About
Who is Joanna Penn?
I am an author, blogger, speaker and business consultant based in Australia (although I am British!). I always dreamed of writing my own books, and spent many years thinking about it before I actually took the plunge.
I self published my first book How to Enjoy Your Job
You can read about my own writing journey here. You can also listen to a free audio on How to Write Your First Book here.
I wanted to share this information with other people who want to become authors, because I found the traditional publishing route too difficult and slow.
I love books and writing, and I want to have the fantastic book deals, but nowadays there are other ways to get there. You don’t have to sit at home with your manuscript for years with rejections piling up, hoping to make it. You can be a proactive writer who does things differently!
I wanted my book to be available globally as soon as I finished it, and I could achieve that with Amazon.com so I self-published my books. I didn’t want to hold stock or pay upfront print costs so I discovered print-on-demand. I wanted passive income and discovered e-books through the Kindle and Smashwords.com.
I wanted to build an author platform online so I discovered blogging. I wanted to share my knowledge and discovered Twitter and social networking…and now I want to help you with your journey!
What is “The Creative Penn” and how can it help you?
This site is aimed at people who are interested in writing, publishing of all different kinds and internet marketing/promotion for their books (in print/ebook or audio format). My aim is to make this the place to come for information if this is your area of interest online.
You will find:
- Regular blog posts on all aspects of writing, publishing and book promotion. The latest posts are always on the home page at www.TheCreativePenn.com or you can subscribe now by email or RSS so you know when we have posted a new article. See the right hand sidebar for posts in different categories, or use the Search box above right to find articles on the topic you are interested in.
- Podcast audio interviews with authors and people in the publishing or marketing industry. Podcasts are just audios over the internet. You can subscribe in iTunes or just download the individual episodes from this page. The audios are approx 30 mins long and I post them at least every 2 weeks.
- Monthly Ezines containing round-ups from the industry and useful articles. Click here for the backlist.
- Free “Author 2.0 Blueprint”
Please do contact me with other articles, posts and resources that would be useful for you.
You can email me at joanna@TheCreativePenn.com or leave a comment on the site.
If you like the posts, you can also Subscribe to receive posts by email or in an RSS reader. This will mean you don’t miss out on useful information posted regularly.
You can also connect with me at these sites:
Check out my photos on Flickr (all Creative Commons)
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Found your site in my google reader … not sure how it got there … may have bee n via Absolutely*Kate, but who knows?
Thanks for the wealth of info and tips on self publishing. I have just finished a labour of love (35000 words) and am considering whether to self publish or to attempt the more traditional route. The latter oddly seems more daunting to me as I am fairly internet savvy.
What’s interesting to me is the psychology around this decision. It feels to me that the traditional route offers earlier “validation” than self-publication. What I mean is, to answer the question “Is my book any good?”, the traditional route would seem to offer a quicker answer than self-publication.
Robert aka Mulled Vine
Incredibly helpful material and very inspirational! Also, congratulations on your 1-year anniversary. In your quiz I suggested a question about agents and wanted to clarify: is there a possible role for an internet agent – similar to what you’ve been doing advising aspiring authors but more active on the publicity side? For example, I write about archetypes in daily life (among other things) on my blog, which can be accessed from my website myth.me.uk but which blogspot have not made easy to find! Maybe you could set up a Penn Friends Group which we could all network through. The benefits to you are obviously concerned with well-deserved publicity for your site, and you can probably see other opportunities too…..
Hi Jane,
There will definitely be a changing role for agents and there are people online who can do publicity for you. It can be expensive though hence why I DIY.
I do have a group people can join and network with each other here http://www.facebook.com/TheCreativePenn
Thanks, Joanna