OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
After wrestling with letting go of self-censorship in 2014, I am ready to embrace the ups and downs of the creative process in 2015. As Dean Wesley Smith says, “Dare to be bad,” and something good will come out of it!
I feel as if my basic process and business model is now (finally) set, and now all I have to do is repeat it in order to develop my craft and grow the business. This is the magic of intellectual property!
Essentially, the model is: trust emergence and continue to feed the muse in order to write (which for me involves travel and research), turn those ideas into books, turn that one book into multiple products, distribute globally and reach readers through marketing, and then repeat.
Oh yes, and have a great life along the way!
That's important, as if you're not loving this, then you're better off getting a ‘real' job. No one said this was easy after all, and there are much easier ways of making a living. But if you love it, there's no better life!
I find all the aspects of being indie fun, so my focus now is more on creativity and the craft of writing to make the books better, and speeding up the various parts of the process, while still enjoying the journey. Here's how that translates into my goals for 2015.
Creating new things in the world!
This is what it's all about! I measure my life by what I create now and although this is a list of ‘production,' my focus this year will be on deepening creative practice as well. That's just not so measurable, and goals generally need to be measurable 🙂
- 6 books out in 2015. A combination of novels, novellas and non-fiction, all in ebook, print and audiobook formats. Three more ARKANE books, Deviance in the London Psychic series plus a minor character spinoff and two books in a new supernatural series. This should turn into 18+ products once each book is turned into the various formats.
- Narrate my own non-fiction audiobooks and publish them on Audible. I'm also looking at doing royalty split deals with other non-fiction authors and getting into ACX as a narrator as well as an author. Like anyone, I used to hate my voice, but after 4 years of podcasting, I am pretty used to it now and I get so many emails from people who like to listen to it. Narration of other people's non-fiction books on a royalty split deal will add another income stream as well, so I will announce availability after I get my own 4 non-fiction books done first.
- Translations: While this is not a primary focus, I do have Portuguese underway for Pentecost as Brazil is likely to be the next emerging market for digital. I also have How to Market a Book coming in German, as well as Prophecy and Desecration in Spanish, so I'm certainly carrying on, but not expanding too much. I am only one person and it showed this year! I will be doing a review of the translation stuff with sales data in Feb/March once I have a bit more historical information.
- Foreign rights. I actually want to sell more rights rather than exploit them myself. The translation stuff takes a lot more effort than expected, so I won't be doing so much of that in 2015. I have various things bubbling around foreign rights sales, and expect to get into this more in 2015.
Filling the creative well, education and creative habits
- Learn how to edit audiobooks for Audible/ACX quality in order to produce my own non-fiction audiobooks. See the interview with Simon Whistler for help on this and his great book, Audiobooks for Indies
- Go to the Robert McKee Genre & TV writing days in London, Fall 2015 for more story focus. I learned so much from McKee's STORY conference that I am keen to build on that.
- Continue to do courses by Dean Wesley Smith & Kris Rusch to improve my craft and writing business – you can find out more on them here.
- Travel more for research and fun! Traveling feeds my muse and gives me story ideas for my fiction, so I need more of it in 2015 …
I also feel that I need to change up my creative routines and habits:
- No apps or email before lunchtime. I've had over a year of not using email on my phone – but I have ended up checking other things e.g. Guardian app for news, Twitter, RSS feeds and other things. I sometimes check it in the morning when I am still in bed as I use my phone as an alarm. It's hard to resist “just checking a few things”! I have bought an old-fashioned alarm clock – shock horror, it only tells the time and has an alarm function with one ring tone! The mornings are for creativity, writing first draft stuff, walking with my husband and I'm also starting with Headspace for (once again) attempting to incorporate meditation in my life.
Community
- Continue to blog and podcast at The Creative Penn for another year, as well as continuing to share useful information on Twitter @thecreativepenn. My aim is to provide graduate level education and inspiration for the indie author community. I'm not going anywhere so I hope you'll stick around for another year 🙂
- I'm also intending to do more Q&A videos, so check out my YouTube channel here if you like vids.
- I'll continue to try and answer all my email, but I won't be answering basic questions like “how do I self-publish” and “how can I sell more books,” as I have all the free resources here to help people. If you have a more nuanced question, feel free to contact me!
- Be an active member of the Alliance of Independent Authors, co-hosting the monthly Q&A show with Orna Ross and contributing to the discussion, promoting quality in the indie community.
- Be an active member of International Thriller Writers, writing for the Big Thrill and organizing UK events
Income
The big change for me in 2015 is the shift away from online education and courses to income from books and live professional speaking, as well as affiliate income and sponsorship. Fiction is evergreen and never needs updating (and super fun!) – whereas I have found that courses constantly need updates and non-fiction needs at least annual updates. There are also pretty much zero customer service issues with fiction! (I'm not counting fan email which is a pleasure, not ‘service')
I was intending to withdraw my courses in 2015 anyway, but the EU VAT law change for digital products pushed me to do this by Dec 31 2014, so that income stream is now over. I need to replace it, as that has been a significant portion since I left the day job. I'm not writing off doing online education again, but it's not a priority.
- Ramp up diversified income streams for my books. I'm already publishing direct on Amazon, Kobo, iBooks and NOOKPress. I am just returning to publishing through Smashwords for subscription and other minor sites. I'm finally going to get into Google Play in early 2015. Financially, I want to have my first 5 figure month in 2015. That's a stretch goal but I am putting it out there 🙂
- Move into audiobook narration for my own non-fiction as well as other people's books. The royalty split options in ACX mean this is potentially a good ongoing income stream and I believe in audio as a growth market. This will be a new income stream, albeit a slow growing one.
- Continue to speak internationally for travel and income reasons. I've already been booked for PubSense in Charleston, South Carolina in March, as well as the Shetland Islands and Orkney, which must count as travel! You can find my speaking page here if you want to see me live or book me for an event.
OK, your turn! What are your creative goals for 2015? Please add a comment below and join the conversation. Let's keep each other accountable.
Top image: Flickr Creative Commons Missing rainbows by Silke Gerstenkorn, alarm clock by dull hunk, notebooks by seeminglee, piggy bank by images money
Great goals!
I’m going to publish my first book this spring (thanks to the help of a terrific editor I found through your site!)
I’d like to get two more books out by the end of the year.
I’ll also be starting a new author website in early spring.
Finally, I hope to give Joanna Penn a nice tour of Vienna when she comes to visit for her “research” trip. Right?
Vienna is definitely on my list 🙂 so I will take you up on that one day. In the meantime, all the best with the book!
My plans for the new year? I have so many I have trouble choosing among them. I am finishing a biography of my mother bathed in a dying culture, that of the Sephardic jews. She was born in Istanbul and spent most of her life in France, that includes WWII. I am sad to be nearing the end of that project which, like all writing I get involved into, I get excited and wish it would go on a while longer.
I have at least two other writing projects I put aside a while ago and one of them will be my next writing. I should mention I write in French and had 2 novels published in France, one did very well the other is dormant.
You seem to have so much energy and enthusiasm, it’s wonderful. I wish I had some of that, not that i am depressed or lack energy, but I don’t know how to push my writing, well.
Your confidence in self publishing is inspiring. I need to listen to you more and learn about it.
My two published books are
LE PEIGNE EN ECAILLE publisher Archipel, 2008
Les Malgré Nous, Les editions du net 2014
My website: vuesdamerique.com
I would love to hear from yoou when you come to the US. I live in Boston.
Nice talking to you, Keep sharing your enthusiasm!
Jean-Pierre Angel
jpangel01@gmail.com
[just in case] 617-924-9136
I also skype
Hi Jean Pierre – I think I am enthusiastic because I spent years doing something that I didn’t love – and I absolutely LOVE this author-entrepreneur life. It suits me very well … but I don’t think being an author 10 years ago would have suited me as i am way too independent 🙂
Your English is clearly excellent – have you considered publishing your books in English? The market is much bigger and you might find another audience that way. All the best.
I certainly did consider publishing in English and my first book [ The turtle shell comb] is translated and ready to go. But this is where I block. I don’t have an agent and my efforts are getting one have been fruitless. You send
50 letters, emails … and not one acknowledgement of receipt.
I must be doing something wrong.
Then, one of my problems is I love to write and don’t enjoy marketing. It’s a chore I need to do but I feel it takes time away from what I enjoy doing.
Then writing for my french blog [VUESDAMERIQUE.COM] takes also a
lot of time.
My second book [not selling] and my blog are on Facebook.
I have also to look more closely at the material you provide.
Nice to hear from you
Jean-Pierre Angel
Hi Jean-Pierre – this isn’t a blog about getting an agent or getting published – it’s actually about being a creative entrepreneur, which means choosing yourself, publishing yourself and yes, marketing! No one ever said that you get to do what you love the whole time – that’s just not real life. If you want to sell books, think about your customer and your business. http://www.thecreativepenn.com/marketing/
You’re amazing, Joanna. Thanks for sharing your goals. I’m blown away by your tenacity and determination. Very inspiring.
My goals for 2015:
– I just finished writing ten short stories and will start rolling them out individually every two or three weeks starting mid-January
– Write the pilot for The City Center and work with my producer friend to get it optioned
– Publish the fourth book in my series, The Torrent
– Work with my husband on a writing project in a different genre
– Be more kind and patient with myself
Best of luck in 2015!
Great goals Simone – I think we all need to be more patient 🙂
My goal for the next couple of years is to focus on my fiction writing. My first non-fiction book was published 3 months ago and is still top 5 in the relevant Amazon charts here and in Canada but fiction is what I really want to do. I was viewing the non-fiction book as a trial run to get experience.
I’ve purchased a few e-courses (including yours just before you discontinued it) and some books on writing to get me motivated and in the right frame of mind. Now I just need some free time….. That’s what might take a year or so!
But I’m taking on a business partner in April to cut back the amount of time I work so that I’ll have more time to focus on writing in the future.
As someone who moved from non-fiction into fiction, I understand the move, Fiona!
Making time is difficult, but all the best for 2015!
I am writing a five book nonfiction project and expect to finish the first four in 2015. In addition I intend to launch a website with weekly blog to support the nonfiction project. For fiction, I hope to finish a supernatural new adult novel this year. Fiction is much harder to write, or at least I seem to make it so.
Fiction is MUCH harder to write – so so true 🙂
Wowee, you have a busy year coming up! I wish you the best of luck in achieving your goals and having lots of fun along the way!
I’m ramping up my own goals this year too. I finally finish my 4 yr teaching degree in May, and am taking some time out (aka keeping a part time job to pay the bills whilst I write write WRITE!) to focus on my author business, as teaching fulltime would mean no time at all to write.
I currently have about 10 projects lined up this year which is amazing – beyond anything I’d have expected!! The first being my 2nd fantasy fiction novel – currently racing through the first draft (I couldn’t do NaNo in November so I’m doing it alone now under #MegsNoWriMo and boy, is it doing wonders for the old wordcount!). I want to release this this year.
Also working on a short story collection with a group of other writer friends in the dark fantasy/urban fantasy genres in memory of our writer friend who passed away last year.
Lastly (but not least!), I’ll be working on my first non fiction project – ‘Accounting for Authors: Practical. Complete. Simple.’! I used to be an accountant before I retrained in teaching, and I realise just how anti-accounting writers can be. It’ll be a mini-series on kindle where people can dip in and out of any topics they want to learn about, I’ll be blogging extensively about it and then I’ll also release them all as one complete book…. plus eventually an audiobook! I really want to make finances of small author businesses accessible to anyone all the way from basic terms and book-keeping to understanding legalities and dealing with HMRC – it’s not hard and it’s not as terrifying as people think! If I can empower people to take control of that aspect of their author life, I would be so happy to have made a difference and a positive contribution to the indie movement.
I’d like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your inspiration – I was inspired by others to sit down and actually write my first book (to paraphrase Christopher Paolini’s words, you can’t be a writer unless you write!) , but it was only when I found you that I was inspired to first publish and then decided to make this into my career – so a big thankyou. Two years ago I would never have dreamed of having all these exciting things lined up… now I cannot imagine being as happy doing anything else! I smile all day every day and have found such unbridled joy, satisfaction and motivation in this lifestyle, even if I am still a relative unknown newbie! I am happy and content – a greater gift in life you couldn’t ask for. Genuinely don’t think I’d be in this lucky position had I not stumbled across you, so thank you! 🙂
Thanks Meg – I am thrilled to be a part of your journey and it sounds like you’re doing amazingly well! All the best with your 2015 goals.
I’m also very interested in your accounting for authors book – please do email me with details on it when the full book is available as it’s something I’d like to share. I’d also be happy to comment on the table of contents before you finalize it, as I have quite a few author-accountancy questions myself!
Thanks!
My goal was to release the book – and finally after three and a half years it is done!
Congrats 🙂