The BookFunnel Podcast

Jack Shilkaitis (00:44)
Hey folks, welcome to the Book Funnel Podcast where indie authors get real world advice on writing, publishing and growing a career on their own terms. Whether you're just starting out or you're deep into your author journey, we're here to help you build your readership.

boost your book sales and connect with your audience. Each episode we aim to bring you insights from authors, experts and industry insiders who have been there, done that and then some. My name is Jack. I am our Lead Author Support Specialist here at Book Funnel and I am joined today as always by my co-hosts Emma Allison and Kelly Tansey.

Kelli Tanzi (01:16)
Hello!

Jack Shilkaitis (01:16)
And our

guest for this episode of the podcast is Joanna Penn. Joanna, I want to welcome you to the Book Funnel podcast. For those in our audience who might not be familiar with you, might not know who you are, give us a brief introduction.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (01:25)
Thanks for having me! I'm excited to be here!

Yeah, sure. So I write under Joanna Penn and J.F. Penn and I have the Creative Penn podcast and also Books and Travel podcast. So yeah, I write books across thriller, dark fantasy, crime, horror, travel memoir and nonfiction for writers. I've basically just been sharing my journey. And as we record this in 2025, I've been writing for 20 years. So I've been feeling a little...

Jack Shilkaitis (01:57)
wow.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (01:58)
Yeah, mean, talk about on your own terms, but yeah, I started in 2005, started my site in 2008. I went full time in 2011. So yeah, I've been doing this a while now and really started at the beginning of the sort of indie author revolution.

Jack Shilkaitis (02:13)
Right, right, exactly. The golden era, as it's often referred to. I know I got into, was, I mean, I've been writing for some time, like since I was a teenager I've been writing, but actually got into indie publishing around like 2010, 2012, so a little bit after you there. Emma, I'm trying to, I think you are, is that about the time that you got started indie publishing? I'm trying to remember.

Emma Alisyn (02:39)
2009. Yup. My villain origin story, yeah.

Jack Shilkaitis (02:39)
your or yep I knew you were a little bit before me yes

and then Kelly is the baby ⁓ author of the crew

Kelli Tanzi (02:46)
I'm the baby. Yeah, I just

it's about four or five years now. So yeah.

Jack Shilkaitis (02:51)
Yep.

Yep.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (02:52)
well,

I'm sure there's people listening who haven't even started and we should say it's always a good time to start. So it certainly doesn't matter. And in fact, you know, back in so-called golden era, it was so hard because we didn't have the tools. I mean, I remember meeting Damon Courtney before he was Damon Courtney, you know, before, and he realized that one of the needs in the industry and then built it obviously. you know, back in the day we had practically nothing.

Jack Shilkaitis (02:57)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ha

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (03:18)
I mean, you now we can do pretty much every single thing that a traditional publisher can do. But I remember when non-US authors couldn't publish on Kindle. I mean, it used to be like that. yeah, so definitely don't think, yeah, but don't think the past was any kind of golden era. I think every year things get better for authors. There are more opportunities, more tools, more technology, more, know, just, so definitely now is the golden time.

Jack Shilkaitis (03:29)
Mm-hmm.

Right. It's changed a lot.

Right.

Right, I think that's absolutely true. It gets referred to as the Golden Era. I think in part because for those, right, for those who were maybe a little bit ahead of their time and kind of knew what they were doing, there were some aspects of it that were different, like the landscape was different. You could put your books up on Kindle and...

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (03:52)
Only by some people.

Jack Shilkaitis (04:06)
you wouldn't necessarily have to advertise them and that's kind of changed. Now, like advertising is absolutely necessary. And so there's some aspects of the landscape that have changed, but whether or not that's good or bad, I guess is kind of subjective because, right, exactly.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (04:19)
Yeah, and there's always pros and cons of technological change,

for sure.

Jack Shilkaitis (04:24)
Exactly,

exactly. But you know, it's funny. I've known Damon for pre-book funnel. I've known Damon. I can remember him telling me like the origin. Like I was there when he's explaining this whole thing to me. I'm like, okay, that sounds like an idea. don't know. At the time I hadn't even frame a reference for that. And now here I am on the podcast for his company that he made. It's just a bizarre turn of events.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (04:47)
Ha ha ha.

Jack Shilkaitis (04:49)
But as we traditionally do here in the beginning, we kind of check in with everybody. We're all authors here, of course, to kind of just see what everybody's currently working on. We don't usually like to pick on the guest first, but Joanna, if you'd like to share some of the projects you're currently working on first, you're more than welcome to. OK. Hey.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (05:08)
Yes, well, I even have a prop because I hand edit

it and this is a short story and I actually even just changed the title of it this morning when I was editing it. So I hand edit everything, I print it out and it's all scribbles and lots of marks. And so this is a short story for my first short story collection. So again, this is another thing over the years, we all do different things and I've written short stories for many years, but this will be my first collection. So the challenge of kind of shaping that.

Jack Shilkaitis (05:15)
That's hardcore.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (05:36)
writing exclusive stories for it. That is my project right now. And again, we should say your definition of success is so important. Obviously a short story collection is not really a knock it out the park, make loads of money product, but it will be my next Kickstarter and it will be a beautiful edition with foil and sprayed edges and everything. And I will be selling it direct.

Jack Shilkaitis (05:40)
Right.

Yeah.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (05:58)
So these are the things we can do now. We can do these creative projects that may not necessarily like hit the top of the charts, but they're what we really want to do. So that's what I'm working on.

Jack Shilkaitis (06:02)
Right.

Right,

right. No, I Kevin J. Anderson, we had him on the podcast a little while back and he had a short story collection that he he launched on Kickstarter.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (06:14)
his was a collection

of collections.

Jack Shilkaitis (06:16)
Right,

was, was, yeah, unto itself. But he didn't, I remember from that conversation with him, it was something that he kind of didn't expect to go off and his fans ate it up and devoured it. So yeah, you never know as the author what exactly is going to be your biggest hit and what's going to, you know, what people are, there might be something that you're like, this this book, this idea that I have, that's what everybody's going to love. Right? And then you put it out there and maybe, maybe not. You never know.

So absolutely. As for myself...

I am, gosh, I think it's been a hot minute since I've given much of an update. Still in the middle of some rewrites. I have some issues in my sci-fi, military sci-fi series. At least I consider them to be issues. But I wanna go back and I wanna iron a few things out in the first trilogy in my series. So I'm in the middle of that wonderful exercise that I know a lot of people are gonna give me flack for.

But I feel it's necessary and I'm actually enjoying it. So it's been fun so far, kind of reimagining a few aspects of my characters and things like that. I'm also at a point now where I am strongly considering making the switch to direct sales. After having some conversations with some other authors and you would think like you're the dude who works for Book Funnel. Of course, you're going to do direct sales. Like, why wouldn't you? Why haven't you been doing it already?

but I just feel like it's about time I kind of take take hold of my own destiny if you will To use to use that kind of language, but so that's where i've that's where i've been nothing flashy nothing flashy right now But that's what i've been working on Emma You're quiet over there in the corner

Emma Alisyn (07:50)
For once.

Jack Shilkaitis (07:51)
And Joanna, we do rib each other a little bit during this segment, so if we're teasing each other, don't... It just is what it is. It's our dynamic.

Emma Alisyn (07:58)
Oh, it's my turn. Okay. Well, I am ecstatic and discombobulated to report that I unofficially, no, I officially unpublished the first edition of Night in His Eyes, which was 54,000 words. It's the second edition is now 113,000 words and counting. And it's the difference between a Hershey bar. I mean, I love the first edition, but now I feel like it's just decadent, rich, dark chocolate.

Jack Shilkaitis (07:58)
floor is yours, Emma. Yeah, no, yeah, it's your turn.

Emma Alisyn (08:24)
Joanna what you said about this being the time the era where you could just really do what you love I resonate with that so much because the second edition of this book it's everything I wanted to do in the first edition but felt so pressured to get to market of course now blessed by book funnel I don't have quite as much pressure just the internal pressure so I'm just loving loving the experience of writing this

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (08:31)
Hmm.

Jack Shilkaitis (08:45)
Ha

Kelli Tanzi (08:47)
When...

When was the first edition out?

Emma Alisyn (08:50)
2022? 2022, I think. Ish. Yeah. I remember rage writing during COVID and Me Too and things like that. Which is interesting rereading it. I'm like, I see where that came from.

Jack Shilkaitis (08:54)
Mm-hmm.

Kelli Tanzi (08:59)
you

Yeah.

Jack Shilkaitis (09:06)
Mm-hmm.

Well, COVID in particular was an interesting time for a lot of folks because a lot of writers probably born out of that even, people that might've never considered the like, okay, I wanna write a novel, but I don't have the time. And then for a lot of people, they suddenly had the time. I don't think that was your situation Emma, if I know your history correct, but I don't think you're alone in that regard. That was a...

An interesting time for everybody and hey writing a novel is a great way to cope with some of that stuff. So if somebody out there is seeing this and you're like you got a lot of time on your hands and you need something to write it up try writing a novel try writing a novel. Kelly what about you what have you been working on lately?

Emma Alisyn (09:38)
Yes.

Kelli Tanzi (09:50)
Well, my contemporary romance that I'm doing in the shared world, so about 15 authors are contributing. They have started to go out to ARC readers, so...

Jack Shilkaitis (10:02)
Hmm.

Kelli Tanzi (10:02)
It's

going to keep going until June or until, sorry, September is every week. There will be a different one that's released and mine is coming out in August. And I'm almost done. I'm almost done. I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have been getting so many words in the evenings, especially. It's been a quiet time to write. And yeah, I've been, I've been, I'm almost there. I'm almost there.

Jack Shilkaitis (10:13)
Right.

Yeah.

Yeah,

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (10:24)
you

Jack Shilkaitis (10:25)
I envy you.

Kelli Tanzi (10:25)
And then it's going to be the editing because the editing is going to...

it's a pretty ugly draft, so it's going to be... it's going to be a little bit to edit it, but I'm hopeful. So, yeah.

Jack Shilkaitis (10:33)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I envy you. Yesterday we were talking because we have kids at different ages and I have little ones and Kelly, most of yours are, are grown up at this point. Right.

Kelli Tanzi (10:44)
Yeah, my

youngest is 13.

Jack Shilkaitis (10:46)
And so

I like I remember last night, it just was like, by 8pm, kids were going to bed, we kind of hand off my wife and I. And so it was the handoff for me to mom for bedtime. And I was like, okay, I could I could stay up for three hours, but I'm just beat I am they take it out of me. So anyway, it's just one of those phases.

Kelli Tanzi (11:05)
Yeah, I get it.

Jack Shilkaitis (11:08)
Becca Simon's even mentioned something like that before. Like you go through these phases and for some authors it's like, yeah, you've got young kids, things like that. And it's hard, whatever that phase might be. Maybe it's that, maybe it's something else, but you go through a phase where you just got a lot going on and writing is not always easy. And you got to give yourself a little bit of grace.

And I did not think I would find myself there, but I kind of am at this moment. Anyway, though, to get to our main topic for today and the reason why we have Joanna Penn here, we want to talk, Joanna, about author branding and kind of this larger conversation that we've noticed here at Book Funnel keeps coming up and is coming up in a lot of different contexts lately, which is just that, on the one hand, like, how do you

use your author brand to like stand out, connect with readers as the publishing industry changes. And we've already, we've kind of touched on already some of these changes, right? We referred back to like the golden era, so to speak, that quotes, I'll put air quotes around that, right? But obviously change is constantly happening. It's like, it is the only constant.

And so around that idea, like author branding, how do you brand yourself to stand out? That's kind of the conversation we want to have here. And so first, maybe to kind of ask you, because you're an author as well. What are some things that you're doing now that maybe five years, five, 10 years ago, you maybe wouldn't have considered doing in this area of branding and trying to reach readers?

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (12:36)
Yeah, I mean, obviously it's a huge topic, but I want to also encourage people because when I started, I just published everything under Joanna Penn. So I think this is really important because I think there's so much obsession in, you know, what Emma just said about doing it fast, getting things to market that a lot of the time people backtrack and change things later. And that's completely fine. Like what Emma just did with that.

second edition. I've done loads of editions, but one of the biggest things I did with branding, so 2008 I self-published my first book, 2012 I split my names. So I split, I put my first three novels out under Joanna Penn and then two things happen. So one is I got a review from a reader that said, I can't believe a woman wrote this. Yeah, ladies.

And it's my you know my action-adventure thriller novel stone of fire Which is kind of Dan Brownie and you know, it's not graphic violence But it has fight scenes and stuff like that action-adventure violence like 18 James Bond style and they were like and I was like I don't want my gender to be the thing that is the first thing on a reader's mind

and sorry dudes, but some dudes do judge a book by its author name. And a lot of men who write romance also use initials. So many authors use initials. So I split my brand and my name. So JF Pen is where I write my fiction. So my crime, my thrillers, and also now my travel memoir. So you asked specifically what I've done recently, but I think this does go back. So I realized I needed to split my brand because they're very different promises.

Jack Shilkaitis (13:50)
Yeah.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (14:08)
So as Joanna Penn, and you're primarily interviewing Joanna Penn here, Joanna Penn is a sort of commentator on the publishing industry, helps authors, that kind of thing. JF Penn, it just writes a lot of dark fiction, my travel memoir, Pilgrimage is pretty dark. I'm doing a book on Gothic cathedrals, that's one of my next projects. So non-fiction around the things I'm interested in. And all of this comes to the basics of brand, which is your promise to the reader.

Jack Shilkaitis (14:12)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (14:36)
and I realised back in 2012 that my promise to the reader was different. As Joanna Penn, I serve different people than JF Penn. And I have felt sometimes over the years that I need even more Penn names. And there's authors out there who have like a ton of Penn names. But the other thing with a Penn name is, so I have two lists. In fact, I have two book funnel accounts because I have two Shopify stores.

Jack Shilkaitis (14:51)
Yeah.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (14:59)
You know, one for each, and you have to therefore connect the different names in, you have different email list services, you have different everything, different signups, different social media. It is painful to have two whole completely different brands. So there's just a bit of a tip to people, if you are thinking about other author names, what is your goal with them? If you're gonna publish wide, if you're gonna sell direct, if you're gonna be active on socials.

Jack Shilkaitis (14:59)
Right?

Yeah.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (15:24)
you do have to do a lot more than say an author who just says, well, I'm just gonna do kind of a pen name on KU and I don't need all that other stuff going on. So those are just, guess, some things to think about, but in terms of stretching the bounds of a brand, obviously covers can really help with that. My travel memoir, Pilgrimage, looks very different to like my action adventure, for example, or my horror.

Jack Shilkaitis (15:33)
Right.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (15:48)
So there's lots of ways you can expand within a brand, but again, circling back to what we said at the beginning, you don't have to know all of this at the beginning. You can change over time. You can rebrand, recover, change your author name. You can do that kind of thing.

Jack Shilkaitis (15:56)
Yep.

Right, and so, your J.F. Penn, Penn name, is where you write a lot of your fiction. And I imagine...

those readers, some authors for example, if they were writing even in a different genre or sometimes even a different sub-genre would come up with a new pen name. But you've got a few different genres under that JF pen name and I assume that your readers know, like if maybe they picked up one of your thrillers, they know some of the other stuff that you're writing under that pen name as well. You don't really keep that a secret or do you try to still keep those compartmentalized even under that same pen name?

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (16:20)
Hmm.

No, I think we can get bit obsessed around trying to split readers. Again, I've always been wide. Actually, I do have some books in KU now, but mostly very wide. the fact is that readers choose what they want to read. I don't need to try and convince someone they're either going to like it or they're not. What I have

found, I think this is an unfortunate truth of our industry, is that some readers will not cross genre even from the same author. So some of them will, but many of them won't. So people who love, my action adventure series, my arcane thrillers, won't necessarily try the Matt Walker dark fantasy because it's got magic in, for example. So they're like, well, I don't like magic.

Jack Shilkaitis (17:14)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (17:16)
Or you know, I do write some horror and some of them be like, I don't want to read your horror, but I might read your pilgrimage memoir, you know, so I think the point is you can offer things to people. What I do try not to do is mix Joanna Penn and JF Penn. So it's very much like, you know, if nonfiction for authors, that's Joanna Penn.

Jack Shilkaitis (17:22)
Sure.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (17:34)
And yeah, that does become difficult. And again, this is my name. My also is my name. It's not a pen name or such, know, pen is my given name. But yeah, but I don't have any other secret names. I've never kept any secrets.

Jack Shilkaitis (17:42)
Right.

Sure.

Right, right. For some authors in certain genres, it does make a little bit of sense. I know one thing, like, if you're already a public persona under your given name, and you don't want that to be associated with the fiction you're writing,

That's one of the most common ones. Like you're a well-known doctor, prestigious in something, you're writing, you who knows what type of fiction you're writing. And maybe you just don't want those two to be associated. You keep those things. Yeah.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (18:11)
Yeah, for sure. I know lots of doctors who do that. Also, if you write

erotica and anything else, a lot of people will keep their erotica name separate, especially erotica and children's, like don't mix them.

Jack Shilkaitis (18:18)
Right. Right.

yeah, no, and that's absolutely, absolute. So there are times where it's necessary, but yeah, that's interesting that those readers are, you have the potential for them to cross over a little bit, but they're still gonna, even though they enjoy this one aspect of what you have to offer, they're not necessarily gonna jump over and sample everything, but you still kind of, you still get a little bit of the benefit of.

Kelli Tanzi (18:22)
you

Jack Shilkaitis (18:43)
of that I guess. Even if they're not going to read your horror, maybe there is something else that they might be interested in.

Emma Alisyn (18:49)
And this is a very self-serving question, but what is part one, what is a reader promise? And part two, as you mature as an author, how do you bring your audience along with you if that reader promise starts to shift because maybe you're more deliberate about it, you're more aware of it, et cetera?

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (19:09)
Great question. Have you heard of Jennifer Lynn Barnes and her id list?

Kelli Tanzi (19:13)
Yeah.

Emma Alisyn (19:14)
I have, have.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (19:15)
Yeah, so I

heard her speak at Ninc a few years ago. She still I believe doesn't have an actual book on this but she writes a lot of fiction and she's a professor or something. She's very good. Anyway, her id list, if people look it up, Jennifer Lindbarn's id list or maybe you can have her on the podcast, but she basically says so your id list are all the things that you love. So they're for me, crypts.

Emma Alisyn (19:22)
Now she does.

Jack Shilkaitis (19:31)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (19:36)
body parts, holy relics. And when I say body parts, mean relics, usually religious relics, European architecture, death culture, all of this kind of stuff. Thunderstorms, there's like thunderstorms in every single piece of my fiction. So those strong women, these kinds of things are what mark my brand out, but I didn't sit there and make that list and then write stuff.

Jack Shilkaitis (19:41)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (20:00)
it kind of relates to author voice. It will come out in everything you write. And what Jennifer said that really kind of set me free from this, she's like, yeah, you can put it in every book. I feel like there's a point where we're like, I've done that before. I've said that before, but actually that's just part of your author voice. So I think that also comes into the maturity aspect because the reality is as you move into different sub-genres and different types of books, like my midlife, you know,

menopause pilgrimage memoir and you ladies will eventually reach that point in your life that Yeah, okay. Yeah, so we didn't I didn't need to bring people along with me because they've been with me for 15 years 20 years some of my lists have been with me since 2008 when I started my list, you know, it's kind of crazy I've been listening to my podcast since 2009 and so as you change some people stay some people go

Kelli Tanzi (20:32)
yeah, were there.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (20:55)
And I've always focused on attraction marketing rather than push marketing. So, and I don't write to market. I'm not the ideal person to be kind of asking about these sort of questions. I'm an intuitive writer, Becca Syme's book, writer, you intuitive? Another excellent book that will really help people who feel like they don't want to write to market. They don't want to brand to market. They don't want to contort themselves into something else.

Jack Shilkaitis (21:21)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (21:21)
And I

mean, the reality is over the last 20 years, I've seen so many people leave the industry because they tried to contort themselves and then they hated it and they couldn't sustain a career. So I think the very best way to build an author brand and a promise to the reader is just by being you and attracting the people who resonate with your message. And that will keep coming out. And then look,

I get emails sometimes, like someone emailed me the other day, they're like, oh, I stopped writing in like 2015 and stopped listening to you and now I've come back and here you are. And it's like, yeah, I'm still here and I'm still here I think because I write intuitively, I market intuitively, I just put out stuff that I'm interested in and then if people are interested too, then they might buy the book. I mean,

talk about like my Gothic cathedral book, which will be partly photos, partly essays on why I love Gothic architecture. Again, not exactly a market for that, but I feel like it will attract a certain group of people and will resonate with a lot of my work because my fiction has some of these places in. So I hope that encourages you, Emma, because then you can just be you, concentrate on being you.

you're just gonna attract people over time.

Emma Alisyn (22:37)
I'm an intuitive island, Joanna, and you're speaking my language.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (22:40)
There you go.

Yeah, exactly. And I actually loved how you said earlier about, you know, your job is taking the pressure off because this is another tip. A lot of people who put the pressure on the books must be the only thing making the money can force themselves into certain timeframes for writing or certain sub-genres that are trendy. And there's nothing wrong with either way.

Kelli Tanzi (22:42)
you

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (23:02)
but it feels like there's been too much emphasis on the do it full time. And just to be clear, I have always had multiple streams of income. For me, the podcast, speaking, consulting, training is another stream of income. So I hope that encourages you to kind of really lean into who you are. It sounds like you've done that with this latest edition of your book there, The Dark Chocolate One. What was the name of that again?

Jack Shilkaitis (23:02)
Okay.

Emma Alisyn (23:26)
It is Night in His Eyes and it was intended as a fantasy romance, but the shift was to epic fantasy women's fiction with a romantic subplot. And it took me a while to realize that's why I'm off market, because it's not the same thing. There's overlap, but yes, it's my market. Yes.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (23:41)
But maybe that's your market. Maybe it's your market. Yeah.

And I think that's the other thing. I also write cross genre and it is absolutely not the way to a kind of multi-seven figure business. But what it is the way to is a happy creative life where you can make sustainable money and you're happy. So I mean, hell yeah.

Jack Shilkaitis (23:53)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah,

which is something that you can do now. And I guess to tie this back to our mention of like the golden era, right? No, I know. But what I'm trying to say here is that you can now, I guess, just with the way that the market has changed over the last 10, 15 years, you...

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (24:12)
Well, can we just be clear? I never said that. Do not quote me as ever saying that.

Jack Shilkaitis (24:27)
Writing to market is maybe, it's not the only option, right? Like it used to be, like if you wanted to make money as an author, you had to get picked up by a traditional publisher, self-publishing comes out. Now we have more flexibility. I feel like those degrees of flexibility are kind of opening up more. Like you said, if you're not writing to market, okay, you're writing in a bunch of genres, maybe that's not the way to build a seven-figure business, but you can still have a very comfortable

full-time living off of that type of writing, which is not, yeah, exactly, or whatever that looks like for somebody. But you can have that.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (24:55)
or you can just be really happy and have a side hustle.

Yeah, think sometimes we

need to remember that most people write because they love writing. this, 99 % of authors and writers in the world are not writing for money. It really is love first. And so we need to get back to that in the industry, I feel, because there's loads of ways to make money that are easier than writing books.

Jack Shilkaitis (25:07)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (25:24)
And yes, I do make money from books, but I also make money from other things. But I think it's so important to keep coming back to why am I doing this? What is the point? And mostly the point is because we have something burning inside us. In fact, the short story that I just waved around, the seed of that story is from 25 years ago when I was in the poor Knights Islands of New Zealand and something happened when I was out there and I haven't written about it ever, 25 years.

Jack Shilkaitis (25:25)
yeah.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (25:50)
And that short story has taken that much time and who knows, but I wrote that short story for me. Sure, it's going in a collection, but who cares? I wrote it for me. And that is why we do this. And I don't want to negate the money side at all, but that is often the big focus of our community. Whereas I think coming back to the love of it and why we do this and why we want to keep writing and why we have something deeply human within us to share.

This double down on being human is my obsession in an age of AI. And sure, I use AI, I'm doing a webinar on AI this weekend, I love it, but it's not doing my finished words. It's not doing my, what matters to me. So I think that is that this humanity and this love of what you're doing, this is why we do it.

Jack Shilkaitis (26:26)
Mm-hmm.

Kelli Tanzi (26:37)
one of the things that I was thinking about when we were talking about this is the authenticity gets lost when of an author. Cause we've been like kind of thinking about in the age of AI, in the age of all the stuff that's that people are really concerned about. Like I'm going to get replaced. And we've been talking about how to bring authenticity to how

authors are putting themselves out there and I think maybe with, you know, this conversation of writing to market, if that's where you are, okay, but maybe writing what you love is more authentic and it's gonna come through. I know there was a while, this was a few years ago, where it was, you know, find a genre that you're kind of okay with that makes a lot of money.

and then write in that and then put out a book and then crank them out because that was selling, they were selling and you were making the money and that's okay. Again, everybody has their own journey. But I do wonder with the turn of AI and where it's going in the kind of the concerns that people have, do you think the authenticity of writing what you love

will help with that or will give you a better brand that you can use.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (27:52)
Yeah, well, I think for those of us who have always written in an authentic manner and have never done that, ⁓ you know, it feels like a much better time. And in fact, even the way Google search is changing in the way that Amazon algorithms will have to change is that we're going to be in the long, long, long, long tail in the future. So the more weird you are, the more your work is personalised, the less mainstream I think it is.

Kelli Tanzi (27:58)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (28:19)
the more likely you might, and it goes back to Kevin Kelly's Thousand True Fans, which was like, is 25 years old, no, 20 years old, 2006 I think it was, where you attract a smaller group of people, but they really like your work. And that's why many of us have moved into the kind of Kickstarter model where we can offer more higher quality books to our fans. So my average order value for my last Kickstarter, which was Death Valley, somewhere behind me.

Jack Shilkaitis (28:32)
Thank

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (28:45)
That was £45, around $60. So an average order value of $60. You cannot get that on Amazon. So if you can offer different things, beautiful things, things you really care about. I also have always written an author's note, but I think an author's note is more important than ever. And in fact, the short story that I mentioned again, I started by writing the author's note, which was where the story comes from.

Jack Shilkaitis (28:53)
Great.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (29:09)
And so I think this is gonna be important. I rebooted my books and travel podcast because JF Pen, I feel needs a voice. So Joanna Pen has a voice in the Creative Pen podcast, but because, and I've pulled away a lot from social media mainly because there's so many bots on it and there's so much AI generated content. And I'm like, I don't wanna do that. So I mean, this podcast for example, is great because the three of you are every, you know, come every week and you do this and people get to know you.

And that's part of it. They can see your human, I mean, you can do video avatars, but this would be a lot of work, right? Super lot of work. So this is really us. I think, so now I'm using like Instagram as proof of humanity as opposed to marketing. So I'm really, this is my cat and this is me on the canal and life stuff, my edits, my hand edits, this kind of thing. So.

Jack Shilkaitis (29:41)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (30:00)
Some people don't think this is important and there will always be people who can write fast to market and do their work which they need to get paid which is fine. But I think again, if you want a longer term, happy career focusing on what you want to create first and then attracting people who might want that, I think, and offering it to them. Like I made this, would you like it? I think is a...

Jack Shilkaitis (30:23)
Yeah.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (30:25)
is a nice way to do it and so it just feels nicer to be fair.

Jack Shilkaitis (30:29)
Right, right. You know, another data point that we've seen here at Book Funnel, and with some of the guests we've had on too, is more and more authors doing like in-person events.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (30:39)
Mm.

Jack Shilkaitis (30:39)
as well.

And I think that not that we have to go all the way down that bunny trail, but it's another data point along the lines of like, proof of humanity, right? Like, I'm here with you in the flesh. And, you know, like, you can ask me about the book, and you probably never heard of me, but like, I'm here. And so I yeah, I think that's just another, another indicator that

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (30:55)
Hmm.

Jack Shilkaitis (30:59)
you know, with again, whatever anybody's opinion is on some of the AI content, like you mentioned, even on social media, it's, it's kind of starting to maybe drown some people out in some respects, I think we'll adapt to it. But you have to find your way to again, just stand out in that and this has happened in other ways before, you know, just even

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (31:22)
I don't

like the words to stand out because we cannot beat the machines. We literally can't. And also I think standing out kind of implies that you want to somehow...

Jack Shilkaitis (31:26)
Mm-hmm.

no, yeah.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (31:34)
be above other people or separate, but actually it's again, just like about being you and you mentioned there about being in person. So if we walk into an author convention, for example, and you start talking to the person next to you, are you interested in that person or not? If you're not, walk away, go talk to somebody else. And I feel like that's it. So it's not necessarily that we're standing out, it's just we're different and we're attracting people because we are different. My kind of weird.

is death culture and pilgrimage and really kind of strange things around that. And every week people send me pictures from cemeteries all over the world and I share it on my podcast. And that's weird, but people will email me and say, I drove past a cemetery and thought of you. And I think that is blooming awesome. Some people think that's weird, but I am actually Wednesday from the Adams family and she's super popular, so you never know.

Jack Shilkaitis (32:09)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Right.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (32:24)
But I think that's

the important thing. It's like, I don't have to force myself to stand out. I just be me.

Jack Shilkaitis (32:29)
Yeah,

right. And I think that's what I'm trying to say. Maybe when I say stand out, that's actually kind of what I'm thinking is not to not to like rise above or rise to the surface, but to to be different. And so that when people are, you know, when with their on social media or wherever it is that they find you, whatever that context is, being yourself is how you actually attract their attention.

which I think is what you're trying to say. yeah, think maybe we're using, when I say stand out, I guess maybe we have a different idea of what that means. But yes, that's exactly what I'm thinking. And I think that's funny that now whenever I drive by a cemetery, I will be thinking of you.

Kelli Tanzi (33:08)
Well, I was kind of thinking along the lines of the kind of posts that you were talking about as having like, you know, here's my cat or here's the edits that I've done. And a few times that I've gone on TikTok and I did a video where I showed in big bold letters all the random things I write in my drafts. And it was so popular and it's that.

It's that authenticity of being like, look at this crazy stuff I put in my drafts. And it's sort of like pulling the veil off of the whole process because as a reader, I would have loved to have had those interactions with an author that I really enjoyed. Like what does their writing process really look like and how many cups of coffee do they have on their desk or water cans or whatever. And it's sort of that pulling off the veil that is bringing that.

authenticity that will, I think, attract those people that would enjoy your books and your content.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (34:03)
Mm.

Jack Shilkaitis (34:03)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (34:03)
Yeah, absolutely. And you do need some, I guess, some courage to do that. So just back on the death culture thing, for probably eight years, I struggled to share that kind of thing because I was, I always still have fear of judgment, know, fear of people thinking that I'm strange. And then my husband would just be like, you are strange. So, you know, people will judge you. What is lovely in the author community is we are all

pretty weird. mean, everyone is a special kind of person in our community, which is cool because you can always find other people to talk to and they don't think you're necessarily strange compared to other people. So I think that's really important is to the self-censorship aspect. If you're feeling like, I can't possibly share that. Sometimes obviously there is a line, like it might be your kids, you might not share your kids' faces or...

Jack Shilkaitis (34:33)
you

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (34:55)
or there's safety things you're not gonna share, but things that will resonate with other people, like the cemetery thing or other cats. I saw your cat there, Kelly, going past, I'm a cat person, my cat is here. So I think these are the things that can bring people, they're just something in common, something human in common. But yeah, if people are like, well, what if I share this and people judge me? Well, yeah, they probably will.

but maybe that's also something you're gonna bring into your writing, know, coming back to Jennifer Lindbarn's id list, maybe it's one of the things on your list. So if people do that exercise, I did that exercise during one of her seminars at Ninc, and you know, some of the stuff on there, like sisters, for example, I write a lot about sisters, twins, that kind of thing, and these things come up over and over again, and they really help you. They might help, coming back to branding, they might actually help you around branding too, because branding is such a...

the marketing word, but it really is like, are the things that people come to you for? What do they want from you? And can you give them that over time?

Jack Shilkaitis (35:58)
Mm-hmm.

Emma Alisyn (35:58)
It's interesting because talking about connecting with readers and id and the 1000 true fans the last six to 12 months especially like the last three months I've found myself turning inward a lot with my audience like wanting to cultivate who I already have like of course you do all the cross-promotion outward big net things to bring new people in but I look at my list

and the people I have, some who are new, some who've been with me for a while, and I'm like, why am I so focused externally when I need to cultivate the people I already have? ⁓

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (36:30)
Yep.

And they're the ones who will back your Kickstarter, for example, rather than, and I mean, and again, coming back to business, you know, all the love, love, you know, rah, rah, good, jolly good. But when it comes to actual money, how many people on so many of these lists actually will spend any money? And that is what it comes down to because we do pay for our email lists. So it's like, okay, well,

Jack Shilkaitis (36:40)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (36:54)
And those people, the people that will support you with reviews, with buying your books, with backing your Kickstarters, with, you know, to your events to see you signing or to get a book signed, those are the precious ones. You're completely right. So yeah, it's like focusing in on those and sure, keep spreading the circle, but focus on serving those who are already with you.

Jack Shilkaitis (37:17)
Right. And sometimes, because I've attempted that myself in the past, it feels like screaming into the void sometimes. And I don't know if you've gotten that same kind of, like, you'll make an effort, you'll make an attempt, and the response is not what you were hoping for, whatever it happens to be. How do you work with that when you're not getting, if you're in that situation where you're not getting a lot of that feedback from your audience?

What should you, again, focusing on authenticity, what would you do in that situation?

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (37:45)
I think it depends when it is because for example the first six years of my podcast practically nobody listened so you know between 2009 and 2014-15 when podcasting really started taking off it I literally was talking into them the wind there was nobody there and again writing books for many years like like I said back in the day back in those days it was very hard to market because we didn't have any of the ways that

Jack Shilkaitis (38:01)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (38:13)
that are available now to do any marketing. So it was very difficult. I guess because my career has been just slow and steady for a year, decades now, I've never necessarily had the expectations of, I don't expect a best seller. I don't aim for that necessarily. I will launch a book in, I soft launch. I expect the money to come over time. I don't expect to make.

a ton of money on a launch. I do sustainable campaign marketing. So, you know, it's nice to sell a few books. So I think I think it's again about expectations. I feel like the most disappointed people are kind of expecting a ton of response. But again, if you're what we said at the beginning, if you're writing because you love this book and you really want to put that book out there.

then it doesn't really even matter because, so there's another one behind me there, Writing the Shadow. That book took a long, long time. the seed of that is from the 90s when I studied Jungian Psychology at university. And that book, The Writing the Darker Side of Yourself, that again was not massively popular book. It sells small amounts every month because most people don't want to write their darker selves. So they look at that and they go, no, thank you. Don't want to do that.

Jack Shilkaitis (39:25)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (39:25)
but

I had to write that book. So I think you just have to come back to focusing on what you love, the real reasons why you're doing this, why you want to write this book. In fact, there's a great author, David Morrell, he wrote What Became First Blood, the Rambo movie. He's wonderful, wonderful man. He's at Thriller Fest. If you ever go to Thriller Fest, David is there. And he said, he told me years ago, what he does is write, he writes a letter to himself before he starts any book.

And that letter to himself explains why this is the book to write. And so like all the reasons, and it's got to be like three, four pages long, A four pages, cause he's old school, he's like in his seventies. Why this is the book he's gonna spend years on because, know, they call him the professor, he does deep research. And so I think that's really important. That's kind of what I was saying with the author's note as well. Why is this book important?

And again, this does come down, I think in this age of AI when you can generate a book a day, you can generate a book every hour if you want. But I don't know why you would want to because it's more about, yeah, putting your soul and yourself into your work. And what's funny now is I kind of sit between the haters who hate AI and the-

Jack Shilkaitis (40:30)
Mm-hmm.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (40:41)
the haters who are gonna hate on me for not being like ultimate AI. So we're at that wonderful point in the author community when it's fractured by this, which is why again, we have to come back to why we keep doing it, why we write what we do. And I don't know, I want that to be a positive message for people in this time of fear and global upheaval and technological change.

Jack Shilkaitis (40:45)
right.

Yeah.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (41:06)
that we write because we are writers and we love it. So don't stop us. We are just gonna keep going.

Jack Shilkaitis (41:09)
Mm-hmm.

Right, right, right. It's one of the most divisive issues in self-publish, or just publishing in general. And it's hard to ignore too, because it is such an advancement. It's touching multiple aspects of the industry. So even for those who are very opposed to it, it's like, you...

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (41:17)
I know.

Jack Shilkaitis (41:29)
It's there though, you can't, Pandora's box has been opened, right? There's no putting it back. And who knows what it will look like. But I think industries have solved problems like this in various ways in the past. I think there are solutions. I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how that evolved. Right.

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (41:45)
But again, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter

how you use the tools, whatever you wanna do. If you're writing because you love writing and you want to write a book or a short story or a poem or whatever, or a memoir, then you do it regardless. It doesn't matter. And I guess I want that to be the message. Use the tools however you want, but please write what is on your heart.

Jack Shilkaitis (42:00)
Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

All right, we're going to wrap things up here for today. Joanna, I want to thank you for joining us. Before we go, anything that you want to shout out or share with the audience?

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (42:19)
Well, here on YouTube, if you're watching the video, my YouTube channel, The Creative Pen, and I have audiobooks and the podcast, and of course the podcast is on all the feeds, and Books and Travel is my other podcast, if people would like to check that out, and my books as Joanna Pen and JF Pen are in all the usable places.

Jack Shilkaitis (42:37)
Excellent. And we'll make sure to link to those in the description of this video on YouTube as well. Joanna, thank you for joining us today for the Book Funnel Podcast. ⁓

Joanna (J.F.) Penn (42:46)
Thanks for having me.

Jack Shilkaitis (42:47)
Yes, and thank you of course to my co-hosts Emma Allison and Kelly Tansey. Thank you to you the audience. If you're watching here on YouTube, please like the video and subscribe to the channel. If you are listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcast platform, please follow us there and leave a review. It really does mean a lot. We want to thank you for listening and we will see you all in the next episode.