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The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
Review Of My 2025 Creative And Business Goals With Joanna Penn
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Welcome to the Creative Penn Podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more@thecreativepenn.com and that's Pen with a double N. And here's the show hello creatives, I'm Joanna Penn and this is episode number 842 of the podcast and it is Saturday 27th December 2025. As I record this, I hope you had a lovely Christmas if you celebrate it, and a happy holiday season wherever you are in the world. In today's show I'm sharing my roundup and reflections on my goals for 2025. What did I achieve that I said I would? What did I achieve unexpectedly? Plus what did I fail at? Some thoughts on my 50th year. Health, things, travel and more. So that's coming up in the main section of the show and of course I'd love to hear from you. Did you achieve what you wanted to in 2025? Please do share your thoughts or link to your own articles in the comments as I love to hear what you're up to. So that's coming up in the main section of the show. So in writing and publishing, I'm going to share a few of the roundups I've seen that you might also find interesting. So 2025 was the year direct sales became mainstream, at least in the discussion of it, if not in the implementation, since Amazon remains the main income stream of most indie authors, but certainly selling ebooks, audiobooks and print on demand paperbacks and hardbacks from Shopify, payhip or other direct stores as well as selling person locally have become an accepted and discussed part of the indie author business model, with Kickstarter and crowdfunding also becoming much more popular. The written Word Media 2025 Indie Author Survey revealed direct sales reached an inflection point. Approximately 30% of authors now sell direct, with another 30% planning to start within 12 months. Among authors earning $10,000 monthly and more, roughly half sell direct. And I've said this many times, selling direct online at least is an advanced strategy, which is reflected in those numbers as anyone making five figures a month usually has a mature author business and a lot of books. Probably the most exciting thing for me and many others is the creative options we have now with Book Vault bespoke options so we can do gorgeous hardbacks with sprayed edges, foiling ribbons, boxes for boxed sets, cases and you know, lots of people doing really interesting things with physical products loads more features with more to come. And also this means that indie authors now can have more beautiful books than many traditionally published authors who often don't even get a hardback and very rarely get sprayed edges. So it is very cool that our quality of books are now surpassing many of the paperbacks that you see in bookstores. And I am super proud of my physical products and in fact I want to go back and do my entire backlist, which is essentially impossible because, well, it just wouldn't be worth it for some of the books. But I'm over time I will do more special editions, that's for sure. It might take a while, but in the meantime thanks to Book Vault for making it possible. And we're also getting more of an ecosystem of companies that are serving this kind of market, making special editions and book boxes and all of this kind of thing. So really interesting times ahead for physical products in social media at the beginning of 2025, it looked like TikTok would be disrupted by a sale to a US company. Well, it's taken all year, but that deal was done just before Christmas. As the BBC and others reported last week, TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance has signed binding agreements with America and global investors to operate its business in the USA. The deal, which is set to close on 22 January 2026, would end years of efforts by Washington force ByteDance to sell its US operations over national security concerns. TikTok said that the deal would enable over 170 million Americans to continue discovering a world of endless possibility as part of a vital global community. Oracle will license TikTok's recommendation algorithm as part of the deal, and the BBC article says under the terms, TikTok's recommendation algorithm is set to be retrained on US user data to ensure feeds are free from external manipulation. And if you are a TikTok creator either in the USA or with an audience in the USA, which probably covers everyone, because even if you're not in the us, you probably aim to sell there. But as somebody who was an IT consultant, the phrase retrain the algorithm. Who knows what the hell that will end up being. But I wanted to mention this because everything changes. All social media platforms shift. All platforms shift. I mean those of us who are around in the era of MySpace and then what Facebook was at the beginning compared to what it is now, I mean it is crazy how things change. So even if this doesn't affect TikTok marketing, something else will. As ever, the key is to get people onto your email list so you can still reach people even if things change. So if you are dependent on TikTok and many authors obviously do incredibly well on TikTok, just make sure you have a backup plan because you never know how this will change. Now obviously this will probably still take a while, but just to be clear, that looks like it's going ahead then. In terms of roundups, there are two episodes which I highly recommend, which are both broadcast on the Wish I'd Known Then podcast with Sarah and Jamie and the double episode is with Nicholas Harvey and Douglas Pratt from the Two Authors podcast. So you can listen on the Wish I'd Known Then feed or the two Authors Podcast feed where they talked about things they had learned in their author businesses and what had changed for indie authors in 2020. And I thought this was a great couple of episodes. Basically they recorded it at the same time and put it out, but you can listen to them both because they're out now. But the two guys, Nick and Doug, focus heavily on Amazon KU and ads and if you want to publish in that model then definitely listen to their show. And they are only now just really looking into other options around selling direct or special editions, whereas Sarah publishes wide and has done lots of Kickstarters as well as a recent launch on her own Shopify store. And Jamie has has a perspective of someone whose life events have been far more important for the last few years. And so she talked about what it's like when you have some books and you had some success, but basically have done no marketing and no launches for quite a while. So it's really great to listen to the episode as it demonstrates different perspectives of different author businesses. So some specific things I found interesting from the show, but it's a super long one so definitely have a listen as you do your post Holiday Cleanup. But the guys, Doug and Nick mentioned that back in June Amazon's algorithm was a mess, in their words, and the algorithms shifted enough to necessitate changes in release strategies to achieve ranking visibility. And there were also ups and downs with Facebook ads now I guess because I just literally never look at rankings. I almost never look at my Amazon sales in general. I mean I do look at it sometimes. I do keep an eye on money coming in. That is my most important metric electric. And I do check my auto ads monthly, but that's about it. I haven't really done have I done any Facebook ads this year? I don't think so. Might have done some for my Kickstarter But I don't run them all the time. And so, yeah, anyway, I was like, wow, okay, that's interesting. I didn't really, I wasn't even really aware of it. Nick also said it's becoming increasingly difficult to make books stay sticky in the charts. Previously, a new release might have a long sales tale that sustained an author until the next book, but now it drops off quicker because the market is so flooded now. Doug attributed some saturation to AI, noting that while not all books are AI generated, AI tools are helping authors release books faster, resulting in more product hitting the market and increasing the struggle for visibility. And of course, I've talked about this before in terms of selling direct because you, you control your store, you're selling to your audience. No one can advertise on your page, no one can kind of steal your traffic as such. But you can also do premium gorgeous hardbacks, which shift the focus from speed to product quality. And my average order value on Kickstarter is 40 pounds instead of, say, Amazon, maybe 4 pounds. So it's a sort of 10x now, of course you have fewer readers at that level, but you can stand out as so few people are doing it this way compared to the people who are flooding the market with ebooks and audio. So as ever, you still need to do marketing, but I prefer the AI assisted artisan author approach and focus on the artisan there, which is not about speed at all. And when you hear my roundup in a minute, you'll see, I mean, I obviously talk about using AI for lots of different things, but I've really not put out many books this year because I don't use it for that speed approach. So competition has also impacted Amazon advertising. Nick noted that some authors are spending enormous amounts on bids, driving up costs to a point where it's difficult to compete. And Doug said his net income remained the same as he pulled back on ads while still releasing eight books, which is a hell of a release schedule. I have never done that. That's crazy. Sarah said her income was steady as she focuses on direct sales and special editions and does not rely heavily on ads or aggress marketing. And in fact, I then messaged Sarah and said, come back on the show, come back on this show and we're going to talk about being introverts and quiet and how you can still be an author and sell books with quiet non hyp marketing. That's going to be our episode, which will be fun. That's coming up in 2026. So there is really an interesting dichotomy emerging and it's really your choice as an indie author what you want to do with your business. You can choose. It's like two different ecosystems. There really are authors who pay little attention to Amazon, like Sarah and I, and you have a choice. It's a different business model, but it is possible. And of course we still sell on Amazon. You can still buy my books on Amazon. It's just not the only way or the way we really focus on and so we don't have to look at rankings or sales all the time. And that makes it, I think frankly, less stressful. So some other things from the episode Doug and Nick mentioned that AI translation was a game changer for some authors they know know and they are getting into it too, obviously. Amazon Translate has now launched in the US for Spanish and available on your KDP dashboard if you publish in the usa. It's not available for me here in the UK or most of us outside of the us, but I'm sure it will be coming. Many authors are also using Scribe Shadow and also GlobeScribe AI. I will mention this again in my trends for 2026, but I expect a massive expansion of this next year. Jamie's perspective on getting her business house in order is also interesting as without maintenance or attention, links have broken, automations aren't up to scratch, and so she's focusing on some of that maintenance as she works toward her next release. And I also hope to have Jamie back on this show to talk about that later in 2026. But it reminded me that we all have to do that. I've actually been doing a bit of an update to my website. I'll talk about that in my 2026 New Year show. But everything degrades. That is entropy. It will all fall into chaos. There is no passive income, there is no set and forget. You have to manage your author business, you have to manage your backlist, you have to email people. You have to do something. It is not just write a book, stick it up and then wander off and expect the money to come in. You have to keep an eye on things, you have to upgrade stuff, you have to change tools and in fact they also talk about what email systems they use. And I was also thinking about it. I started in 2008 on one shopping cart. Some of you might remember that. Then I moved to AWeber and ActiveCampaign and then ConvertKit, which is now Kit and I am still with them. Lots of authors are moving to Substack, which is more for essays or podcasts rather than author update emails. But anyway, lots of interesting things in those two episodes. Check them out on Wish I'd Known Then podcast or the two authors podcast past Wherever you're listening to this Kickstarter also posted a 2025 year in review and I love how they opened it, noting in many ways 2025 asked creators and communities to hold more than ever before. Rising costs, economic uncertainty and the continued erosion of traditional support systems for art and independent work made it a challenging year to build anything new. And yet, across categories and continents, creators and backers on Kickstarter responded not by pulling back, but by leaning in. They funded ambitious ideas, rallied around passion projects, and proved that creative work still thrives when people are empowered to support one another directly. What followed became Kickstarter's biggest year to date, not as a fluke, but as a reflection of a deeper cultural truth that even in moments of instability and exhaust there is a ravenous appetite for originality, independence and community driven creation. I love that because let's face it, we all have moments of instability and exhaustion, but we're still aiming for originality, independence and as a community, we're driven to create for sure. And I love that. And I've obviously been leaning into this too over the last few years. More human touch, more beautiful physical books, more original work, more independent and terms of my stores. And however you choose to work, whether you use AI tools or not, you can focus on small, high quality community focused campaigns rather than trying to reach a mass market using the big companies like Amazon and Meta. So it is a different way to do things as I said, but I personally find it very satisfying and will be doing more more on that in a minute. Kickstarter also introduced two features. They introduced Kickstarter Pledge Manager giving creators more flexibility to manage add ons fulfillment and post campaign engagement. And I don't use the Pledge manager as it says it will manage tax for you and I have a process for that already. But if managing tax is one reason you have avoided Kickstarter then maybe this will help. Go read about that Kickstarter Pledge Manager. You can also do pre launch updates to help engage followers and build momentum before launch, which I'll be trying this year. They've introduced pledge over time for higher ticket items so backers don't have to pay all at once. There's also a newsletter, Kickstarter After Dark, a dedicated newsletter that helps not safe for work projects reach the right audiences and make it easier for backers to discover them. Now I don't write NSFW not safe for work, but many indie authors do and a lot of the big platforms censor erotica, so this will be another avenue for marketing if you do write not safe for work material wheel so on AI things It's been a big year in AI. I just wanted to mention a few key things that were important in AI and copyright. The anthropic settlement was significant in that it essentially ruled that training on copyright data was fair use, but that they had to pay for using pirated books. That settlement should go forward in 2026, but it's so funny how people seem to be sort of of crowing that that was a success. But of course the ruling was Copyright training on copyright data is fair use. Now there are of course more open court cases, but there were also a lot of licensing deals struck across various industries. Disney's deal with OpenAI being the most recent for SORA videos. There are going to be a lot more licensing deals in 2026, but this train is not slowing down. And remember of course copyright law is different in different countries, so even if things change in the USA, TR usage will continue elsewhere. So also AI narrated audiobooks went mainstream in 2025 with Spotify accepting 11 Labs and other AI narrated audio and Amazon opening their own audible virtual voice AVV accessible in the KDP dashboard. Lots more authors are now doing AI narration and it's opening up new languages, new accents and new opportunities for voice licensing. And of course I have my own AI voice clone, which I'll talk about in the main section. Back in 2019, I did an episode on this show on 9 Ways that AI Would Disrupt Authors and the publishing industry over the next decade. So before 2029 one of those nine ways was that voice synth technology will replace human narrators for mass market audiobook narration. Note that I said mass market. And in my 2020 book on AI and publishing, I said that the rights would stratify. Like there wouldn't just be one right for audio, like you don't just sign away all aud, but the AI audio would turn into the cheaper mass market narration and there would then there would be high quality human narration multivoice sort of big productions which would command premium prices for a premium experience. And we're certainly heading in that direction. And of course I said before 2029, so I'm pretty confident of us making that. I'll link to that episode in the show Notes that was out in July 2019. I'm usually two to five years early. In some cases I'm far more than that. But in that article I also A couple of other things that I mentioned in that article. Non fiction books, blog posts and news articles will be written by AI. That's definitely happening. Copyright law will be challenged as books are used to train AIs, which then produce work in the voice of established authors. Translation will be performed by AI for books as well as other content, and content will explode exponentially and AI discoverability and marketing tools will help navigate the tsunami. So looks like we're on track for all of those things, and I might have to do an update on that article in 2026. So then the biggest jump for me in terms of my own experience with the AI tools was the shift to reasoning and thinking models and the expansion of the context window. So the context window is how much you can give it as background. And now it's big enough you can give it a whole series. For example NotebookLM, if you haven't tried that, you put in a whole series and then use that as a world bible. You can say, okay, give me a list of characters in alphabetical order. Very, very useful if you've never done that and then you realize that you overuse certain letters. I always default to Mary as a character name and a lot of my characters have names beginning with M. So this is super, super useful. And so having a bigger context window, being able to give it a lot more to work from is useful. And then the thinking models, the reasoning and thinking models think a lot more and they take a lot more time. And I've been doing a lot of deep research reports on topics which I just love. It will go away and do a massive deep dive on different topics and the work is more accurate. They use citations. It's just super useful. So just so you know, I currently use ChatGPT 5.2, Thinking Claude 4.5, Opus Gemini 3 Pro, and Notebook LM. They're probably the main ones I use and my prompts are often paragraphs long. Like the word prompt is just not even appropriate anymore. You do not use these things like you would do a Google search for example. You can just give them a lot more work to do. It's very much a back and forth developmental process. So if you haven't tried the models or you haven't tried them in a while, then give them a go. One of the most useful things for authors is to get a personalized marketing plan. So give it links to your author website, social media, your Amazon author page, and then tell it your goals. For example, I want to grow my email list or I want to grow my revenue, ask for a deep research report and go from there. And of course, if you're in my Patreon, we do a lot of this kind of thing in there. That's patreon.com thecreativepen in personal news, I've been working on my tall ship thriller, which is now called Bones of the Deep, inspired by my own blue water sailing trip on a tall ship in 1999 from Fiji to Vanuatu. Now the story has it's been one of the things on my list for a long, long time. And Jonathan's been working on his MBA dissertation this holiday. And when I finished my term of my masters, which I'll talk about in the main section, I was like, I'm just going to work on this over the holiday. So I've really been enjoying writing fiction. It's so much fun to write fiction when I've been writing these academic essays where every single line has to have some kind of, well, not every line, but, you know, quite a lot of citations and backing up your opinions and all this with sort of searching research papers and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I've been really enjoying writing this book. It is just a. Well, it's a thriller. It was going to be horror, but it is now it's a thriller. So the Kickstarter campaign will go live in April. But you can read a bit about it, see the COVID and some photos from my trip. Yes, photos of me from 1999@jfpen.com bones that's jfpenn.com bones and that will go to the Kickstarter pre launch page, which you can put up many, many months in advance. So I'm planning to do that in April. But yeah, wanted to start the pre launch. As you know, one of the most important things with Kickstarter is people signing up for the pre launch. So there you go. I've also been preparing my webinar on business for authors and the focus is really on transformation, which I will talk more about in my New Year episode coming soon. I'm running the webinar twice, January 10 and January 24 and there'll also be the replay. If you buy a 10th ticket, you'll get the replay, the video, the audio, the slides, any other material. So even if you already have a business of some kind or if you're thinking about an author business, it's a chance to think about some more strategic questions and set yourself up for 2026. And there will be. It's not just me teaching, I will also be getting you to do some writing and some thinking and so it's really aimed at your own transformation. Find the links@thecreativepenn.com live L I V E thecreativepenn.com patrons get 25% discount so check the Patreon site if you are a patron before you book. And of course I've been running my own businesses, different businesses for 25 years and I'm actually including some of my failures in the material to help you think about some of the questions. Because my failures before starting the creative pen helped me make this business a success. Or at least it is so far. Touch wood. And I have now been a multi six figure author entrepreneur with multi streams of income, multiple streams of income every year since 2015. So a decade now. So I guess I did learn a few things along the way. So thanks for your emails and comments and photos. Sally Shakti said. I just listened to the relaxed author episode, really enjoyed the permission it gave me to become the kind of writer I want to be. What most inspired me was hearing you speak about how much you enjoy researching your book books. Yes, it really reminded me of why I want to write and what I love most about the process. Ah, I just love research. As I mentioned, I am always getting the AI tools to do research reports for me that help me with my own research. Love it. So just Sally Shakti said. Just having this realization and clarity helps me to put me on a path of clearer intention when it comes to my own writing and research. Fantastic. So please leave a comment on the podcast show notes@wcreativepenn.com or on the YouTube channel. Or you can email me, send me pictures of where you're listening or your favorite cemetery, crypt or churchyard. JoannaTheCreativePenn.com I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation. So today's show is sponsored by my community@patreon.com TheCreativePen thanks to the 17 new patrons who've joined over the last few weeks and thanks to everyone who've been supporting for my months and years. Right, let's get into the main section of the show. 2025 review of my Creative and Business Goals so another year ends and once more it's time to reflect on our creative goals. Did you achieve everything you wanted to? Let me know by leaving a comment. I always find it interesting to look back at my goals from a year ago because I don't really look at them in between and sometimes it's a real surprise how much they've changed or things that happen that I didn't plan. And this year is no different. So I'll go through my J.F. penn books first, then Joanna Penn and the podcast and Patreon and surprising things. And also while I didn't quite epically fail at some of my goals, I certainly didn't smash them out the park. Plus reflections on my 50th year year so first up, J.F. penn, Death Valley A thriller. If you're a longtime listener, this was my desert book, partially inspired by visiting Death Valley in California in 2024, but also from many years of loving deserts and one of my first memories, flying over the Sahara when we moved to Malawi in Africa in the late 80s. And that kind of pervasive love of deserts has been haunting me ever since. And then I was like, right. Death Valley it's Gon is a standalone, high stakes survival thriller, no supernatural elements. One of my rare books with no supernatural there are ancient bones and a hidden crypt from a lost Spanish mission. Of course, wouldn't be me without some hidden crypt and some bones. The Kickstarter campaign in April had 231 backers pledging £10,794, which is around US$14,000. The hardback is a gorgeous foiled edition with custom end papers, research photos and a ribbon. Thanks to everyone who was part of that campaign. Now, as an AI assisted artisan author, I used AI tools to help with the creative and business processes including the background image of the COVID the custom endpapers and the book trailer which I made with Midjourney and Runway ML. And the audiobook is narrated by my JF Pen voice clone which took a little to get used to, but now I really love it and I published Death Valley Wide a few months later over the summer and it is out now on all platforms. Jfpenn.com Death Valley so while that was my, I guess my main full length book of the year, I also got two more into the world in a wider sense. So JF Penn, Blood Vintage, my folk horror and Catacomb, the audiobook, which has been years. I've been waiting years for that one. So first of all, with Blood Vintage, I wrote that and did the Kickstarter for the hardb in late 2024. Thanks if you were part of that one. And then worked with a US agent to see if we could get a deal for it. That didn't happen. And although there were some really nice rejections, like great rejections, mostly it was Silence and the waiting around really was a pain in the proverbial I am not someone who likes to wait around. So after a year on submission, I went ahead and published Blood Vintage in all formats wide. It's available everywhere. Again, I use my voice clone for the audiobook which I and if you enjoy books by Adam Neville or films like Midsommar or proper vintage English folk horror like the Wicker man, check it out@jfpenn.com bloodvintage I also finally produced the audiobook for Catacomb. It is a standalone thriller inspired by the movie Taken, set in the catacombs under Edinburgh. I love the father sacrificing everything to save his daughter Trope Armageddon the film Armageddon would be the other sorts of inspiration for this book. And I wanted a male voice. But this is it is a long novella. It's either a long novella or a short novel basically. And it obviously it never made like so much money that I wanted to pay for full narration. So I was waiting for the AI narration to get a lot better and I found a male voice. It's. I find it easier. Like Blood Vintage in my voice is perfect. Perfect. Death Valley in my voice is perfect because they both have female British main characters, which is what I often do. But Catacomb has this male character, ex military search and rescue kind of character. And I was struggling with the voice and then finally I found one on eleven labs earlier this year which really fitted the character, the father who goes into his daughter, who goes after his daughter into the catacombs. So yeah, really happy with that. And the book is also available everywhere in all the usual formats. And then one of my big goals for the year was and this was kind of an ego goal, but I was really happy with the Kickstarter too. But JF Penn the Buried and the Drowned Short Story collection. Now one of my big goals was I wanted to get all my short stories into print. I've been writing them for more than a decade, I guess even yeah, sort of 2012. So yeah, let's say 13 years worth of audio and ebooks, but nothing physical. And I don't know about you, but if something doesn't exist physically, it almost feels like it doesn't exist. So I was like the these are my work and I want my work in print. Plus to do a nice collection, I needed the two extra exclusive stories. I wanted a really beautiful special edition and all of that. So partially it was ego because I just wanted my work in print, but I wanted to do a beautiful book for my 50th year so I wrote two new stories. So the Black Church, which was inspired by my Iceland trip in March and also Between Two Breaths, which was inspired by an experience scuba diving at the Poor Nights Islands in New Zealand almost two decades ago. Really. Well even more than that actually now I guess it would have been over two decades ago. There are personal authors author's notes accompanying every story. So the collection is actually part short story, part so part fiction and then part memoir. And that is a human narrated audiobook. So it's all human mean narration. Now I did this in September, so the Kickstarter was in September 2025 with 206 backers pledging almost £8,000. So that's like ten and a half thousand US dollars for the various editions conditions. I did my first patterned sprayed edges and of course there are skulls and I love the hardback. It has head and tail bands and if you don't know about head and tail bands, they do add cost but they make the hardback really strong and just gives it a lot more longevity I guess. Gorgeous paper, foiling a ribbon, color photos, custom end papers. Like I really did every single possible thing I could with this book and I've heard from lots of people who got the special hardback that it is indeed a beautiful book. Thank you. If you were part of the campaign and if you are interested in that, it is now out everywhere in all editions. The signed limited edition was for the Kickstarter but you can still get that hardback as a print on demand, not signed. So the Buried and the Drowned you can find@jfpen.com buried and if you have enjoyed the stories, a review would be much appreciated on my store jfpenbooks or Goodreads or wherever you usually want read. So then Joanna Pen books for Authors so early in the year. How to Write Nonfiction the second edition launched wide as I only sold it through my store in 2024. So it is available now everywhere in all formats, including a special hardback and workbook@creativepenbooks.com I also unexpectedly decided to write the fourth edition of successful self publishing, mainly because I saw so much misinformation and hyp around selling direct and I needed to get into writing how many options there are for indie authors now. I also do not offer any publishing services myself and I saw that most of the books about self publishing were being put out now by people who were offering publishing services, which means they have to be a bit biased because it's underpinning services and I don't do publishing services. So I thought, right, I really need to put this out. So yeah, the ebook and the audiobook are also free from my store, creativepenbooks.com and also available in all formats including print wide. If you haven't revisited options for indie authors for a while and even if you read earlier editions of this book from me, please have a read or a listen. As the industry moves fast and you might not even know how much opportunity we have now. So probably wherever you're listening to this, you can also listen to the audiobook or you can go to thecreativepen.com SSP4 and get that fourth edition. So yeah, I didn't plan to do that, but I just, I just really felt the need to do that. I also really rate ChatGPT helped me with this. I uploaded the old edition and said give me an outline of what I need to update for now. And if you're updating an old non fiction book to a new edition, this is a great way to get a sort of overview because I felt like it was so unmanageable in my head that I needed like some help with a list of what needed to be done. So that really helped. Also for Joanna Pen and J.F. penn actually all my fiction and non fiction audiobooks are on YouTube. So after an inspiring episode with Derek Slayton earlier in the year, I put all my audiobooks and short stories on YouTube. Firstly, my non fiction channel is monetized so I do get some income from that. YouTube.com TheCreativePen it's not much, but it is something and I believe in lots of something. Streams of income. I mean this is the truth, not many of my streams of income are massive, you know, great big lumps of money. They're all reasonably small, but there's lots of them. So I really love building up new small streams of income because you just never know how people are going to find things. So that is the most important thing to me. It is marketing for my books and many audiobook listeners go on to buy other editions, especially non fiction listeners. So I'm one of those people. I might start listening to an audiobook or just chapters, say on Spotify, and then I'll be like, this is great, I need to look at this again. Or maybe I want to write some notes on it. And so I'll buy the print edition almost as a sort of backup. And I won't necessarily read the whole thing again, but I'll flick through it to whatever chapter I was like Yeah, I need to remember that or I need to write notes on that. And that is so I'm definitely one of those people. The audiobooks are also part of doubling down on being human since I human narrate most of my non fiction as well as the memoir and the short stories and I will continue to do those things myself so that the voice clone is really only for full length fiction or fiction when it's not appropriate for my voice. This helps bring people into my ecosystem and they may then listen to the podcast and end up buying other books or joining the package Patreon. And finally, in an age of generative AI assisted search, which is a huge deal now, I want my books and content inside Gemini, which is Google's AI and it trains partially off YouTube. YouTube is owned by Google and I want my book surfaced in recommendations. And so by having your audiobooks on YouTube they will be surfaced by Gemini. And if you're anti AI, then you shouldn't be using YouTube. YouTube either, as well as any of these things, which pretty much it's in everything now. So only you can decide what you want to do with your audiobooks. But if you want to listen to mine and you like YouTube, then YouTube the creative pen for nonfiction or FPEN author for fiction and memoir as well as the usual audio platforms and my own stores, then the Creative Pen Podcast and my Patreon community. It has been another full year of the podcast. This is episode 842, which is kind of crazy and I think now, I mean it's kind of inevitable that I will have to reach a thousand, which is going to take three or four more years. When I say it like that, I wonder. But yeah, I'm certainly planning to reach a thousand now somehow, if you don't know the backstory. I started podcasting in March 2009 sporadically, and then I went to weekly about a decade ago in 2015 when I committed to making this a core part of my author business, which it absolutely is these days. Thanks to the wonderful corporate sponsors for the year. All services I personally use and recommend ProWritingAid Draft 2, Digital, Kobo, Writing Life, Book Funnel, written Word Media publisher, Rocket and Atticus. It's also been a fantastic year inside my patreon community@patreon.com thecreativepen thanks to all patrons. I love the community and I'll talk a bit more about this in a minute around sort of moving away from the drama, but I am able to share my unfiltered thoughts in the Patreon in A way that I've stopped doing in the wider community. Even a tiny paywall and it's only a couple of dollars a month, makes a big difference in keeping out the haters. So I've also and also I control it. So even if a hater does come in, I can just throw them out. I've also done monthly audio Q&As, which are extra solo shows like this one where I answer patron questions. I am actually recording the December edition after I finish recording this. I've also done more live office hours on Zoom this year and the recordings go up within 24 hours so everyone can join in and get the benefits. And it's been a lot more fun than I thought to have live sessions with patrons, so I'm definitely doing more of that. And I've also shared content, some kind of content every week on AI tools, use cases, places, different tips, as well as writing and author business tips. And patrons also get discounts. On my webinars. I did two webinars on the AI assisted Artisan author which were great fun and I will be updating all of that and running those again sometime in 2026 as they were a lot of fun and obviously a lot continues to change. So if you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us@patreon.com TheCreativePen we have almost 1400 members now, which is wonderful, wonderful. Thank you to everyone who is part of the community. So my unexpected goal of the year, the thing I didn't plan for and thus was quite a surprise, which is Masters in Death, Religion and Culture at the University of Winchester. So during the summer, as I did my Gothic cathedral research, I went around visiting lots of cathedrals. I realised that I was feeling just quite jaded really about the publishing world and totally sick of the drama in the Author community over AI. Really. You know, I've been talking about it since 2016, so a lot of the issues that people have I've already investigated, I've already talked about and I feel like I've moved on and I'm just using this stuff and I really enjoy it and so I just was like, oh, I just don't want to to deal with all of that stuff. So spending time in beautiful places and thinking about deep time and the span of history and these Gothic cathedrals have such soaring naves and you can sit there and look up and just gives you so much perspective. And I thought about how I wanted to spend my time. I am not interested in the Drama and I needed some space and I do lean on Memento Mori, remember you die to keep perspective in my daily life. You know, life is short and we need to make the most of it and all of that. And my top five Clifton strengths are learner, intellection, strategic input and futuristic. And I was like, I need more input and I need more learning. And I usually get that from travel and book research, but I haven't had enough of that this year since Jonathan, my husband, is busy finishing an MBA and I have done trips without him, but I much prefer prefer to do it together. So I decided to lean into learning And I asked ChatGPT to research courses that might suit me. Oh, and it found some good ones. But the one I decided to go for was the Masters in Death, Religion and Culture at the University of Winchester here in the uk, which I could do full time and also online. It would be a year of reading quite different things, writing academic essays, which is something I haven't done for decades, and hanging out with a new group of people who are just as fascinating as me with macabre topics and who don't look at me strangely when I talk about what I'm interested in. So I was like, this would be a great idea. So I started in September and I've now finished the first term, tackling various topics around theories of death and hell and the afterlife in the Christian tradition, the ethics of using human remains to inspire fiction and many other interesting things. I have bought lots of lots of awesome books. I have read a ton, I've written lots of essays. And I think that's probably the weirdest thing, because it was a challenge to get into the style of academic essay writing. But I think the weirdest thing is that it's an audience of one, because you read it yourself and edit it and everything yourself, and then you send it to your professor and they read it and give you a mark and that's it. And I kid you not, these are not essays you're going to want to read. I mean, they're super academic. But I've certainly loved the rigour of academic research, the importance of detailed citations. I've really enjoyed that. Something I think the indie author community needs more of. And I'm going to come back to this in 2026, going to revisit that, what we can learn from academic writing and publishing and also what might be not so great about it. But I've certainly found the topics fascinating and the degree is a great way to expand my mind in a new direction. And distract me from the drama of the author community, which, let's face it, is never ending. There's always a drama about something. I mean, when I first started out, the drama was over. Ebooks Will ebooks destroy print? Well, clearly not. You know, should you go indie or trad? That was a big drama. There's been so many dramas over the years and of course the 8ai drama is just one of the new ones. So yes, I will get back into my studies in mid January and will finish in September 2026. And it has already inspired a new book which I'll talk about in my New Year update. I've been writing that since I finished my term, but I know it's going to inspire a lot more before the end of 2026. So while this was an unexpected thing to happen, I feel like like it's been really good for me and just given me so much richness and things that I would not have had otherwise. So yeah, I think a midlife random degree is a good thing. So Book Marketing I'm going to say this is not quite a fail, but it's definitely lackluster. So in my 2025 goals I set I would do a monthly book marketing plan and organize my paid ad campaigns per month for revolving first books in series and my main earners. Did I do that? No, I didn't. I also said I would organize my Shopify stores, creativepenbooks.com and jfpenbooks.com into more collections to make it easier for readers to find things they want to buy. So while I did change the theme of creativepenbooks.com over to impulse theme to make it easier to find collections, I haven't done much to reorganize or add new pathways through the books. I am therefore rolling this goal into 2026. I also said I would reinvigorate my content marketing for JF Pen and make more of booksandtravel page with links back to my stores and do fiction specific content marketing with the aim of surfacing more in the LLMs as Generative Search expands, which it certainly has this year. And I know I'm familiar surfacing and as I am getting traffic, but I did want to do a lot more of that now. I did reinvigorate books and travel podcast, but once I started my masters I then had to kind of dial that back again. I have started extra content for jfpenbooks.com and I'm going to roll this into 2026 as I said, because I have a lot I want to do. I just haven't really focused on it. I did say I would leverage AI tools to achieve more as a one person in business. So I use AI tools, mainly ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini every day for different things, all kinds of things, personal stuff as well as. I mean like literally fixing household objects as well as research. And I use it for so many things and but as ever, I'm pretty scattergun about what I do. I'm very intuitive writer, I'm very curious, and I love research. So I'm far more likely to ask the AI tools to do a deep research report on South Pacific merfolk mythology. I kid you not. More on that next week with my, oh I guess a few days time when in the new year or another research thing I've been looking at is how gothic architecture impacted the development of sacred music or how geology in deep time are reflected in literature. I'm far more likely to get into all of that kind of stuff rather than asking for marketing hooks, which if I'm bored, I just don't bother with things. So I certainly intended to use more AI for book marketing, but as ever I was just too optimistic about the timeline of what might be possible without too much intervention. So you can pretty much do everything with prompting finessing. And I certainly did all this like for my bookmark for my Kickstarter campaigns. You know, I got a lot of help with images and with marketing hooks and social media stuff. And so I would prompt, I would get an image or get some hooks and then I post on the various platforms. But I only did that for the campaign gains and I am not interested in spending my time doing that. My gold standard for an AI assistant is to upload the finished book. This is what I want. I mean, maybe this will be 2026, right? I want to upload the book and say here's a budget, go market this. That's literally what I want to do. I do not want to have to connect lots of things together in some Franken book workflow. And I see some wonderful indie authors doing that who would just love Autumn Automations, but it is just not me. That kind of one shot. Here's the book. Please go do stuff that is not available yet. Maybe 2026. I mean sure you can do that on with Amazon ads. And I do do that because of course I have done book marketing. So it's not like I haven't done it. I have done it, but I haven't done as much as I intended. And maybe everyone is thinking that themselves as well. But we all have to do some kind of book marketing because we have to sell some books and make some money. Me and marketing is a very important part of that. Like we just. You just have to do marketing. There is no choice. So I've mostly put effort so my time and my money into my Kickstarter launches. But of course I have consistent backlist sales fed by my podcast and I've I guess with between this show and books and travel, I've done 70 or 80 shows this year, plus interviews on other people's podcasts. I've been on quite a few podcasts this year. I guess I'm off the top of my head. I was recently on the Novel Marketing podcast. I have my alliance of Independent Authors podcast with Orna Ross. I was on the two Authors quite recently. That was fun. So yeah, I have been on some shows and that is definitely something I'll probably do more of in 2026. I also have my email newsletters. My main weekly marketing is the podcast and it's my email. My combined email list is around 60,000. I cull it every now and then because of GDPR and just people who aren't opening things anymore. So with the podcast in the email newsletter that's sort of regular marketing. I also have auto campaigns running on Amazon ads, so only on my non fiction just basically automatically marketing those and they work fine. I also have used written word media campaigns as well as bookbub throughout the year. And basically this is the minimum possible book marketing to keep the flywheel moving and as usual must do better. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only audience author saying that. Right now, however, my business has multiple streams of income. I have the podcast sponsorship revenue as well as the Patreon thank you and my sporadic webinars and affiliate income which all add to my bottom line and don't require paid advertising, which is wonderful because the profit is obviously much much higher than book sales which require advertising. So I have always recommended multiple streams of income and it's certainly what I still recommend and have myself. So then, reflections on my 50th year. So I woke up on my 50th birthday in March. We were in Iceland by the Black Church of Budir, out on the Skaefellsnes peninsula, and as the seals played in the inlet by the hotel, we walked in the snow over the ancient lava field under the gaze of the voltage volcano that inspired Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth. And then my short story the Black Church, which you can find in my collection, the Buried and the Drowned. On that trip we also saw the Northern Lights, which featured in that story. And this year has definitely been a shift. And I had previously been told by lots of people that 50 is a proper birthday, as in it's one of those that makes you stop and reconsider things. And it has. Has indeed been that. Although I've also found the last few years of perimenopause to be a large part of the change as well. And all the ladies will know what I mean with that. But it is indeed a big shift around priorities and not caring so much what other people think, which is a relief in many ways after a lifetime of it. Also, I don't have the patience to do things I don't think are worth doing for the longer term. And so I'm appreciating a quiet, quieter life. I'd rather lie in a Sunbeam and read with Cashew and Noisette, my British shorthair cats. I'd much rather do that than create marketing assets or spend time on social media. And I'd rather go for a walk along the canal with Jonathan than just go to some networking thing or go to a conference or like, I just. I'm really valuing a quieter life. And in my Pilgrimage memoir, written a few years ago now, but still relevant, I quote an anonymous source who said, pilgrim, pass by that which you do not love. Pilgrim, pass by that which you do not love. And I really value this quote. It's a powerful message and I take it to mean stop listening to people who tell you what is important, listen to yourself more, and only pay attention to that which you feel drawn to explore. And if you're like, like, no, I don't love that, then turn away from it. And on pilgrimage, it might be turning away from the supposedly important shrine of a saint to go and sit in nature and feel closer to God that way. And in our author lives, it might be turning away from things that just feel wrong for us and leaning into what is enjoyable, that which feels worthwhile, that which we want to keep doing for the long term. And as ever for all of us, it is the writing, the thinking, the imagination. And as I've always said, measure your life by what you create. It's the creation side of things that we love. That's what we need to remember when everything gets a little much. So I hope you can pass by that which you do not love in this coming year. I just think it really helps. Helps to stay away from the drama and in fact many authors left social media in 2025 and while I haven't left it all together, I don't use it much. I still post pictures proving I'm human generally from my research trips on Instagram fpenauthor which automatically posts to Facebook. Although I barely check my pages, I barely check my I certainly don't check any DMs. Don't ever DM me on social media because I literally don't even look at it. I am still on X with a carefully curated feed that I use to learn about the AI things which I share with my Patreon content community, but just in general. I guess turning 50 has given me more perspective and permission to do the things I love and let go of anything that feels like a waste of my time or anything that brings too much drama. So happy times indeed. It's certainly been a better year for that attitude then in terms of doubling down on being human, travel and health. Health wise. I have continued powerlifting this year. It is certainly something that I enjoy and is very good for me and all of us. I think everyone should be lifting heavy objects basically. I think as humans that's what we should be doing. Sitting at desks is very bad for us. I did another competition in September in the M2 category, which is the masters category. Now I'm in my 50s, I'm in the M2 and the 63 kilos category which is the weight category. And yes I won it, but yes I was the only person in it. So with the age and the weight I basically won that category. My deadlift was 95 kilos, my squat was 60 kilos and my bench press was 37 and a half kilos. So I'm really happy with that. It is just a couple of kilos less overall than last year, but I also weigh less so I'm actually stronger based on my lift to body weight percentage. I've also done a few pull ups in the last week with no band which I'm thrilled about. And when I get a video of this, this I will be putting it on Instagram because doing a pull up is one of these things that I've wanted to do for a long time and something yeah I'm gonna video it and put it on Instagram and I have. I did put a video of me powerlifting on Instagram as well. So if you want evidence it is there at jfpenauthor. On the travel side, Iceland was the big trip and I also had a weekend in Berlin for the film Festival where I met up with a producer and a director around an adaptation of my day of the Vikings thriller that didn't pan out, as most of these things do not. But I certainly learned a lot about the industry and why it doesn't suit me. It was a real wake up call that trip. And yes, I've dipped my toe into screenwriting many times and yeah, I really hope that I'm over it now. Certainly that trip really put me off. Also over the summer of 2020 25, I visited lots of Gothic cathedrals, including Lichfield, Rochester, Durham, York and I revisited Canterbury as part of my book research for the Gothic Cathedral book. Now I have. I now have tens of thousands of words written on this project. They are all over the place. It is absolute creative chaos. I also have thousands of photos, but this is one of those projects that will take time. A bit like my Shadow book, which became writing the Shadow book, but that took like a lot of years. A bit like Pilgrimage, which took a lot of years. So yeah, carried over to 2026. It might happen in 2026, but I don't know with the Masters. It might also be later, I don't know. But it's going to happen at some point. I do complete projects, it just depends how long it takes. I also spoke at Author Nation in Las Vegas in November 2025 and before it started I I visited Lower Antelope Canyon, one of the places on my bucket list and it did not disappoint. What a special place. Really loved that visit. Pictures as ever on Instagram F Penauthor if you don't know, if you think you don't know Antelope Canyon, go have a look at the photos because you'll be like, oh, that's the place. You'll recognize it. Beautiful rock colors of pink and orange and purple and beautiful shapes. It's a slot canyon formed by heavy rain and flooding. So another year passes and I am grateful for everything I did and created. And I am so grateful for you, for listening, for your support this year, if you bought my books, if you're part of the community, if you clicked on my affiliate links, if you bought my webinars, if you just in general, if you found my work useful this year, I am so grateful to you. You help me continue doing this for another year and yeah, I am super grateful. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being part of the community. Onwards to 2026. So I hope you found that interesting and useful as you reflect on your year. I hope your 2025 had some wonderful times as well as, no doubt some challenges, and I hope you have time for reflection as the year turns once more. Let me know in the comments whether you achieved your creative goals and any other reflections you'd like to share. You can leave a comment on the podcast show notes@thecreativepen.com or on the YouTube channel at the Creative Pen, or email me joannathecreativepenn.com also please send me pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or churchyard. I'll be back with my 2026 goals on new Year's Day, and then I'm planning to do more of a Live Look Ahead prediction Show on the first Monday the 5th of January. And remember, if you're thinking ahead to 2026 and want to level up your author business, join me for my January webinar on Business for authors details@thecreativepen.com live. Or if you're a patron, use the special Link for the 25% discount. In the meantime, Happy holidays wherever you are in the world. Happy writing and I will see you in 2026. Thanks for listening today. I hope you found it helpful. You can find the backlist episodes and show notes@thecreativepen.com podcast and you can get your free Author blueprint@thecreativepen.com Blueprint. If you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and X hecreative Pen or on Instagram and Facebook fpenauthor Happy writing and I'll see you next time.