Fifteen 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.
1. Sometimes you need to step away to indulge your curiosity and fill the creative well
I have just handed in my dissertation for my Masters in Death, Religion, and Culture that I started a year ago as a full-time degree at the University of Winchester (online).
It has been an intense period of study and a shift into academic writing, which has been absolutely fascinating and well worth while, but which at times has stretched my patience for the minutiae of Chicago and/or Harvard referencing!
I’ve written essays on natural burial, the ethics of using human remains to inspire fiction (which also helped inspire Bones of the Deep), the art history of hell, death rituals of orthodox Judaism, assisted suicide, Is death a good thing? And my dissertation was on The Afterlife of Authorship: Consent, Control, Creative Legacy, and the AI Resurrection of the Author. More to come on that topic in the coming months.
The essays were on top of the taught classes and group discussion sessions, which were all online. If you’re interested in the shadow side, then I absolutely recommend the course (which you can also do part-time and from outside the UK. Tell the team you heard about it from me!)
When I went into the course, I was considering a new direction, perhaps adding funeral celebrancy into my portfolio career or pivoting partly into the death industry. I am already a professional speaker, and I thought it would be a good way to help more people in my community at what is always a difficult time.
But interestingly, I soon discovered that the rise of direct cremation in the UK means that fewer celebrants are used these days and the ‘death industry’ is not underserved, at least at the moment!
I also found myself longing to get back to commercial writing after so much academic focus, so I have a backlog of creativity to express, once I have recovered from the intensity of the dissertation process.
Stepping away at least partially has ultimately fuelled my desire to keep going as an author entrepreneur, which is a good result!
2. Sometimes you need to step away to remove yourself from the drama and the noise
As much as I love being part of the creative side of the author community, I do not enjoy the drama online or the social media storms that rage over whatever issue is the latest thing. Over the last 20 years of being an author, the topics have changed, but the noise continues unabated. Perhaps it has grown louder of late, or perhaps my tolerance has decreased, but I am just not willing to spend my time arguing or getting wound up.
So, I curate my inputs very carefully these days and try to stay on the positive, upbeat side of things. There is enough doom and gloom elsewhere, so you won’t find it here!
I am rarely on social media now, and whatever the downsides of that, the huge upside is my mental health, so I am happy with my choices. I share pictures of my travels and my life (as proof of humanity!) on Instagram @jfpennauthor which automatically posts to Facebook @jfpennauthor, and I occasionally post on X @thecreativepenn but that’s about it.
I am also more grateful than ever to be an independent author with my own email list and podcast and websites and community on Patreon, which means I can choose what I write, how I write and publish, what tools I use, how I reach my readers, and how I make my money. I remain more committed than ever to serving my audience, those of you who choose to follow me and listen to the podcast and read my books. Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans remains my guiding principle and seems more relevant than ever.
In this age of AI, it is easy to spin up content and publish books every day if you want to, but it is not possible to replicate 20 years of writing and showing up as a human, so a huge thank you to my community for continuing to be part of my creative and business journey.
3. Stepping away (for whatever reason!) will (inevitably) impact the business
I am a one-person creative business and while I have kept things ticking along over the last year, inevitably doing a full-time Masters has meant less time on the business, fewer books and generally, leaving a lot by the wayside with my focus on the academic side.
I did write one novel, Bones of the Deep, inspired by my essay on human remains in anatomy museums, and also a short non-fiction book on How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Fiction, out now on my store and everywhere from 1 October 2026. I also podcasted every week and continued to serve my Patreon community with live office hours, articles, video and audio.
However, I created a lot less than my usual output and so I am behind in my updated editions for Joanna Penn books, and I am also behind in my usual schedule for my ARKANE thrillers, and I am brimming with other creative projects.
I expected this to happen of course, but I am now feeling the pressure of getting back into it all. It feels like I have a backlog of ideas waiting to get out, and I am very much looking forward to returning to being a full-time author entrepreneur, instead of juggling it with study. 2027 feels like it will be expansive indeed!
4. Increasing my use of AI tools for business and marketing has enabled me to save time and money
While the debate about the use of AI in the creative side of things rages on, the use of AI for business and marketing tasks has grown amongst small and large businesses alike. It’s possible that you are far more aware of AI tools now if you have a day job since it is being rolled out in many corporate areas.
If you are still just using ChatGPT as a search engine, or not using it at all, then things changed in Dec 2025/Jan 2026 when Claude Code marked the beginning of truly useful agentic AI, and now we have Claude CoWork, ChatGPT Work, GrotBot, and many other options. In short, AI tools can now do useful work, the kind of useful work that most authors struggle with as it relates to marketing and business.
In the last few months, in between college work, I have been increasingly using Claude Code and ChatGPT to do the work that I don’t enjoy, and/or am not good at. Examples include: rebuilding JFPenn.com with a new theme and book pages, optimising my sites and my stores JFPennBooks.com and CreativePennBooks.com for SEO/GEO purposes, setting up and running my Amazon Ads, fixing technical errors on all my websites, helping to analyse cold subscribers and clean my email lists, tidy up and format my transcripts for the podcast, schedule social media posts and audio snippets, research guests for the podcast, takeover my bookkeeping and reconcile my bank accounts, manage business receipts, create strategic financial reports for the business and help me with data-related analysis and decisions — and lots more.
One of the most useful things I use it for is as an ‘organising partner’ for all the things I am meant to be tracking and doing and reviewing and creating.
I have a lot of ideas for things I want to do, and lots of plates spinning for my backlist book marketing as well as new projects, the podcast etc, and Claude keeps a backlog of everything and then reminds me when things are due, or need doing. It sets automatic tasks, like ‘check amazon ads’ and also reminders like ‘check results of BookBub ads’ and then analyses data and helps me make decisions. I will often download the data it needs, for example, my KDP sales and downloads and then it can action monitoring tasks and optimisation like Amazon Ads, always with my review of course! These are all things that I often missed because my one-person business will always prefer to write and create rather than analyse and optimise!
If you haven’t tried this kind of business help with AI yet, make sure you are using a current model (like ChatGPT 5.6 Sol or ChatGPT 6 Astra, or Claude Fable 5.1 at the time of writing) and just ask, “How can you help me with my author business / book marketing?” Give it as much context and info as possible so it can specifically help you and then have a conversation about how you can use it. I plan to do some more webinars around AI before the end of the year, and as ever, I cover a lot within my Patreon if you want to join the Community.
Conclusion
After 15 years as a full-time author-entrepreneur, and 20 years as a writer, it’s been a year of consideration around how I want the next year to go.
I thought I might come out of this degree with a new path ahead of me, but now, it’s clear that I love writing for an audience, and I love producing books that people want to read, as opposed to academic papers that only my professor will see and critique!
I also like being useful and I want to keep being a positive voice in the indie author sphere, especially during a time of great change, so I plan to keep writing, keep podcasting, and keep serving my community. I hope you will join me in the year ahead!
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.