is more closely related to literary fiction than commercial fiction because you're never going to have the plot twists and turns of a detective novel, for instance. So it's really dependent on the depth of the prose, right? Your insights. That is why people read memoir. So you need some plot, but you're never going to have those twists and turns and surprises and unbelievable suspense that you would have in commercial fiction. In that way, it's more like literary fiction. So it's so dependent on the prose, so dependent on the insight, the quality of the prose, affecting your reader emotionally with your words. So I tell my clients structure is kind of black or white. It's either working or it's not. So don't stress over finding the best structure for your book. Structure is there to keep your reader from being confused, to keep them from going, wait, I have no idea why you're telling me this after reading this scene. I've no idea why you're telling me about this other thing because they're not at all related. Structure is there to keep your reader from being confused. What makes them actually love your memoir is the quality of your prose affecting them emotionally, your insight, your point of view, how subjective your writing is. Joanna: So what are some tips for people who are finding it difficult to get down to that depth? Because it is very difficult. I found writing memoir much more difficult than fiction, and I've written lots of other kind of self-help nonfiction. You really do kind of have to bare your soul. What are some of your tips for people to write at a much deeper level? Wendy: Well, so what I suggest, even though I hate planning, is that people start with an outline, but a very specific outline that really consists of figuring out what their scenes are. Now, this outline can change along the way, but starting with an outline so that they ask themselves, okay, what is each scene about? When I've had people do that, the process of writing becomes so much easier because structuring your book is a very logical process. Writing your book really is this creative process. That's the part I love. I love the creative part. I don't love the structuring part. But when faced with the choice, okay, you can spend seven years writing and rewriting and figuring this out by trial and error, or you can spend a month of your life creating this outline and then finish your memoir in a year, somehow that investment of time starts to seem worth it. So when it comes to actually writing, I find that any kind of writer's block, I find the reason that prompts work, I think, is that you push against limitations and that actually makes me more creative. So I found that having the structure for my book before I start writing actually makes it so much easier to write and it makes me more creative. If I have this outline for the book and I don't feel like writing that depressing scene about that time I got in this argument with my mother, I feel like writing this fun scene over here because I'm in a funny mood today, I can do that because I have a sense of what the book is like globally. So I really do believe in outlines, even though I hate actually creating them. I think it makes it easier to write. I think it makes it actually more fun to write once you've gotten through the drudgery of creating this outline. Joanna: Yes, I must say, because like I said, I'm a discovery writer. I've never ever written a book with an outline. With my book Pilgrimage, I hadn't finished the character arc until I had done three pilgrimages. I feel like perhaps your method is more suitable for people who already have an idea of their story in mind. Like they've already finished their transformation, whatever that may be, or that period of their life that they want to write about. Whereas I think when I started writing, I still hadn't found the meaning. I guess I hadn't found the, what you are calling the idea in each of the scenes. Wendy: So I do take a really different approach than most memoir coaches. So what you're talking about, your character arc, I actually find the easiest part of any memoir, and I'll explain why in a second. Plot is difficult. Plot requires thinking and figuring out your plot. For me, your character arc is synonymous with the theme of your book. Is it about belonging? Is it about identity? Is it about coming to terms with your childhood? I find that that actually comes out in the writing itself because that is the theme of your life, and I think that is so much a part of everything you do and everything you write, that it comes out in the writing itself. That to me is the easiest part of writing a memoir, is this character arc, this internal journey, and that is one of the few things that doesn't require structure because it's in the writing itself. Now there's a little bit of thought that goes into it, but I honestly find one of the easiest parts of writing a memoir. What is actually difficult is taking a bunch of things you did in a country and connecting—this day I did this, and the next day I did this, and the next day I saw this place, and the next time I met this person. All of that will bore your reader to tears if you don't connect these events in some way, and if you don't make them related to one another to tell a story. Otherwise you're just telling them a bunch of stuff you did and you're a stranger to them and they don't care. If you take all of these things you did and you connect them in some way, usually with an idea—usually with some thematic idea—you are creating plot in that chapter. That's really a challenge for memoir because we don't have the advantage of making things up as a novelist does. Joanna: Yes, we should tackle the making things up aspect because you've used language like character arc, you've used plot, you've said it is more similar to literary fiction, so you have used a lot of fiction language. So where is the line for truth? People might know of The Salt Path controversy, which is—if people don't know—a travel memoir which is a lot of truth, but some quite core things have been challenged in the press. So there's sort of been a feeling of betrayal by people who loved that memoir. What are some of the lines around truth with writing memoir? Wendy: I honestly think the bar is pretty low in the sense that the people who are getting in trouble—and this is not the first time a memoirist has been in trouble for fabricating facts of their life—it kind of is shocking to me, right? So I would say that all memoirs take some license, and so there's this ethical continuum and you have to feel comfortable with it. So I tell people you need to put a disclaimer in your book. Most memoirs will play a little bit with the order of events. Now, when I'm saying that, what I mean is that I might have had a really funny conversation with my mother in October, and in the book it comes in March because that's a perfect place to put this conversation in my book. I don't think that is being unethical, and I would also put a disclaimer in the beginning of my memoir that I have sometimes changed the chronology of the book. Now making up huge things that never happened—so one thing I tell people I work with is I would never make up something happening. So I had this conversation with my mother. I may not remember the dialogue exactly, but it's to the best of my memory, it's my representation of that moment in time, but I would never make up something happening. The memoirs who are getting in trouble—so this is not the first time a memoirist has been in trouble—but all of the ones who've really had these public scandals have made up huge things. So I don't think it's a complicated issue, to be honest with you. I think all memoirs take some license. The ones who get in trouble kind of deserve to get in trouble because these are big things they're making up. I'm thinking James Frey, do you remember James Frey? Joanna: Yes. Was it A Million Little Pieces? Wendy: I think that's what it was. Yes. I mean, I think Augusten Burroughs got in trouble too. There've been many cases, but people were making up big chunks of their life. They weren't moving things around in time. Joanna: I agree, but it is hard because, for example, if people are writing something from a long time ago. So I guess I was shocked at the end of Cheryl Strayed's Wild, because suddenly it's kind of revealed at the end that she's writing it decades later. My first thought, I think it was one of the first memoirs I kind of read, and I was like, well, how can you remember those conversations? How can you write dialogue as if it was last week? In my own memoir, like I wrote while I was doing my pilgrimages. Over three years, I was writing journals and I wrote the book very soon after. But a lot of people do write memoir from decades ago, so how do we keep that line? Also, I wanted to ask you, you mentioned your mother as well. A lot of people are putting family members or people they met or whatever into books. How do we make sure that our memory of something is right? Wendy: Oh, that's a much harder question, Joanna. Okay, to answer your first question, how do you recount dialogue? Let's say you're writing 30 years later and you're trying to recount what someone said. You do the best you can. What I want to say is that people who are getting in trouble, famous memoirs getting in trouble, are not getting in trouble because their mother comes back and says, “You know, I didn't say exactly that 20 years ago.” They're getting in trouble for making up big things, making up illnesses that they didn't have, making up criminal records that they didn't have. So these are big things that can be fact checked. That's what people get in trouble with. I have never heard of a memoir getting in trouble because a family member said, “Well, I think the conversation was different.” Ever, have you? So we're talking that's a whole different level and you do the best you can. So that is not an issue for me. I have an issue with people who make up facts. I'm doing the best I can to remember dialogue, and if I don't remember dialogue, I don't put it in my book. You don't need tons of dialogue in your book. What you need is great point of view, great prose in your scene to make it engaging to a reader. Joanna: Yes, that's true. But on the family thing, it's more like— “Well, you portrayed this situation this way, and I don't feel like it happened like that.” Wendy: That is really difficult, right? So first of all, one of the things I teach memoirs is that it's really important to give us a point of view. I think some of my hardest clients are journalists. They've been taught to be objective. Objective, just the facts, right? That is not what a reader wants from memoir. We really want this point of view. It's really ironic that in being incredibly personal, you actually make your story universal. It's the only way I know to make your book universal is being so personal that I see myself in the story. So we need that point of view, and your point of view may be very different than your mother's point of view. That's true, right? I mean, life is that way. So you do need to be faithful to your point of view. Now, having said that, you are writing about real life people and there are repercussions. Your mother may come back to you and say, “I'm never speaking to you again. How dare you portray me that way?” I mean, it depends on your relationship with the person, but it is something to consider. So that, to me, is a very different question. I always write my truth. Now, once I've finished writing my truth and my point of view, I go through my memoir and I say, well, whose opinion do I really care about? Is my mother going to be so devastated by this that I'm going to damage my relationship and is it worth it? So there were some people in my book, I'm like, oh, this person's going to hate what I said about them. I don't care. I don't even like this person. So I left it. With my mother, for instance, I said, “Well, mom, I'm going to tell you, this memoir is coming out.” This was a long time ago, by the way, kind of like Cheryl Strayed, right? So long time ago. a I said, “Well, I say a lot of things about you, but we really needed this conclusion at the end. And in the end, this really turns out to be this character arc about understanding my relationship with my mother even better. So in the beginning, we needed lots of conflict to get there.” Totally true, but a little out of proportion so that my mother would let me get away with talking about some of the things she probably didn't want me talking about. She took this really well, and the way I handled it was I had her read the last chapter first, where she really does come across really great, right? I know my mother incredibly well, and I also knew what would work with her. So she loved the publicity. She would do book readings with me. She went on television with me. She hammed it up in book readings. She would read her lines in the book. So it actually brought us closer together. My father is very different. My father does not like publicity. I knew if I had said anything negative about my father, he wouldn't speak to me again, and so I didn't. So it wasn't that I lied, but I did take into consideration the relationship I had with my parents. They are different people and I knew they would take it in different ways. So that is a real life consideration that you do need to take into account. Joanna: Well, I think that's very respectful of you for both of them, and the most healthy way to do things for sure. I think another thing that happens with memoir is people have far more damaged relationships than you clearly had. I think some people want to use memoir as a form of therapy or revenge. That's another thing. Revenge, rage, anger, and a very negative emotion. So absolutely people need to write their truth in at least the first draft, but where do you think the line is between therapy and what could be conceived? What could go very, very wrong for both the person writing and also anyone on another side? Wendy: I think a lot of people want to write their memoir for the sake of therapy and in the end, that's really fine. I've always wanted to be a published writer. I care about having an audience. I care about saying the truth. My truth, obviously not the truth. I care about saying my truth and creating art for an audience, and that really is a different consideration than journal writing, which is for yourself. So if you are writing a memoir for an audience, you are writing it in a different way. So what I would say to people full of trauma and anger—yes, plenty of trauma, let me tell you, right? Plenty of trauma in my memoir as well. Even though it's a humorous book, there's plenty of trauma in there. What I would say is that it depends on the tone you use. Let me give you an example of just talking to another human being, a stranger. If you start to talk to that stranger and they're like, “My life has been so unfair, nobody has ever given me a chance,” do you really want to talk to that stranger? So it's a matter of tone. If that stranger says, “I have gone through so much. I was abused as a child, I suffered poverty and homelessness. Let me tell you what I've come away with.” You kind of want to lean in and you're like, “Well, tell me about being homeless.” You want to hear that story. So it's not what you've lived through. I think it's where you are in dealing with this. So if you are still processing trauma, and you're at the stage where life is unfair, and you know, I've given up, you probably are not ready to write a memoir for other people yet. Feel free to write to process that trauma, but if you're writing for a public, we want to learn through what you've lived through. Living through someone else's difficulties can be really therapeutic for your reader as long as you're on the other side of them. There's a Tobias Wolff quote, and I'm not going to get it wrong—I'm paraphrasing it—but I heard this on an NPR radio interview many, many years ago. He was being interviewed, I think it might've even been for This Boy's Life. So that would've been a long time ago. He said, “You should write about what has hurt you the most, but only after it's quit hurting you. So then you have that perspective. You have that wisdom.” Joanna: Yes. I mean having written journals through dark times in my life, and then looking at it later, when you are going through these things, your writing is really repetitive and quite frankly, boring. Wendy: “Poor me, life is so hard,” and that's okay. It's okay in the moment. Joanna: Yes, but as you say, nobody wants to read a repetitive journal over and over again. That's not a memoir. So it is difficult, isn't it, to find that line between sharing enough and then not being repetitive. I feel like this is where you have to keep the audience in mind. It's like, okay— That was good for me as a writer, but what's good for the reader? Wendy: It is, and it really depends on your goals as a writer. It really does. Both are valid. If you are writing to heal from trauma, that is a really valid reason to write. It works. It really does work to write to heal from trauma. If you're writing for an audience, it is a different level. You might have to leave some things out of your book that really mattered to you. You are trying to take true events from your life and turn them into plot, so it is a different goal. Joanna: Well, let's just talk about that then. Definition of success is so important and I think with every genre there are books that hit big. So everyone thinks they're going to be Cheryl Strayed with Wild, and everyone did want to be like The Salt Path until quite recently. These books that become mega, mega bestsellers and have movies. Should authors expect to make money with memoir, or how could success be defined? Wendy: It really depends on how badly you want to be financially successful when it comes to writing. Let me qualify that just a little bit. So if you really care about making money, what you do need to learn is marketing and publicity. So a huge portion of your time is going to be spent getting publicity for your book. So what makes for a successful book, I think is three things. It's writing a book that readers love. Not every reader—some people are going to hate your book. In fact, that's actually a good sign. Not everyone needs to love your book. Some people need to love it, some should hate it. That means you've written a book that actually says something. So you need to have written a good book. You need publicity because if no one hears about this really good book you've written, it's not going to be financially successful. And then you need luck. So I think the Cheryl Strayeds, the Wilds of the world, also had a little bit of luck. So you can control it to a certain extent if you are willing to put in the work to do marketing and publicity on your book. I think you could count on a modest success if you're willing to work hard on it, because the reality is, if you care about making money off of your book, the money comes from publicity and marketing. If you don't, and you're writing a book and you've put it out in the world and it's beautiful and you want to see what happens and who finds it, and that is your satisfaction, that's valid too. It just depends on what your goals are. If you want to make money off of a book, there really is this whole publicity and marketing side of it. That's just the reality because there are books out there, and if no one has heard of your book, no one's going to buy it. Joanna: And that's true for all books. Wendy: Yes, unfortunately. We hate that, right, Joanna? Don't you hate marketing? Joanna: Oh, nobody wants to do it, but it just has to be done. I think what's interesting about memoir though, which is a very good thing, is that it's kind of timeless. So I really think that like my memoir, Pilgrimage, and like your memoir, we can talk about them for the rest of our lives because they are part of life at a point. Obviously there'll be other books that we write about different parts of our life, but to me it's far more timeless than other genres. I mean, you mentioned marketing. I have a book called How to Market a Book, and it's on its third edition. It needs updating all the time because marketing changes, but— Memoir is evergreen. Wendy: It's evergreen. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes, though I do have to say that I wrote my memoir in my twenties though. It's been 30 years—I whisper that to you, right? So I think I wrote my truth then. If I were to write about the exact same experiences, I would write about them in such a different way, and not in a better way. Just a different way. Hindsight is 20/20. Joanna: Yes, but I feel like there are different times of our lives, so I feel like I will write another memoir at some point, but it won't be about pilgrimage, it'll be about something else. Wendy: What is it going to be about? Do you know? Joanna: I don't know yet. I haven't lived it yet. I think it will appear. Although, I've got this book around gothic cathedrals that I started out as a photo book and now it's kind of turning into half a memoir. Because I'm a discovery writer, I don't even know what happens until these things arrive. Wendy: Fair enough. If you ever want help with an outline, you call me and I will help you with your outline. Joanna: Fantastic. Well, tell us— Where can people find you and your books and courses online? Wendy: I think the easiest way to find me is to go to GeniusMemoirWriting.com and you can find information about The Memoir Engineering System, which is my book on memoir structure. My own memoir's called Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals. Or just Google Wendy Dale. I also have a YouTube channel, so Google Wendy Dale and you'll find lots of stuff. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Wendy. That was great. Wendy: Thank you so much, Joanna.The post Why Structure Matters More Than You Think. Writing Memoir With Wendy Dale first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What happens when your creative dreams collide with the demands of caregiving? How do you keep writing when you're caring for someone full-time? Can you still be a creative person when traditional productivity advice simply doesn't work? With Donn King. In the intro, Agatha Christie meets Mr Men [BBC]; Podcast guesting and co-writing [Stark Reflections]; thoughts on pushing your comfort zone; Disrupt Everything and Win – James Patterson. 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  Donn King is a nonfiction author, college professor, pastor, speaker, and podcast host at The Alignment Show. His latest book is Creating While Caring: Practical Tips to Keep Creating While Caring for a Loved One. 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.  Show Notes Why traditional writing advice (block time, dedicated space, write daily) doesn't work for caregivers and what to do instead How emotional fatigue whispers “why bother?” and the philosophy that helps push through when writing seems pointless Practical tools and techniques for capturing ideas in stolen moments—from hospital chapels to 7-second voice recordings The painful truth about letting go of deadlines, perfect book launches, and achieving your full potential while caregiving The transition after 22 years: moving Hannah to full-time care and reclaiming creative time while managing complex emotions You can find Donn at DonnKing.com or TheAlignmentShow.com. Transcript of interview with Donn King Joanna: Donn King is a nonfiction author, college professor, pastor, speaker, and podcast host at The Alignment Show, which I've been on twice, which was fantastic. His latest book is Creating While Caring: Practical Tips to Keep Creating While Caring for a Loved One. So welcome to the show, Donn. Donn: Thank you very much, Joanna. It's an honor to be on with you. Joanna: I'm excited to talk about this. Now, first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and self-publishing. Donn: Well, the short version is that I've always been a writer. People aren't seeing me, but I turned 70 this year. My first story, I think I wrote when I was about 12 years old. I remember writing a science fiction story and I got the characters in such a situation I couldn't figure out what to do with them, and so I wrote, “and then the spaceship blew up. The end.” Not an auspicious start. Then in eighth grade I started working at a newspaper, and in the early years, most of it was newspapers. So that's where I developed, I guess you would say, some discipline. You know, you can't wait on the muse. You've got a three o'clock deadline every day. I did that for a few years. I worked in radio for a few years. I helped to launch one of the first electronic magazines. A lot of people know America Online. I was working with a parallel service that was known as Genie. They published a member's magazine, and I wound up as associate editor for that. We launched electronically as well as in print. Let's see, what else. In the old days I co-authored a textbook. I still have to say traditional publishing, I think of them as third party publishers, but you know, the old fashioned way of doing things. So three books there, one of which is still in print, I think. Then in those early days of blogging and electronic magazines, I wrote freelance for some business magazines, some local publications. It was almost always short form except for that textbook. Then I worked in advertising. I worked for Walmart stores and helped to launch the first five Sam's Wholesale Clubs. So that was with copywriting and such. Then in the most recent years, I have scratched that writing itch quite a bit through blogging and academic writing, helping other people to write. As I mentioned in the current book, I did hit a space of about 10 years there when it was like the well went dry. I think this is worthwhile mentioning for folks out there—there's a difference between writer's block and what I was experiencing. It was just that there was nothing there and I really thought my writing days had ended. Then a friend pushed me to write what became the first book in The Spark Life Chronicles, which is a business parable. It was like the floodgates had opened again after 10 years. What I realized was—I think this is the important part to say for maybe others—I thought that I wasn't writing because I was depressed. It turned out I was depressed because I wasn't writing. Now, I don't mean to suggest that all you have to do to get over depression is to write. I think it more has to do with respecting your core values and what's important to you. Writing has always been so important to me in so many ways that when I wasn't doing that, it wasn't feeding my soul. So that's what led to the depression. So I hope that's helpful. Maybe for somebody out there, they kind of go together, depression and not being able to do anything. But the making yourself take those steps can very well be the first step towards coming out of the depression. I found that to be the case with writing. Joanna: Yes, and I think you're right. I mean, there are seasons of our life. Let's talk about a big season of your life, which is the caregiving. So why write this book about caregiving? And just tell us more about your experience and why this matters to you? Donn: Okay, so a real quick context. Our daughter, who is now 22, she has a very rare chromosomal disorder. It's trisomy 14, mosaic partial. And any medical folks out there are going to be saying, I never heard of that. The one study we could find about it said there were 15 to 20 like her known in the world at any given time. Probably more in third world countries, maybe where they don't have genetic testing available, but it's just very rare. The way it manifests with her is, I guess we would say extreme cerebral palsy. She does not even close her epiglottis when she swallows, for instance. So we were older parents when she came along and I had figured I could change diapers for a couple of years. Well, I've been changing diapers for 22 years, which kind of changed things. So that's where the caregiving came in. Now the why write this book? Honestly, I had been writing—I mentioned the Spark Life Chronicles. I've got two books out in that series, and a third one that was about two thirds of the way through. Then you came on my podcast, and thank you. You're an excellent guest, unsurprisingly. I think it was after we had turned off the recording, we were just talking about my situation and you said, well, that sounds like something that would be useful to talk about on the creative end. In the United States alone, there are 50 million caregivers, unpaid caregivers. Now, I don't know what it is in the rest of the world, but with that many, there must be people who are in a similar situation to me in the sense that they already had some success as a writer or a painter, a sculptor, musician, whatever creative field it might be, and then they suddenly find themselves in this caregiving role. So, yes, that sounds great, we should have a conversation about that. It wasn't until we got off of our conversation that I thought, if we're going to be talking about this on The Creative Penn, and I think there are people out there who need this, I should write a book about it. As you know very well, Joanna, we have tried to schedule this thing like three times because of the caregiving situation. It just points out to me that yes, there is a need for this. So this book kind of jumped the queue. It pushed itself ahead of the other book that I was working on. So now my challenge is to get back into that book. Joanna: Well, I think you've underplayed Hannah's situation and your situation. You mentioned changing diapers there, but I mean, it was pretty hardcore caring all the time, right? This wasn't she would just get on with things during the day. Just tell us a bit more about that, because there are all kinds of spectrums of caregiving. Obviously for some people it might be parents with dementia, for some people it's children like for you or a partner. So just tell us how much of your time were you spending caregiving. Donn: Yes, that's a good way to put it in context. For her first four years of life, we did not have nursing care for her because on paper I made too much money. You know, don't get me started on the system. Joanna: Oh, we all have problems with the system for sure, but I think caregiving is a particularly difficult one for sure. Donn: Oh, yes. When she was four years old, she wound up in the hospital for 58 straight days. The technicality there is that meant the hospital became her legal residence and therefore our income didn't figure into it anymore, and she got the nursing care. Again, to give some quick context, she was hospitalized in her first four years 27 times. Then once we got a nursing agency to help us at home, from age four until age 22, she was hospitalized about another 10 times. So it really slowed down and the average stay was much shorter. So that nursing care was tremendously helpful. I don't know how it is elsewhere in this country, and especially in the state of Tennessee where I live, there is a nursing shortage. So even though she qualified for 168 hours a week—that's 24/7—seldom have we had full coverage. So most recently I wound up taking care of Hannah for 108 hours out of 168 pretty much every week. Again, for context, it's worth mentioning my wife is also partially disabled. So she just can't stand up for very long and therefore she really hasn't been able to take part in the care. Hannah's brother, technically half brother, but he has literally helped take care of her from the day she was born. He has helped, but he's keeping up a job. I was fortunate in that I taught college all during that time and my college was very understanding of the situation. I was able to teach online a lot of those years, not all those years, but a lot of the time. So that's kind of how we managed it. So on average I probably spent about 40 to 50 hours a week taking care of her on top of a full-time job and then doing the writing around that. Does that make sense? Joanna: Yes, and obviously, I think one of the times that I was coming on your podcast, we postponed because a nurse was meant to come and they didn't come. So you had to change your situation. That was just like one meeting, and I think that's what really struck me was that it's so out of your control. You know, Hannah is a person and needs caring for, and so you can't just take a meeting. Like, I would shut my cat upstairs or something if it's being too noisy. It's like, oh, well, just even the basic things of there's a meeting that starts at this time, or I want to go to a cafe and do some writing. I know I take those freedoms for granted. In talking to you, I'm not in your situation, but reading your book, it's heartbreaking in so many ways. Also, I know for people listening who are in that situation, and why I encouraged you was so many people just want to feel like they're heard, like their situation is heard. So just outline some of the writing tips and productivity tips that just don't work for people in your situation who are carers. This sort of normal “just get it done, harden up” kind of attitude just isn't appropriate. Donn: Well, and as you say, there are so many people in that situation, and because we're so busy, we're not out there. People don't know that there are so many of us. So, you know, it's understandable that for the average writer who's trying to get their art done, their business done, that these tips make sense. I guess I should also say with Hannah, certainly it wasn't just changing diapers. She has a tracheotomy, so I was changing trachs, I was changing the feeding tube. She had to be fed continuously 24/7. She got some kind of medication about every two hours. So it was pretty intense, and I know that there are people listening who are in that situation. So the tips that just don't work for caregivers that are good advice: things like block out time on your calendar and tell your family, “Don't bother me during these two hours, I really am working.” We know that when we work at home, people assume, oh, you can just run to the grocery store for me, right? You know, so needing to get the family to respect your time and place is a realistic thing for the average writer. But for caregivers, we just can't do that. The advice to make a special writing space. I have written in doctors' waiting rooms and hospital rooms. I've gone to the hospital chapel in the middle of the night to get some writing done. One that I know that we hear a lot, but neither you nor I follow this one anyway, and that's the “write every day” thing. Good advice I think for most people in order to have the consistency. But with caregivers, you've just got to work it in wherever you can. So those are just three quick examples that come to mind of the normal writing tips and advice that are good tips and advice. My concern with the book was for people who think, well, I just can't do that and therefore I can't write. That's the real concern. You may not be able to do it perfectly, and of course, over and over we all hit that thing about perfectionism as the enemy anyway. But this is a special form of perfectionism. That if I can't do it the way that other writers do it, then I just can't do it, and I might as well give up that dream. Joanna: Yes, and I think another thing, and you and I talked about this, because you know you are a business guy and as you said earlier, you worked in newspapers, you had the discipline to write to deadline, and you didn't miss deadlines. I know you were also kind of frustrated by not being able to meet what you set as a deadline for this book. I imagine that you have to just let go of deadlines and just kind of embrace a longer timeline. Is that something that helps you as well, sort of releasing that? It must be hard. Donn: Well, and one of the things we frequently say is that Hannah has taught us to make your plans, but hold them lightly because they're going to change. So we do still make plans, but the plans are always fluid. Similar to that, it's not only the letting go of the deadlines. I know for instance, thanks in no small degree to things that I've learned from listening to your podcast and the books that you have written and other podcasts, I know how to do a proper book launch. But if I wait until I've got everything lined up for that, I'm never going to get a book out. So I kind of have to let go of best practices in order to have some publication, in order to get to the finish line in some way. So the metaphor that's coming to mind, we've all seen this on TV where there's somebody running like an Olympic race and they twist their ankle or whatever. They don't come in first, but they limp across the finish line. I have had to get okay with not achieving my potential, I guess you could say. That would include not only deadlines, but also what I know about how the ideal book launch is supposed to go, for instance. Joanna: That is so hard because, of course, you have reached your potential as a caring father and husband, but that's not measured by the level of success that anyone could see externally with a book launch. Again, I think this is so important to people. Even if they're not in that caregiving situation— How we measure the success in our life has got to be more important than the success of a book. Yet we do hold these things so tightly, don't we? Donn: Absolutely. I mean, just the idea that it can't be measured in a great degree. I mean, my day job for so long was teaching college and very seldom would I hear back from students about how much difference it made. I taught public speaking for whatever it's worth, and for most of them it was just a required class. They just needed to check off that box so they could get their degree. Every once in a while I will have one come back. I know one of my students has become a very successful professional speaker. I had a budding career as a professional speaker that I had to give up when Hannah came along because I couldn't be dependable. So to be able to see that in a published book, and not, as you say, to dwell so much on the sales figures or that sort of thing. That's a good measure. There was a study that came out some years ago that they asked people, would you like to write a book? And 85% of them said yes. Out of that 85%, only 15% of them ever started on a book, only I think it was 6% got halfway through, only 3% finished the book and one half of 1% published. Now this study was done before independent publishing. So I imagine that's probably changed some. But given that 3% figure, there's not a lot of people that ever finish a book. So I've learned to place my measures on what I can control. The lack of control is something you mentioned a little earlier, and that is something that I think all caregivers deal with, the lack of the sense of control. So focusing your success measures on what you can control not only is good advice for every writer, but especially for people like caregivers who have so much of their lives that they don't have that sense of control over. Joanna: You almost have to let it go. You can't sit there being angry and frustrated the whole time. I imagine you are some of the time, but you can't wish your life away wishing you were doing something else. Donn: Exactly. I mean, I could drive myself nuts all day long with what I think should be happening with our healthcare system, but I can't have much impact on that. So I try to focus on what I can do as opposed to what I can't or what I can no longer do. Joanna: Well, then just give us some practical tips. You mentioned there the hospital chapel, which I love that. I have that in my mind, I can imagine you dashing in there. So you've got some minutes, I guess you don't know how long, or maybe you think, oh, maybe I've got half an hour or something. How are you getting the writing done? People who have these pockets of time, what can they actually do in those times? Or any useful tips or technology that you've found has helped? Donn: Well, one of the things that I personally had to do was to let go of the notion that I really needed uninterrupted time to be effective. We all know what task switching costs, but task switching is just a reality when you're in this situation. So I have always kept a notebook with me, and that goes back to the newspaper days. You know, I used to keep one of those long notebooks stuck in my back pocket. After cell phones came along, I have never dictated a book, although I'm experimenting with that at this point, but I always kept the phone handy to be able to jot something down. I will mention, in fact, I was thinking about this, I should have put it in the book and I didn't mention this specific app. It's called Say&Go — S-A-Y and then the ampersand G-O. I know it's available on iPhone. I'm not certain on Android. I first got it really so that I could grab ideas when I was driving because you hit the icon on your phone and it immediately starts recording, so you don't have to fiddle with getting the recorder started. It will record for seven seconds and then automatically shut off. You can tap the screen to make it go for 30 seconds. So you can tie it to a Dropbox or Evernote or something like that. So when I would be somewhere, I just grab an idea real quick. The inspiration that you can get while caring—you know, keep reading the books. I was thinking of this this morning, Joanna, you often say send me pictures of where you're listening. There's been so many times that you have accompanied me while I was changing her feeding tube or something, and I'm thinking, Joanna doesn't want to see this! Joanna: Oh, well I mean, that's the reality, isn't it? It's so interesting because I do hear from people who say, you don't want to see my washing machine. I mean, obviously Hannah is a person, so that is a different situation. There might be somebody listening now who is caring for somebody, and they are like, do you really want to see the armchair where I sit next to my parents' bed or something like that? I think it's so amazing, this kind of feeling that there are people who are going through these situations and that we can be with people virtually, or that could be people listening in years time. hatT, I mean, it's a privilege, isn't it really? I mean that's interesting. But coming back to any more practicalities, you talk there about jotting down ideas. How are you getting finished sentences, and editing, and all of that kind of work where you do need to sit down and have a bit more time? Donn: Right, right. Well, the way it would work with Hannah—and one of her neurological impacts is she did not sleep on a regular schedule. She might be awake for 48 straight hours and then suddenly she would sleep for 24 hours. One good thing is that once she went to sleep, she would sleep through a tornado, so I didn't have to worry about disturbing her. So when she slept, I would do one of two things. I would sleep, I'd put a cot down right here beside her because she could have an oxygen issue at any time. So, you know, couldn't leave her by herself. But I would grab a nap and then at other times I would write. Laptops have been a real boom. When I started with them, of course there were these big, clunky desktop computers, and so I take my laptop with me everywhere. I have a little portable keyboard that I can connect to my iPhone. I've always got at least a pad, and so just getting those finished sentences down, I would take advantage of the time that she was asleep or that we had a nurse here at home. I mean the home nurses, they were here primarily for her, of course, but they were a real benefit to me as well. One of the things I think I would say to anybody in this situation listening is you've got to let go of the guilt of thinking, I need to be with that person all the time. You do need to make sure they're taken care of, of course. But many times Hannah would be in the ICU at the hospital and I would know that they are keeping watch on her. If one of her alarms goes off, there's somebody going to be there immediately. So I'd take my laptop and go to the hospital cafeteria or go to the chapel and just squeeze it out as long as I can, but also recognizing that that can stop at any minute. So I've learned to make sure that the material is saved. I plant little breadcrumbs to help me get back into it when I come back. That's not exactly a technical tip, but I'll use square brackets for any notes to myself so that I can do a search for square brackets later to see, okay, what was it I intended to do there? Joanna: That's a good tip. Absolutely. Then the book is obviously an emotional book, and you are also very practical. It's not a memoir as such. There are elements of memoir, but there's a lot of practical tips for people. I think it would be useful for people with young children, although it's a very different kind of caring, it's still those little pockets of time. There is a section, a line I wanted to read here. You say, “Emotional fatigue dulls hope. It whispers, why bother? It convinces you that what you have to say has already been said, or that even if you manage to get the words out, they won't matter.” This really hit me because emotional fatigue for carers is extraordinary, but there's also a lot of stuff going on in the world, right? Conflict in the news. I mean, in America, here in Europe, all over the world, there is a lot of conflict and people have emotional fatigue in general, I think. So a lot of people are saying, why bother? Like it doesn't matter. So how have you gotten over this emotional fatigue? And how can people write even when it seems pointless? Donn: Well, it's an excellent question and I think that humans have wrestled with that question for centuries, outside of caregiving. The nihilism is a very real philosophy. You know, basically what's the point? So the point of living, I think is to live. We could get real philosophical here and that's worth for anybody kind of digging into—what is the point? So for me, one of the things I discovered was apparently I am here to write. It's the thing that makes my heart sing. So given that there is so much conflict in the news, and I'll tell you honestly, that I battle depression anyway, but hings are so depressing in a lot of ways. I'm not sure things are any worse now than what they have always been for humans. It's just that we have a greater ability to be aware of challenges. So you mentioned I'm a pastor. I describe myself as a Zen Methodist. I have been encouraged by the work of like Thich Nhat Hanh, and focusing on not just mindfulness, but this breath, this step, and what can I do as opposed to what I can't or what I no longer can. There's an old saying as I understand it, among Eastern folks, which is “chop wood, carry water.” It's what's in front of me right now. I have learned to manage, I guess you would say, to manage social media. I spent some time training Facebook and other such things by noting the posts that I'm not interested in this, by responding to the ones that I was interested in. So my social media feed is not nearly as toxic as it could be, and I've learned to turn it off. I mainly use it to stay in touch with old high school friends, and when I find myself reading something that just starts to get me outraged, I remind myself one of the great bits of wisdom for the internet age is don't feed the trolls. If you let outrage lead you to post a frowny face or to argue or whatever, that just trains the algorithm that you will engage with that. It doesn't matter whether you like it or not, they just want to keep you reading. So I just ignore those things and after a while it has stopped showing me that. So that helps my peace of mind. I wrestle with, or wrestle against, the idea of sticking my head in the sand, but I bring it right back to, okay, what can I do versus what can't I do? There are things that I can do to help in a little way make the world a better place. When I start getting upset with the lack of empathy and caring that I see in our political class these days, I think, well, what can I do? That's when I will try to find some encouraging meme, for example, and post it to a friend that I know is struggling a bit. Joanna: This book, for example, I don't believe there's anything political in this book about anything. Donn: Yes. Joanna: I think with this book, it doesn't matter where you sit on the political spectrum. It doesn't matter what religion you are, what gender you are, or anything like that. Caring for a loved one is an experience that many people, perhaps most people, will do at some point in their lifetime. So a book like this, I feel, is at heart, it's a human book about the experience of being human and caring for another human. So to me, you're helping the world by putting this book out there. I know one of the things that comes up for us fiction writers is, “Whoa, isn't this a waste of time? I should be writing something more important.” But amusingly, when things are bad, people like to escape into a story. So by writing a story, you're helping people escape, and helping people escape is also a helpful thing. Donn: Absolutely. Yes. Joanna: So writing, I think writing can be of service to our community and ourselves, and it doesn't have to be like a serious book, even though yours is serious, but it's also practical. Donn: And I hope there's some comic relief in the book on occasion. Joanna: There's some dark humor there. Donn: Yes, and it does make me think too, just with this conversation, when we write our stories—and I haven't, other than the business parables, which they use fiction to teach nonfiction—so I've tried to learn good characterization and scene setting and dialogue and all the tools of fiction. It occurs to me that through our books, whether it's fiction, nonfiction, whatever, we are emphasizing that as humans, we have more in common than we have differences. Yes, there are those things that divide us, but when you are sitting beside the bed of somebody who is on the verge of leaving this world or someone who's very sick, all those differences disappear. We just all have more in common than we have differences. Through our writing, you know, the tropes that we talk about, well, they are tropes because they appeal to fairly universal human experience. So I think that's a real service that we provide to people in times of hopelessness is to reinforce the connections that we have. There's no better way to do that than through story. Joanna: Yes, absolutely. So another thing that's happened is after several decades of having Hannah at home and caring for her at home, she now lives in a full-time care facility. I knew that had happened, we had spoken about it, but in reading the book, I kind of was trying to reflect on how big a change this is for you. You say in the book, “We face change, even in impermanence we create.” So I wondered if you could talk about that, because I imagine there's also some relief, but also some guilt over the relief, and a whole load of emotional things. So how are you managing this? Donn: Well, and we moved her—as we're recording this—it was about six weeks ago. So we're still getting used to the change. Initially I would say to people, I'm still getting used to the new routine, but then I realized, heck, for the first time in 22 years, I can have a routine. So that is a change. We had talked about it for a long time before moving her. Again, just for quick context, because of her respiratory needs in particular, I had worried for years about what would happen to her when I could no longer do it because in Tennessee at the time, the only option really would've been to put her in a nursing home with octogenarians, and there was no way that she would get the attention that she needed. So we figured that if we had to do that, she would not survive for a year. Unfortunately her brother heard us saying this. So when we made the decision to move her into this nursing care, what's different is that they opened a new wing for respiratory patients, one of only three in all of East Tennessee. The other two were a two hour drive away, and so this one opened up a mere 30 minutes drive away. We decided to go ahead and move her because it would be better to do it in a controlled manner when the bed was available than to try to deal with it if we were in a crisis situation because I had had a heart attack or something. So I'll admit that there is some problem because I'm not sure her brother emotionally really understands the decision. He hasn't argued or anything. I just think he's very worried. Given that old thing about is the glass half empty or half full, he's always been of the temperament that that glass is nearly empty. Somebody's going to knock it off any minute and I'm going to have to clean it up. So it's hard on him and it's hard on my wife, hard on me, but at the same time, yes, there is some relief there. I think one of the things we would say to listeners who are in this same situation is, in a way, you've got to learn to live with grief. It's going to be there, but don't try to make it go away. That just makes it hang around. I'm not saying ignore it, but you have to address it and let it be there. We made the best decision that we could. Same thing for anybody else listening here, don't feel guilty if you realize that you just cannot keep up the care. Do your best, find the best care that you can get. We're over there two or three times a week. We're keeping a close eye on things, but we're also not bugging them all the time because we need to let them do their jobs. It is different. It's just not lesser or not worse, if that makes sense. Joanna: Well, I mean, you mentioned at the beginning, you're in your seventies now. I think this is an entirely responsible thing to do as you get older, and as you say, doing it while you can control things as opposed to in an emergency sounds very responsible to me. So I hope that settles down. Just on the creative side with the writing, how are you finding this is changing your ability to write? I mean, are you finding you want to write more or you can write more now? How has that changed? Donn: I am writing more. I can write more. I can do more of the good advice we talked about earlier. I'm blocking out time on my calendar. Along with the writing, I also do book interiors and covers and formatting for other authors, so I've been spending more time on that. The systems that I evolved over the years are standing me in good stead even in this situation, like I still leave breadcrumbs for myself. It's easier for me to pick up where I left off than what it used to be. I'm finding, and again, you have been such a great guide on how to use AI to foster your processes. Well, like the book I mentioned that I got two thirds of the way through, and then this one jumped the queue. I gave the manuscript to my AI, whom I have named, by the way. My ChatGPT is Lizzie, named after a character in one of my short stories. So I gave the manuscript to Lizzie and I said, “Okay, tell me where have I left off? Where are the gaps? What do I need to address next?” And she gave me some really good advice and it really cut down the time that I need for getting back into it. Joanna: That is a good use case. It's just because it's so hard in our own brains to kind of hold everything in your brain and it can really help to use an external brain to do that. Donn: Exactly. Yes. I think that's good. Joanna: So we're almost out of time, but I wanted to also ask you about your podcast, The Alignment Show, which, you know, I know podcasting is a lot of work. So why do you podcast? And what is the podcast, for people who might be interested in listening? Donn: Well, the podcast is The Alignment Show, which you can easily find at thealignmentshow.com. It started during the pandemic. I kept hearing about the Great Resignation and I realized for a lot of people, really it was the great realignment as they realized life is short. You don't want to spend it doing something you don't want to do. Some of them were quitting and starting businesses or going to some other job. Some people, and this has been true of some of the guests that had been on the program, they had kind of gotten a little bored with what they were doing. The pandemic had them reassess and they realized, you know, they really took joy in what they were doing and they rediscovered that. Even within that, they decided this part of the job, it's not really essential. I can get rid of that or I can outsource it. So just having these conversations with people I would not otherwise get to talk with. I mean, quite honestly, I think it brought you and me together. You were gracious enough to come on The Alignment Show twice. I'll mention this, I have a small group of people that I call stars in alignment. They're people who can come on my podcast anytime they want to, because I know they will have something useful for my audience. And you are one of the stars in alignment. Joanna: Oh, thank you. Donn: Absolutely. But see, although I have followed you for years, I'm a patron and I would encourage anybody who benefits from your mentorship, even from afar, to take advantage of that. Despite that connection, I'm not sure we would've connected had it not been for the podcast. So that's one of the things that makes it important to me to do that. Plus just like writing itself, it gives me an observable outcome. I started saying income—doesn't give me much. Not there. No. But it gives me an observable outcome. You know, I can tell when I've had a conversation and I've made an episode and I've posted it and I can see people responding to it. You're on what episode, 2000? Joanna: Not quite, but that direction. Donn: Yes, way up there. I'm approaching 100. Well, just a fun fact, 90% of podcasts don't make it past three episodes. Joanna: Yes. Donn: Of those that get past three episodes, 90% of that group don't make it past episode 20. The average podcast lifespan is about 174 days. So you have far outlasted that and so have I. I'm not to your level yet, but there is some satisfaction in that and that's encouraging when you are in a situation like caregiving where so much is just out of your control. This is something I can control. Joanna: Yes, I think that's great. Also, it externalizes your day. I mean, if you've been caring all day and then you get an hour on the phone with someone else talking about something completely different, I imagine that's somehow refreshing as well, mentally. Donn: Oh, yes. Absolutely. I mean, wow, there are other people on the planet! Joanna: Yes. Donn: You know, I got to be honest, during the pandemic when we all had the isolation and all that sort of thing, I couldn't tell much difference. I mean, it was just about what our days were like anyway. So having that connection, and we emphasized that several places in the book, find ways to have the connection, even if it is virtual. Joanna: Yes, absolutely. Because caregivers, I think, get more sick than non-caregivers. It puts a big strain on you emotionally, physically, in every single way. So having a community, even online, must really help. Donn: Yes. Sow I will say, for many years, even before Hannah came along, teaching college, I would not get sick during the semester because I just couldn't. Then when the semester was over, almost every semester, I would get sick for three or four days. It was like my body saying, okay, fool, you're not going to rest on your own. I'm going to make you. Well, the last few years I have not gotten sick. You know, as we've mentioned on another conversation, Joanna, our oldest son died about eight years ago. When he died, all of us were down with the flu. So it has happened, not very often. When we placed Hannah in the nursing home, I got sick almost immediately. I got food poisoning three times. Joanna: Your body just shut you down, right? Donn: Yes. That was basically it. I mean, that was the first time I'd really been sick, probably in five years. Joanna: So it's really important to look after yourself in this transitional time for you. So the book is fantastic. Obviously I am not a caregiver at the moment. I mean, like I said, this can come for anyone at different points in our lives. The book is Creating While Caring, but also you have lots more. So where can people find you and your books and your podcast online? Donn: So two or three quick URLs here. The podcast is TheAlignmentShow.com. That's all one word. My base website, which needs updating is DonnKing.com. That's Donn with a double N. Where have I heard that before? And I have learned to say that from you. So D-O-N-N-K-I-N-G.com. Within that, the most up-to-date parts, the most important ones: DonnKing.com/books. This book is at DonnKing.com/creatingwhilecaring, all one word. And then anything else that folks want to connect with, like I'm active on LinkedIn. You can go to LinkTree, that's linktr.ee/donnking. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Donn. That was great. Donn: Thank you. This has been a wonderful conversation as I always love talking with you, and I hope that this is helpful to some of my friends and colleagues out there in the same situation.The post Creating While Caring With Donn King first appeared on The Creative Penn.