Amanda Gunn speaks about her debut poetry collection, Things I Didn’t Do With This Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2023), in this installment of the Line / Break series hosted by Copper Canyon Press publicist Ryo Yamaguchi. Gunn is featured in “Performing the Future: Our Nineteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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Author: jkashiwabara
All of Us Strangers is a British romantic fantasy film directed by Andrew Haigh and based on the 1987 novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada. Starring Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott, the film follows a screenwriter who develops a relationship with a mysterious neighbor that triggers memories of his past and draws him back to his childhood home.
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Author: bphi
Two iconic personifications of the passage of time frequently appear at the start of a year: Baby New Year, a diapered baby wearing a top hat and sash displaying the upcoming year, and Father Time, an elderly bearded man often accompanied by a scythe and an hourglass. As we’re all pressed to return to work with renewed energy and begin the year with replenished resolve, take some time to reflect on the endings that coincide with these beginnings and write a personal essay on the theme of conclusions and closure. What routines or activities do you turn to that help bring you closure?
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Author: Writing Prompter
“It’s life bleeding into stories. I feel like the longer we live, the more life bleeds into stories.” In this Books Are Magic event, Yiyun Li reads from her latest short story collection, Wednesday’s Child (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), and discusses story endings, why it can take years to finish a story, and what sustains a plotless story in a conversation with David Means.
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Author: bphi
Last month, a long-lost art amusement park called Luna Luna was resurrected in Los Angeles, with rides and attractions created and designed by contemporary artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joseph Beuys, Salvador Dalí, Sonia Delaunay, Keith Haring, David Hockney, and Roy Lichtenstein. The interactive artworks were commissioned in the 1980s for an amusement park in Hamburg, Germany but were put away in storage, lost and forgotten for decades. This week write a story in which something that was created for another era suddenly resurfaces and provides whimsical joy to a new audience. How might you mark the passing of time and all that occurred during the years when the item was forgotten and left to languish? Is there a heightened sense of tension and anticipation, and long-awaited appreciation, for the creations?
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Author: Writing Prompter
For the past fifty years, the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York City has hosted its annual New Year’s Day Marathon, a day of readings and performances that has grown into a twelve-hour-long event with over a hundred artists and writers given a few minutes on stage. In a Washington Post article about last year’s gathering, poet Jameson Fitzpatrick explained that she was there to “bear witness to poetry’s being alive. Reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.” Write a short poem that captures the exuberant potential of verse, one that celebrates its own form and would be exciting to read in front of an audience. Consider how diction, sound, rhythm, and subject matter might collide to create a sensation of language teeming with vitality.
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Author: Writing Prompter
In this 2023 event hosted by the Chicago Humanities Festival, Zadie Smith reads from her latest novel, The Fraud (Penguin Press, 2023), and discusses the definition of historical fiction, the relationship between truth and emotion, and the impact of code-switching on her voice-driven writing with poet and novelist Chris Abani.
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Author: bphi
Another year ends, and once more, it’s time to reflect on our creative goals.
I hope you will take the time to review your goals and you’re welcome to leave a comment below about how the year went. Did you achieve everything you wanted to? Let me know in the comments.
In the intro, 2023 was the year that Twitter died — and became X. What that means for me, plus The Verge does an overview. Thoughts on lighthouses and what yours might be, from The Comfort Book by Matt Haig quoting Anne Lamott; “We’re in an artist’s age now,” reflections on the changing author business model from Johnny B. Truant; The Future by Naomi Alderman.
This episode is supported by my Patreon community, who fund my future-focused thinking time. If you join the community, you get an extra solo Q&A show monthly, as well as behind-the-scenes videos on planning for the year ahead, AI and creative business, plus discounts, early access, and more. Join the community for the price of a coffee a month at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn
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 the full transcript is below.
You can read my 2023 goals here and I reflect on what I achieved below.
Let me know in the comments below how your 2023 creative goals went.
Although I wrote and edited Pilgrimage in 2022, the publishing, launch, and marketing all happened in the first quarter of 2023.
The Kickstarter for Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways absolutely exceeded my expectations. It had 692 backers and funded at £25,771.
After the initial Kickstarter, I published the book on my Shopify store for a couple of months and then released it wide. You can find it here on my store, here on all the other retailers, or you can order it through your local bookstore or library.
I wrote and published a stand-alone novella, Catacomb, and two short stories, With a Demon’s Eye, and Beneath the Zoo.
I narrated the audiobooks for Pilgrimage, With a Demon’s Eye, A Midwinter Sacrifice, and I need to do Beneath the Zoo and Catacomb in early 2024. I’m committing to narrating as much of my fiction as possible (as human me!) as well as my non-fiction in order to ‘double down on being human.‘
I didn’t write action-adventure thriller ARKANE 13 as intended, but it’s first on my list for 2024. My creative process involves travel to specific locations to find stories, and I didn’t make it to Vienna this year, but I have a trip planned for the end of January 2024.
I’ve significantly upskilled this year in direct sales.
I’ve done two successfully funded Kickstarter projects, learned a lot of lessons, and improved my book marketing for launches.
I built a new fiction-first Shopify store, www.jfpennbooks.com and I did a Shopify accelerator with Pierre Jeanty.
I’ve added lots of bundles and box sets for both fiction and non-fiction for digital and print products, which makes a huge difference in terms of being able to offer options to readers, and also make advertising worth it.
Click here for fiction bundles and box sets by J.F. Penn
Click here for bundles and boxsets for authors by Joanna Penn
I’ve worked with Matt Holmes on AI-powered Meta advertising direct to my fiction store, and I only use Amazon auto-ads now on a few of my non-fiction books.
After more than a decade of working on this book on and off, I finally wrote and published Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words.
The Kickstarter had 1,059 backers and made £36,454 on launch.
I am really proud of the limited edition, gold foil hardback with black ribbon, and I’m encouraged that people want these premium products.
I also did a normal paperback, large print, ebook, workbook, and narrated the audiobook. All the usual formats are now out on all the usual stores (but the limited edition was only for the Kickstarter).
It was my biggest book signing ever, with over 430 books signed at the Bookvault factory in Peterborough, UK.
As part of the Pilgrimage Kickstarter, I wrote and recorded a course on Writing Settings and Sense of Place.
I’ve been consistently podcasting for another year with 63 episodes in total. You can find the backlist episodes here.
I’ve done quite a few solo episodes, which take the longest to prepare:
#728 – The 15-Year Author Business Pivot
#727 – How Generative AI Search Will Impact Book Discoverability in the Next Decade with Joanna Penn
#718 – Let Your Dark Horse Run. Writing The Shadow With Joanna Penn (audiobook excerpt)
#714 – Lessons Learned from 12 Years as an Author Entrepreneur
#690 – The AI-Assisted Artisan Author with Joanna Penn
#682 – Lessons Learned and Tips from Pilgrimage, My First Kickstarter Campaign
#671 – Writing Travel Memoir, Fear of Judgment, Fear of Failure, and Journaling with J.F. Penn
Thanks to my patrons at www.patreon.com/thecreativepenn for supporting the show. Your financial support demonstrates that the show is still useful and makes it worthwhile to continue. I really appreciate it!
In the last few months, I’ve moved the Patreon to a monthly subscription — the price of a coffee a month, or a couple of coffees if you’re feeling generous!
I’ve added video tutorials on various aspects of AI and author business, with much more to come, as well as the usual monthly audio Q&A.
The Patreon is now organized into Collections so it’s easier to navigate the content, which I will continue to add to over the coming year.
Thanks also to corporate sponsors this year: Kobo Writing Life, Draft2Digital, ProWritingAid, Ingram Spark, FindawayVoices, Kindlepreneur, and WrittenWordMedia.
2023 was the year that generative AI went mainstream, and what was futurist is now very much part of the mainstream conversation for authors and the publishing industry.
Some of the important developments for authors included the following, all of which I have talked about in the intro to the weekly shows:
Microsoft Co-Pilot is bringing generative AI to MS Word as well as other applications, and Google has brought Duet to Workspace and Docs. ProWritingAid and Grammarly use enhanced AI as part of their functions, and cover designers who use Adobe Photoshop and Creative Cloud have AI generative fill as standard, as well as other generative AI tools.
So much has happened in 2023, and I’ve been sharing what I learn in the intro to the podcast as well as in specific episodes including:
#690 – The AI-Assisted Artisan Author with Joanna Penn
#727 – How Generative AI Search Will Impact Book Discoverability in the Next Decade with Joanna Penn
You can find all the episodes and more resources at www.TheCreativePenn.com/future/
I’m also sharing video tutorials and other resources for my community at patreon.com/thecreativepenn including:
(1) Even if AI tools write and create ‘better’ books than me at some point, it doesn’t matter because I will still write and create. I measure my life by what I create, and even if no one wants the finished result, I will still do it.
(2) I can focus on doubling down on being human, and showing you my flaws and my humanity, and (hopefully) enough of you will buy what I make, and join my Patreon community, so I can keep doing this and not have to go back to a day job!
I go into more detail in The AI-Assisted Artisan Author, as well as my 15-Year Author Business Pivot episodes.
At this point in my mature creative business, my primary goal is to make enough money every year to sustain my lifestyle and investment goals, as well as be able to continue to write the books I want, when I want, and travel to places I want to visit.
I don’t want employees and I don’t want the overhead of scaling up the business, so I am very happy with the way things are.
Overall, the company made more money than last year, in terms of both revenue and profit, which is always a good direction for things to go in.
I had a goal to double my book sales revenue in 2023. I didn’t quite manage that but I did increase it by 50% and take it back into the six-figure GBP range through Shopify sales and my two Kickstarter campaigns.
These methods also require less advertising and promotional spend than retailer stores, so the profit margin is higher.
I had a goal to increase foreign rights licensing and subsidiary licensing, which didn’t happen, but I will carry that goal over and see what 2024 brings as I write different kinds of books.
It was a big year for travel and speaking and connecting in person. You can always find my photos at Instagram @jfpennauthor or Facebook @jfpennauthor
I spoke at Superstars of Writing in Colorado Springs and spent a few days in Washington DC on the way for book research.
I spoke at 20 Books Spain in Seville and really enjoyed the spring heat and the relaxed vibe, plus it was the first author conference that focused on AI, so it was a pivotal experience for many people.
I also spoke at London Book Fair the week after, again on technology and AI.
We went to New Zealand for Jonathan’s 50th birthday and met up with friends and family.
Jonathan and I went on a walking holiday in the Norwegian Fjords. It rained pretty much all the time, but we had a good break. Such a beautiful place!
I spoke at an author conference in Paris, France, and then went to 20BooksVegas where I spoke on various panels and had a Patreon meet-up.
It was also a significant conference for me in terms of the people I met and talked with, and the focus on AI and direct sales.
Cashew and Noisette have helped with social media book marketing this year, and Cashew in particular has kept me at the writing desk with purring companionship. I love being at home with my cats!
You can find more pics on Instagram @jfpennauthor
Health-wise, I’ve been consistently lifting weights this year. I am now post-menopause and lifting is much better than long-distance walking. I am training for my old lady body — plus I love lifting and am getting stronger every month!
My twice-weekly sessions with my personal trainer, Dan, are now focused on the three disciplines for powerlifting — deadlift (my PB is 90 kgs), squat, and bench press. I also walk to and from the gym (11km) twice a week, and do 8-10kms per day as part of normal life. So I still walk, I’m just not doing the longer distances.
If you’re interested in the benefits of lifting, I recommend Next Level: Your Guide to Kicking Ass, Feeling Great, and Crushing Goals Through Menopause and Beyond by Stacy T. Sims.
Thank you so much for being part of my community this last year — for buying my books in all formats, for being a patron of the show, for clicking my affiliate links, for leaving positive reviews on the books and the podcast, and for recommending them to others.
I wouldn’t have this career without you, so thank you so much and I hope you’ll join me for the year ahead.
I’ll be back with my 2024 goals on 1 January 2024.
The post Review Of My 2023 Creative And Business Goals With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.
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Author: Joanna Penn
Happy New Year, everyone! Welcome to 2024!
For me, 2023 was an incredibly productive year. What makes me most pleased and proud is that I feel I was able to return to a high level of productivity in a way that honored everything I’ve learned from the severe burnout I experienced in previous years. Above all, this has been a year of working through healing and growth in my relationship to the business side of being a writer (something I’ll talk about in a future post).
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As for this coming year, I have several plans in the works. In addition to continuing with my fiction WIP, I am considering expanding my YouTube channel into longer videos. Many of you have requested that I include a transcript of the videos (which I can’t do on YouTube due to word limits in the descriptions), so I am thinking about incorporating videos into the site, perhaps alternating them with the regular posts every other week. Let me know what you think about that!
The top project I want to complete this year is a short course that delves deeper into exploring the relationship of the shadow archetypes to the six main archetypes (Maiden, Hero, Queen, King, Crone, Mage) that I’ve talked about in Writing Archetypal Character Arcs.
I also have ideas for a new book on advanced story structure, and I’m even toying with creating a huge set of masterclasses that will cover all my most important information. That, obviously, would be a gigantic project that would span more than just this year! In view of how many requests I get from people looking for editors who follow my system, I’m also toying with the idea of offering a certification. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that as well.
I wish you an amazing New Year, full of joy, challenges, growth, satisfaction, and the best stories ever!
And now, just in case you missed them (or want to revisit them):
1. How to Create Insanely Complex Characters Using “Shadow Theory” (which was far and away one of my most popular posts ever with over 100k views in nine months! o.o)
2. Genre Tips: How to Write Fantasy (which was also my most popular podcast episode of the year)
3. 5 Tips for How to Return to Writing After a Long Break
4. The Daily Routine of a Full-Time Writer
5. How to Rediscover the Joy of Writing
6. Genre Tips: How to Write Literary Fiction
7. Your Story Isn’t Working? Here Are 6 Problems to Troubleshoot
8. 5 Ways to Use Your Character’s Shadows to Power Your Story
9. 8 Different Types of Scenes
10. 6 Lessons Learned From 4 Years of Writer’s Block
Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast or Amazon Music).
___
The post Top 10 Writing Posts of 2023 appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.
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Author: K.M. Weiland | @KMWeiland
I love January and the opportunity to start afresh. I know it’s arbitrary in some ways, but I measure my life by what I create, and I measure it in years.
At the end of each year, I make a photobook, and I publish an article here, which helps keep me accountable. If you’d like to share your goals, please add them in the comments below.
2023 was a year of change, culminating in my 15-Year Pivot, and so 2024 will be a year of consolidation and optimization of my new creative and business processes — as well as writing and creating, plus surfing the wave of more change ahead.
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 the full transcript is below.
As ever, I am a full-time author-entrepreneur and this is my job, so I have a lot of goals. If your goals are simpler — like finishing your book, or publishing for the first time, or selling 1000 copies, then fantastic! You don’t have to have such extensive goals as me.
Please share your goals in the comments so we can keep each other accountable.
I’m planning on two major book projects, both launching with a special edition high-quality hardback and other exclusive products on Kickstarter, then selling the main editions on my JFPennBooks.com store before publishing wide to all the usual places.
Spear of Destiny, An ARKANE Thriller book 13 will be first, possibly launching in April/May. I’ve already started the research in terms of reading and thinking, and I have a trip booked to Vienna, Nuremberg, and Cologne at the end of January for more in-depth research and story hunting.
The Gothic Cathedral project is a chaotic mess of ideas right now, which I absolutely love. I have some vague thoughts on what it might turn into. I trust emergence!
There will certainly be a gorgeous limited edition hardback of my photos of Gothic cathedrals which I’ve been taking for over a decade alongside essays on various aspects that go alongside it — beauty, cathedral thinking (long-term thinking and building something that lasts), memento mori, craftsmanship, harmony, gothic sensibilities, and much more.
It will be a non-fiction book under J.F. Penn that aligns with elements of Pilgrimage, and since many of the cathedrals feature in my novels, it also resonates with my fiction. It is very me, and hopefully interesting enough to some of you, too!
There may also be a mystery novel alongside it, based on a stonemason character I am researching, but I am a discovery writer. I don’t know what I am writing until I commit time to the project and get into it, so that will become clearer as the year goes on.
I also want to narrate more of my fiction as part of my ‘doubling down on being human’ approach. I need to do Beneath the Zoo, a short story, as well as the two new books above. I also still need to do Catacomb, but it has a male protagonist so I am hesitating about doing it personally as a female voice.
The first three ARKANE thrillers haven’t been in audio since I re-published the books in 2022 with substantial edits, so I am also considering narrating those, too.
But audiobook narration is a big job, and there are other options. I could hire the narration out, and there are also more AI narration options emerging. Somehow I will get everything in audio in 2024.
I have sooooooo many other projects in my J.F. Penn folder and I would love to get to a few more of them, depending on how the time goes.
I have several stand-alone novel ideas, and also many short stories, so there are lots of options to choose from. But two books could well be enough for my creative bandwidth and I want to give them both time and breathing space.
I’m aiming for a short story collection in 2025 or 2026, so I need to be writing them regularly, as they won’t all go into the collection. I really enjoy short stories and have a ton of ideas for them, so I’ll aim to write at least one or two in the year.
In 2023, I published two physical hardback editions I am super proud of. The color photo edition of Pilgrimage, and the gold foil/black ribbon edition of Writing the Shadow, both printed with Bookvault.
I want to go a lot further in 2024 and learn the language of physical books, as well as investigate how I can make some more beautiful editions.
I’ll be visiting some custom printers and papermakers, and generally delving more deeply into making books, and of course, sharing what I learn with you.
This is part of the over-arching trend of premium physical products becoming more important as the revenue models of digital head towards zero with the rise of generative AI and unlimited subscription and streaming.
Beautiful physical books were all the rage this Christmas with sprayed edges everywhere, and in the music industry, vinyl sales were the highest they’ve been since the 1990s, as reported by The Guardian.
The podcast will continue for another year, supported by my fantastic expanding community at patreon.com/thecreativepenn and my wonderful corporate sponsors — Kobo Writing Life, Draft2Digital, and ProWritingAid.
I will continue with the weekly show, primarily with news and an interview, as well as sporadic solo episodes when I have something more significant to say.
I’ll continue to share more content in the Patreon community. There will still be the monthly Q&A audio, which is like an extra solo episode every month, plus videos and tutorials on aspects of AI, creative business, mindset, and more.
You can join the community for less than a coffee a month (or a couple of coffees if you’re feeling generous!) at www.Patreon.com/thecreativepenn
Now I have shared my 15-Year Pivot, I need to action it. This means cleaning up TheCreativePenn.com and my non-fiction backlist, and making it more evergreen.
I’m preparing for the changes that will come with generative search, which I outlined in a recent episode on how it will impact book discoverability.
Amazon has already started experimenting with it through www.amazon.com/yourbooks which can generate recommendations if you click Discovery Mode, powered by AI.
It’s in Beta and only on the .com store and I mainly buy on the UK store, but it still came up with some interesting things. There are also no ads on the page so it’s cleaner to buy from, making it a better user experience, but clearly, a more difficult environment for advertisers.
This is only the beginning of what generative search might look like …
I also want to rewrite my Author Blueprint and make it available in ePub format as well as PDF. It’s only available through my email list at TheCreativePenn.com/blueprint and if you’re signed up, you will get that (hopefully) by the end of January.
I have unpublished my courses, so you can no longer buy them. If you bought any of them, you have at least six months to go through the material and you can also download the videos, audio, transcripts, and other material for your personal use. I’ll email through Teachable about that in the coming weeks.
Direct sales was one of the emerging trends of 2023 and 2024 will see it expand even further, as more authors and creatives reach readers directly with their books and more services emerge to cater to them.
Interestingly, these sales are ‘invisible’ to any of the charts or lists, and since Amazon is also opaque with their data, many indie authors are selling tens of thousands of books, and some are making big money in a kind of shadow industry.
Even Brandon Sanderson with his $41m Kickstarter didn’t make any list because Kickstarter sales are not counted in any lists. Neither are Shopify or WooCommerce or presumably BookTok sales through TikTokShop, which is a form of direct sales.
Perhaps this will change in 2024, or maybe it just won’t matter anymore as the splintering of the business models continues.
Personally, I love the freedom (and the profitability) of my Shopify stores — www.JFPennBooks.com and www.CreativePennBooks.com — but there is a lot more I need to do to optimize them, so I will be revisiting my Minimum Viable Stores to take them to the next level in 2024.
I have a list of things to do. I just need to action them. I could outsource this, but I have always built my own websites, and I like to tinker, so I will do it myself, it just takes a little longer!
I’d like to incorporate merchandise in some way, but at the moment that feels a little out of reach. Perhaps I will do it as part of the Gothic Cathedral project, so I will at least dip a toe into merch this year.
Most authors hate marketing, which is why the rise of AI tools in this area is super helpful! Essentially, advertising will need less human input as the models become better at targeting, prediction, analyzing data, optimization, and even the creative.
I wrote about the potential impact in my recent episode on How Generative AI Search Will Impact Book Discoverability In The Next Decade, and we might be seeing the impact on the advertising industry starting already.
The Information reported on 19 December, 2023 that Google is reorganizing its 30,000-person ad sales unit, as “Google is relying more on machine-learning techniques to help customers … which don’t require much employee attention.”
I’ve already transitioned this year. I only use Amazon auto-ads on KDP for my non-fiction books. I’m working with Matt Holmes on using more AI in Meta ads to my Shopify store.
We use generative AI images and leave all the targeting to the Meta algorithm. It’s only going to improve. Mark Zuckerberg discussed this in an interview with Lex Fridman in June 2023.
“In the future, if you’re advertising on our services, do you need an ad creative? No, you just need to tell us, ‘Okay I’m a dog walker and I’m willing to walk people’s dogs and help me find the right people,’ and [we’ll] create the ad unit that will perform the best. Give an objective to the system and it connects you to the right people.”
By leaving it to the Meta AI instead of over-controlling the targeting, I’m selling more fiction than I have in years, which is fantastic.
I used to think I couldn’t reach people who liked my cross-genre books, but the AI algorithm can target based on so many more granular data points that we could possibly select manually. Of course, this works best when you control the sale, so you can optimize for Conversion rather than Link Click Ads, as many authors do to Amazon.
In 2024, I intend to rely as much as possible on the more automated advertising and marketing possibilities as they emerge.
I also intend to make a book trailer for the first time in years. I am getting some awesome pictures from DALL-E through ChatGPT and also with Midjourney V6 so I will use those to make a trailer for my Spear of Destiny Kickstarter.
Text-to-video will improve substantially in 2024, so more tools will emerge as the year progresses. Check out Runway ML to see where the tech is right now and expect it to improve a lot this year.
In terms of my creative process, I love having ChatGPT and Claude as brainstorming partners, but as I have outlined in The AI-Assisted Artisan Author, I am not using them to pump out content ever faster.
I use them to spark new ideas and to riff on ideas with, as well as help me research. My creative time is so much fun now, and I would expect this to continue, even as more powerful models emerge in 2024.
The models we use may change, as their specific functions become useful in different areas. I will play with whatever becomes available — perhaps Open AI’s GPT5, maybe Anthropic’s Claude 3, maybe Google’s Gemini Ultra, or the open source model, Mistral. Perhaps even Amazon’s Olympus, rumored to be twice the size of GPT-4.
While 2023 was the year that generative AI went mainstream in terms of awareness, 2024 will be the year that AI becomes part of business processes and incorporated more into daily life.
I don’t have the bandwidth to go through all the potential possibilities, but in our industry, there will be data licensing deals for media companies and publishers — as there have been for The Associated Press and Axel Springer, which includes Politico and Business Insider.
Even though The New York Times is suing OpenAI at the time of writing this, I expect that to be settled and a licensing deal reached, alongside other kinds of arrangements that keep journalism alive and continue to build generative AI.
In many ways, being paid to create content this way may even be preferable to the ad model that is prevalent now. The media could concentrate on better journalism rather than writing click-bait to retain advertisers and make people click. What won’t happen is the end of generative AI.
In many ways, 2023 felt like year zero, with experimentation and playfulness and testing the limits of what’s possible. 2024 is year one, where regulations will start to come into effect, but the growth and change in AI will continue apace. This technology is not going away, so if you have avoided it in 2023, it’s time to engage.
Many of the tools we all use will have AI embedded as a seamless part of the experience. After all, do you even notice that your car satnav is powered by AI, or your shopping online, or your social media, or your TV choices?
The same will be true of the AI embedded into your MS Word or your Google Docs or your Adobe Creative Cloud, or any of the other services you use. It will have an AI co-pilot built in and you might not even notice.
AI audiobook narration is now available on most platforms, albeit in a limited manner, and in 2024, I would expect it to go mainstream and expand the amount of audio available.
Google Play Books offers auto-narration on its platform for free, and you can also download the files and sell them directly on your site, and also now publish them on Findaway Voices by Spotify, which is expanding its distribution to more places. Kobo Writing Life accepts AI-narrated audiobooks (while being mindful of giving the listener a good experience). Apple has its own AI narration service. Amazon KDP has a limited beta in the US for AI narration. Monica Leonelle goes into more detail in an article on The Author Analyst.
Even though I am AI-positive in many ways, and I have experimented with AI narration, I want to use my (human) voice as part of doubling down on being human, so I still intend to narrate my short stories and novellas. If ElevenLabs becomes an acceptable partner for FindawayVoices by Spotify, I might experiment with it in 2024 for full-length novels.
All this is great for consumers, but it drives down the revenue for audiobooks. This began with unlimited streaming and subscription models and continues with AI narration.
Once again, selling direct is the best way forward. My primary audio channel in terms of revenue is now selling direct — through my Kickstarters and my Shopify stores.
Thanks to Bookfunnel who enable us to sell audio as well as ebooks direct, and if you want to support more authors, then try listening to audiobooks or reading ebooks in the Bookfunnel app. The more of us who educate readers and listeners about doing this, the more they will buy from other authors, and the more we can build a sustainable ecosystem.
To be clear, my audiobooks are also on all the usual apps, but you can also buy them direct from me, including multi-book bundles that work out even better value. [Books for authors at CreativePennBooks.com and fiction and memoir, JFPennBooks.com]
As ever, I’ll keep you up to date on which aspects of AI impact our industry in the intro of The Creative Penn Podcast each Monday and I’ll share my experiments behind the scenes in the Patreon community.
I have a research trip to Vienna, Nuremberg, and Cologne booked for the end of January, which will feed into both Spear of Destiny and the Gothic Cathedral project.
I have a few other things booked so far:
I may also be at Thrillerfest in NYC at the end of May, and I might have a bigger trip planned for October, depending on how things shape out.
In terms of health, I turn 49 this year and my goal is to start entering powerlifting competitions next year once I turn 50. I’m stepping up my training in 2024 in order to get to a good lifting form and weight for the three disciplines of dead lift, squat and benchpress.
I’ll continue walking — I do 8 -15 kms per day as part of daily life — but I don’t intend to do any ultras or multi-day solos. I want to go into my fiftieth year healthy and fit, and stronger than I’ve ever been, and any free time for holidays, I will spend with Jonathan. He’s doing an MBA this year as well as working so he is very busy!
I have lots of things on a pinboard next to me and for many years now, I’ve had the statement, “I want to write the books I want, when I want, and travel where I want, when I want.”
As long as my business allows me to do that, and I don’t have to go get a day job, then I am happy.
I continue to value freedom — creative freedom in writing whatever I feel like, and who would have thought that I’d plan to write a book on Gothic Cathedrals!
Also financial freedom, and I focus on investing as part of my monthly accounting processes. If you want to concentrate on money and investing this year, check out my list of money books here.
That’s about it — and I am excited to get into the year ahead!
There will no doubt be many things we can’t see or anticipate, but if the world is in turmoil and you don’t know what to do about it all, just keep writing — even if it’s just for you. One day at a time, one word at a time. I hope you will join me on the journey.
If you’d like to share your goals for 2024, please add them in the comments below — and remember, I’m a full-time author entrepreneur so mine are substantial. Don’t worry if yours are as simple as ‘Finish the first draft of my book,’ as that still takes a lot of work and commitment!
The post My 2024 Creative And Business Goals With Joanna Penn [Updated] first appeared on The Creative Penn.
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Author: Joanna Penn
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