The Creative Penn Blog: Helping you write, publish and market your book

Turn Your Author Failures, Setbacks, And Mistakes Into Success With Joanna Penn And Orna Ross

January 25, 2021 by Joanna Penn 2 Comments

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:07:18 — 54.7MB)

We all experience failures, setbacks, and mistakes on the author journey — but if we learn from them, they can be the basis for our greatest success. In this episode, Orna Ross and Joanna Penn share their biggest mistakes, failures, and setbacks as well as lessons learned.

This interview originally went out on the Ask ALLi Podcast on 11 December 2020.

In the intro, #1 NY Times bestselling urban fantasy author, Ilona Andrews, shares why going indie is such a good idea; Wattpad has been bought by South Korean company Naver [The New Publishing Standard]; US publishing had its best year in a decade in 2020 according to NPD Bookscan and Overdrive [The Hotsheet] and why we should not feel guilty about a good year of book sales revenue. ACX will be sharing returns data, paying royalties on certain returns, and making opt-out of contracts more flexible, but this does not go far enough according to Susan May and the Fair Deal for Rightsholders and Narrators Group.

Please take my survey on author income streams (by 31 Jan 2021); What to do if you’re not making a profit from your books [6 Figure Authors]; and 9 Characteristics of a Successful Self-Publishing Mindset [Ask ALLi]

Plus, Not Quite Lost: Travels Without a Sense of Direction with Roz Morris on Books and Travel, photos of Bath in the snow, and how awesome is The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman.

Today's podcast sponsor is Findaway Voices, which gives you access to the world's largest network of audiobook sellers and everything you need to create and sell professional audiobooks.

Take back your freedom. Choose your price, choose how you sell, choose how you distribute audio. Check it out at FindawayVoices.com.

Orna Ross and Joanna Penn at London Book Fair, 2018 — one of my favorite pictures of us!

Orna Ross is an award-winning and bestselling indie novelist, poet, and founder-director of the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), the global non-profit association for self-publishing authors. This advocacy work has seen her named “one of the 100 most influential people in publishing” by UK publishing trade magazine, The Bookseller.

Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-nominated, 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 full transcript below.

Show Notes

What are author setbacks, failures, and mistakes?
How epic fails can lead to great successes — if you learn from them.
Freezing is a response to fear, and we all have to find ways to get beyond that — especially in these pandemic times
Common indie author mistakes — paying for a print run, not learning marketing, hiring the wrong people, undervaluing editing, working with bad companies and getting ripped off, the wrong book cover, build a website around your first book
When it's not a mistake but you need to give it up anyway — co-writing with family, overwork, projects you don't want to do anymore
Reframing difficult times

You can find the Ask ALLi podcast on your favorite podcast app, and lots more help at SelfPublishingAdvice.org

Joanna and Orna do a monthly Advanced Self-Publishing Salon, and Orna does other shows weekly with different co-hosts. You can find Orna Ross at www.OrnaRoss.com and on Twitter @ornaross and Instagram @ornaross.poetry

A Techno-Optimist’s View Of The Creative Future For Authors. Joanna Penn On The Kindle Chronicles Podcast

January 22, 2021 by Joanna Penn Leave a Comment

Podcast: Download (Duration: 54:07 — 44.1MB)

It can be daunting to think about the future for authors and publishing when converging technologies are expanding into the realm of creativity, but there are many opportunities ahead — if you engage with the tools rather than run from them.

In this interview, Len Edgerly interviews Joanna Penn about Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Worlds: The Impact of Converging Technologies on Authors and the Publishing Industry. This episode was first broadcast on the Kindle Chronicles Podcast on 19 December 2020, used with permission from Len Edgerly.

Len Edgerly is a nonfiction author with degrees in business and poetry. He's also the host of the long-running Kindle Chronicles Podcast, where he's interviewed Jeff Bezos, Margaret Atwood, and Dean Koontz among many others.

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 below.

Show Notes

Writing with Open-AI's GPT-3 and why ‘centaur-writers' might be the future
Why authors and the publishing industry need to engage with this new technology
You don't need to know HTML programming to use the internet to sell books — and you don't need to know the technical side of blockchain to understand how it could transform the industry
How AI might be able to solve problems that are too big for humans, like health care and the environment
How virtual reality could affect the bookselling business
How the pandemic accelerated technological change

You can find Len Edgerly at Kindle Chronicles and his podcast on your favorite podcast app. More on AI and the future of creativity here.

You can also find my previous discussion with Len in episode 505 on Changes in the Publishing Industry Over the Last Decade.

Co-writing With Artificial Intelligence With Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

January 18, 2021 by Joanna Penn 13 Comments

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:01:26 — 50.0MB)

We all use tools as part of the writing process. Other books and internet resources for research, Scrivener for writing the first draft, and a computer for typing or dictating into, as well as editing tools like ProWritingAid. But what if you could use AI tools to help inspire the writing process?

In this episode, science fiction author Yudhanjaya Wijeratne talks about how he used artificial intelligence to co-write his novel, The Salvage Crew.

In the intro, I talk about how I've been playing with Inferkit using my own books to train the Natural Language Generation model. More on AI writing tools here. Google announced a model 6x bigger than GPT-3, and Eleuther.ai wants to create an open-source version.

In publishing news, Amazon and the Big 5 publishers have been accused of colluding to fix ebook prices [The Guardian], and Amazon is being investigated for potentially anti-competitive behavior in its sale of ebooks [Wall St Journal].

I useful stuff, Mark Dawson's Ads for Authors course is open now and very useful if you want to get to grips with paid ads this year, one of the ways in which big tech definitely impacts authors! Plus, you can get 50% off my online courses during lockdown: www.TheCreativePenn.com/learn Use coupon: LOCKDOWN. Valid until the end of this UK lockdown!
Today's show is sponsored by my patrons at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. They pay for my time so I can think and research the future of creativity and then share it with you. If you find the show useful, please consider supporting for just a few dollars a month and get an extra monthly patron-only Q&A audio. Thank you!

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne is the award-nominated author of science fiction novels including Numbercaste and The Inhuman Race, as well as a Senior Researcher on Data, Algorithms, and Policy for an Asian think tank based in Sri Lanka. His latest novel, The Salvage Crew, features humans working alongside an AI overseer and was written with the help of AI tools.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and full transcript below.

Show Notes

How code is less like math and more like art
Co-writing a book with AI tools
What does it mean for art if art can be automated and humans can't perceive the difference?
Why the fear of machines taking over may be unfounded
How working with AI made the writing process joyful and exciting
How copyright might impact machine learning and ways around that. More in my solo episode on Copyright Law and Blockchain in an Age of AI
How a financial model of authors sharing data might work
Would traditional publishers potentially use the data they have in the copyrighted work they own and control to train specialist genre models?
Why technology is too important to be left to the technologists and why we need to get involved in the conversation and design of the future

You can find Yudhanjaya Widjeratne at www.yudhanjaya.com or twitter.com/yudhanjaya

It’s Never Too Late. How To Achieve Your Goals At Any Age With Kate Champion

January 11, 2021 by Joanna Penn 7 Comments

Podcast: Download (Duration: 59:23 — 48.4MB)

If you feel like it's too late to achieve your goals — whether that’s because of your age or your fear of technology or you’re late to the indie author world — or anything else, today's interview with Kate Champion will help you reboot your mindset for the year ahead.

In the intro, thoughts on the COVID-19 and Book Publishing Report: Impacts and Insights for 2021; Top 10 Trends that every author needs to know for 2021 from Written Word Media; positive signs for translation from Ricardo Fayet at Reedsy (where you can also hire translators), plus my experience using AI translation tool Deepl for German translation.

In useful stuff, Mark Dawson's Ads for Authors course is open, which I use and highly recommend; plus if you want to create an online course that sells, check out the free Teachable webinar with everything you need to know. PLUS, if you'd like to do one of my online courses for authors, you can get 50% off until the end of February 2021 (when hopefully, we are out of lockdown!). Just go to TheCreativePenn.com/learn and use coupon: LOCKDOWN

Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide at www.draft2digital.com/penn

Kate Champion is the author of Never Too Late and Starting Out or Starting Over, as well as a licensed mental health professional who works with anxiety, loss trauma, with a focus on sustainable wellness and overcoming limiting beliefs.

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 below.

Show Notes

How writing can help with mental health issues
Writing as marketing for a small business
How our limiting beliefs don’t have to stop us from achieving goals
The importance of discomfort for pushing your boundaries and comfort zone
Finding mentors to inspire and guide you
How life is a series of transitions

You can find Kate Champion at KateChampionAuthor.com

How To Be A Healthy Writer In 2021 With Dr Euan Lawson

January 4, 2021 by Joanna Penn 2 Comments

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:09:25 — 56.4MB)

Let's make 2021 a healthy, creative year! In today's show, Dr. Euan Lawson talks about ways to improve your physical and mental health, and how it can impact your creativity in a positive way.

In the introduction, some thoughts on the year ahead for authors and publishing, including continued expansion to the global, digital, mobile business model and more subscription options for ebooks and audiobooks [Episode 520 – Voice technologies, streaming and subscription audio], Smashwords 2021 predictions, consolidation in publishing and impact on paid ads, Writers Ink state of the industry.

Expansion of audio as Amazon buys Wondery; regulation or possible break up of Big Tech (as discussed in episode 505), and by David Gaughran in his year-end newsletter, plus TechCrunch on European plans for digital rules; PLUS, a useful podcast on doing larger print runs through China on the Self-Publishing Show episode 259. My tutorial on how to set up your email list, and you can buy ebooks and audiobooks directly from me at Payhip.com/thecreativepenn.

Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, who I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 39,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries and more. It's your content – do more with it through IngramSpark.com.

Dr. Euan Lawson is a British medical doctor and a fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners. He is currently the Acting Editor of the British Journal of General Practice, as well as an educator. He’s the author of GP Wellbeing: Combatting Burnout in General Practice, and the co-author, with Joanna Penn, of The Healthy Writer: Reduce Your Pain, Improve Your Health, and Build a Writing Career for the Long-Term.

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 below.

Show Notes

Common health issues that may crop up in a year like 2020 — depression, anxiety, loneliness and more
How mental health issues can be magnified in stressful situations like a pandemic
What Joanna and Euan have done to help lift their moods this year
Giving ourselves permission to feel what we feel
Balancing individual needs with the collective good
Creating healthy work habits when working from home

You can find Euan Lawson at euanlawson.com and on Twitter @euan_lawson

Turn Your Author Failures, Setbacks, And Mistakes Into Success With Joanna Penn And Orna Ross

A Techno-Optimist’s View Of The Creative Future For Authors. Joanna Penn On The Kindle Chronicles Podcast

Co-writing With Artificial Intelligence With Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

It’s Never Too Late. How To Achieve Your Goals At Any Age With Kate Champion

How To Be A Healthy Writer In 2021 With Dr Euan Lawson

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