Lessons Learned from 14 Years as a Full-Time Author Entrepreneur

Fourteen years ago, in September 2011, I left my day job to become a full-time author-entrepreneur. Every year since, I’ve reflected on the journey and what I learn along the way.

My challenges continue to evolve with the business, and you'll likely be at a different stage, but I hope you find my lessons learned useful on your own author journey.

You can read all my lessons learned from previous years on my timeline here — and remember, just like everyone else, I started out writing my first book with no audience. But with time and continued effort, everything is possible.

(1) Self-publishing continues to change — and there are more choices than ever 

Earlier this year, I updated Successful Self-Publishing, now in its Fourth Edition, and it was extraordinary to realise how much had changed over the couple of years since the last edition.

There are more choices than ever in terms of how you get your book into the world and how you reach readers, and while that can be daunting, it can also be a liberating ‘choose your own adventure’ experience.

You can still start with an ebook on Amazon and put it into KU, or go wide with ebook and print on all book retailers, or produce an audiobook and a hardback along with the main editions and sell in the usual way on the usual stores.

But you can also do so much more now! 

Direct sales have become an important part of the indie author business model, and personally, I make far more money away from Amazon than from the platform that has been the dominant source of revenue for indie authors for so long.

Indie authors have always been a hidden part of the publishing industry, and our sales and revenue barely acknowledged by media and industry reports, but it’s even more so now. 

Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms, Shopify and other direct sales stores, subscription sites like Patreon and SubStack, and many others are not counted in bestseller lists or industry reports, but as ever, indie authors just keep on creating, enjoying our freedom, and focusing on our readers and fans, rather than industry commentators.

I’ve done three Kickstarter campaigns since last year’s lessons learned — Blood Vintage, a folk horror special hardback, Death Valley, a standalone thriller, and The Buried and the Drowned, a short story collection. None of these fit the model of what sells well on the main retailers, but they are perfect for crowdfunding and selling direct, and also end up on the main stores eventually. 

I have two Shopify stores — JFPennBooks.com and CreativePennBooks.com and I use BookVault print on demand for my physical books, and Bookfunnel to deliver ebooks and audiobooks, as I prefer the freedom of having no physical stock or shipping. 

But there are indie authors now pushing the boundaries of selling direct. Sacha Black as Ruby Roe, as well as Adam Beswick, are both killing it with Kickstarter and Shopify sales and shipping from their own warehouses, powering sales by TikTok and Instagram rather than paid ads.

David Viergutz started selling horror stories by physical letter in the post and is now expanding into his own epistolary empire! 

There are so many indie authors doing exciting and new things with their writing, publishing and marketing. There is no single business model anymore.

You get to choose your path — or invent a new one, and of course, this is both the opportunity and the challenge at the heart of being an indie author.

(2) Some creative projects are books of the heart, rather than commercial prospects — and that's okay

My short story collection The Buried and the Drowned is a really personal project. It means a great deal to me, as there is something tangibly important about having my short stories in print after more than a decade of digital-only publication.

The book represents a mind shift, a moment when I started writing in a form that I didn’t even know I wanted to write, but have grown into and now look forward to creating. 

These stories also contain more fragments of my life than my longer fictional works, and more glimpses into my own back story through the Author’s Notes included throughout.

Short stories can make money, for sure, but like poetry, they are written more from a creative drive, than a commercial one. Perhaps that makes them even more precious.

The Buried and the Drowned will be available from my store, JFPennBooks from 1 November and at all the usual stores from 1 December — www.JFPenn.com/buried 

(3) Not everything works out as planned — but that’s okay too, as indie authors have options! 

In October 2024, I did a Kickstarter for the gorgeous hardback edition of my folk horror novel, Blood Vintage, but then, rather than self-publishing it in all formats, the book went out with my agent to major publishers in the US and UK. (I didn’t want a small press deal as I can do what they do myself, so it only went to significant imprints.)

There were many months of waiting, and then some lovely rejections, but mostly silence. The trad pub process is incredibly slow, and that in itself was a reminder that it might not be a good fit for me, at least for this book. 

After nine months, I said that we needed to set a time limit and then I would take it back, and we have now reached that point. 

Blood Vintage is available now in ebook and print editions from my store, JFPennBooks, and I am just working on the audiobook with my voice clone through ElevenLabs, which is a fun project! It’s also on pre-order at the other stores for 15 October 2025 — www.jfpenn.com/bloodvintage 

I’m thrilled to have it back as this book has some very personal elements and it’s set in my home county of Somerset, so if you’d like to try an English folk horror novel set at a biodynamic vineyard, click here to check it out.

Will I try the traditional publishing approach again? 

Yes, at some point, but probably for a more mainstream kind of thriller, or a different kind of book altogether. 

(4) Some books take longer than others 

I’ve learned this lesson before as my Pilgrimage memoir took three years, and my ‘shadow book,’ took almost two decades to emerge as Writing the Shadow, but it’s sometimes hard to figure out which books need more time — and it turns out that I’m working on another one of those!

Over the last 18 months my husband Jonathan has worked on an MBA as well as his day job, so we haven’t traveled as much as usual. I’ve taken the opportunity to work on my ‘gothic cathedral book,’ visiting lots of cities in the UK, researching and taking photos and thinking about how this book might come together.

Originally, it was going to be a purely photo book, which I then abandoned as I discovered the pain of getting photo permissions.

But then ChatGPT became my useful sidekick, and with Deep Research, I was able to get a full list of all the contacts at all the cathedrals, as well as a draft letter and a process for doing that.

Then, during my travels this spring and summer, the book has deepened and shifted. I have thoughts on memento mori, stone and deep time, the nature of change, and so much more. Right now, it is tens of thousands of words of disjointed thoughts and ideas, and tens of thousands of photos! 

I told Kristen Tate, my editor, that I would have a draft to her by the end of the summer, but a few weeks ago, I told her it wasn’t happening. This is not a book I can rush, so it might be 2026, it might be 2027. I don’t know. 

This is another book of my heart. It is about as far as writing to market as you can get! It has taken a lot of time in the last year and it will take a lot more time. 

But I trust the creative process. 

I’ve been in this position before, and I will be so again. The chaos is part of the fun of discovery writing, so I won’t rush it, or try to force the book into shape. I trust emergence, and it will come in its own time. 

You can see my photos and articles about the gothic cathedrals on my Books and Travel site here. These write ups are the first part of the processing phase, or the incubating phase, a necessary part of any kind of travel based research, at least for me. I hope you enjoy the virtual visits! 

(5) Sometimes you need to push into a new trajectory

I turned 50 in March 2025, and so inevitably, thoughts of the next decade flashed into my mind. I’ve also had a need for change for a while, and have started a slow pivot over the last few years.

I started writing seriously for publication in 2005, so it’s been twenty years of focus to get to this point.

I left my job in 2011, so I’ve been a full-time author entrepreneur for 14 years — which is now longer than I was an IT consultant in my previous career.

My work is deepening and I want to think about and write what matters, so in a few weeks time, I'm starting a Masters in Death, Religion and Culture at the University of Winchester. It is a full-time online course, so I will be back to having a ‘day job equivalent’ in terms of the time I need to focus on something else other than being an author entrepreneur.

I’m doing this because I need more input and variation in my thinking. I want to dig deeper into the big questions that fascinate me — mortality, meaning, and the sacred. These themes run through my fiction and memoir but I want to explore them more rigorously. 

My Top 5 Clifton Strengths are Learner, Intellection, Strategic, Input, and Futuristic, so it’s not a surprise that I would seek out another degree. My previous degrees are in Theology, and also Psychology, so this builds on those, and potentially gives me a new trajectory and new ideas for my writing.

The academic environment will challenge me in different ways. I'll read texts I might never have encountered, engage with ideas that stretch my thinking, and defend my arguments in ways that will ultimately make my writing stronger. As authors, we’re always researching, but formal study is a different kind of discipline. Whatever happens, I know this course will generate a whole load of new ideas for my creativity, which will emerge in fiction and non-fiction alike.

Don’t worry! I’m not giving everything up. Not at all!

I’ll continue to share with my author community first on patreon.com/thecreativepenn and also continue to podcast at The Creative Penn, although I will be reducing the number of interviews in 2026 and doing more solo, shorter episodes.

I’m not sure whether I’ll write any new books in the coming year, but the beauty of the backlist is that I can continue to market my other books and still make income that way. 

I also have multiple streams of income through the podcast, Patreon, and also my AI-Assisted Artisan Author webinars. The final one for 2025 is on Sunday 21 September 2025, and I will do a new batch in early 2026.

If you're feeling stagnant or like you need a fresh perspective or a new trajectory, consider pushing yourself into something new. 

It doesn’t have to be a degree, of course, but perhaps try writing in a new genre, or taking a workshop outside your comfort zone, traveling somewhere new, or attending a live event that you know will be a challenge. I will be at Author Nation in November, so perhaps I will see some of you there.

Conclusion

After 14 years, I'm still here, still writing, still learning, still growing, still sharing.

I'm grateful for this weird, wonderful career that lets me explore whatever fascinates me while sharing the journey with others. From AI to Gothic cathedrals to death studies, it’s quite the ride!

Thank you to everyone on this journey with me — my readers, my Patreon community, podcast listeners, and everyone who backs my Kickstarters and buys my books. You make this possible.

The next year will bring new challenges and discoveries, and I’ll keep sharing what I learn along the way. I hope you'll join me for whatever comes next.

What about you? What lessons are you learning on your author journey?

I'd love to hear about them, so please leave a comment or question below.