Happy New Year 2025!

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 also measure it in years.

At the beginning of each year, I publish an article (and podcast episode) here, which helps keep me accountable. If you’d like to share your goals, please add them in the comments below.

2024 was a year of consolidation as I got my creative house in order and began to shift my creative and business processes. 2025 is going to be a year of personal and business changes as I turn 50 and focus on expanding the J.F. Penn side of things using Leverage as an over-arching theme. More details below.

Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of memoir, thrillers, dark fantasy, and horror 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.

Show Notes

Leverage: Make more of what I have
Launch of How to Write Non-Fiction, Second Edition
My 50th year
J.F. Penn bucket list and books: Blood Vintage, the ‘desert book,' ‘ the tallship book,' ‘the gothic cathedral book.'
J.F. Penn short story collection — Kickstarter
Joanna Penn — The Creative Penn Podcast and Patreon Community

Leverage: Make more of what I have

My over-arching theme for 2025 is Leverage, which can be defined as utilising available resources, assets, tools, and relationships to achieve more.

The famous quote by Greek mathematician Archimedes goes: “Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world.” The idea is that you can achieve a lot as an individual — if you use leverage.

Here's an overview of some aspects and I go into more detail in the following sections.

(a) Leverage the books I've written but not made the most of yet.

Launch How to Write Non-Fiction Second Edition everywhere by end of January 2025
Work with my US agent, Renee Fountain, to get a book deal for Blood Vintage — or self-publish by the end of 2025
Get my existing short stories into print. Write an extra two exclusive stories and launch as a Kickstarter Collection and then publish wide.
Get Catacomb in audiobook format

(b) Leverage my existing available assets to bring in more income

Do a monthly book marketing plan and organise paid ad campaigns per month for revolving first books in series and my main earners. I have been pretty scatter-gun at this recently, so I just need to get organised, and AI tools are good at helping with this!
Organise my Shopify stores, CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com into more collections to make it easier for readers to find things they might want to buy.
Reinvigorate my content marketing for JFPenn — 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.

(c) Leverage AI tools to achieve more as a one-person business

I already use a lot of AI tools as part of my creative and business processes, but everything is quite disjointed as I create in different places and bring it all together myself.

2025 brings the promise of AI agents — where you give the AI agent a goal and it will plan a multi-step process and then execute that plan on your behalf after your approval, with as much interaction as you like along the way.

AI tools helping author achieve leverage. image by joanna penn on midjourney

I've glimpsed this step by step planning process as part of Google Gemini Deep Research, which I've started using as part of my book research and marketing processes. The potential launch of OpenAI's Operator in early 2025 is also interesting.

I'm primarily interested in using these tools for book marketing, which let's face it, is the part we all want to outsource! There are tools which already have AI embedded within them, which will hopefully become easier to use in 2025. I would love Meta Ads and Amazon Ads to have specialised agents we can use for book marketing. Fingers crossed on that!

I'm also researching how SEO works for ‘advertising' to the LLMs, as generative search continues to disrupt ‘old' ways of getting traffic to websites. I still think content marketing is relevant, and I am far more interested in doing more of that rather than social media, so I'm going to look into it.

I'll do more visual media — using Midjourney for images since that's still my favourite, but also RunwayML or Sora for video. I loved making my Blood Vintage book trailer, and intend to make similar trailers this year for my first in series books, and also the ones I am pitching for film/TV.

While I still intend to self-narrate my non-fiction and my short stories, I'm interested in using ElevenLabs for Catacomb, which has a male main character. In order to maximise potential distribution and sales, I'm waiting for FindawayVoices by Spotify to allow ElevenLabs files, which I think will happen in 2025.

OK, let's get into some more specific details.

How to Write Non-Fiction, Second Edition

January is all about the launch of this completely rewritten new edition. I'll be on lots of different podcasts talking about the book, and also doing lots more social media as well as paid ads to get the book moving.

How to Write Non-Fiction, the Second Edition is available now on CreativePennBooks.com in ebook, audio, paperback, large print, and hardback editions, and as part of bundle deals. It's on pre-order at all the other stores, available 31 Jan 2025. You can find it here on Goodreads.

My 50th year

In March 2025, I'll be 50, and as we all know, it's a big birthday! I've had a goal on my wall for many years — “Create a body of work I'm proud of. 50 books by 50!”

I'll let you know in March whether or not I have achieved that goal, but regardless, I am still in the middle of creating a body of work I'm proud of! I'm not intending to stop any time soon. I will be doing some trips and celebrating, and as ever, I'll share on Instagram @jfpennauthor (also Facebook @jfpennauthor).

J.F. Penn bucket list and books: Blood Vintage, the ‘desert book,' ‘the tallship book,' ‘the gothic cathedral book.'

I have three main bucket list things that I'd like to achieve (at some point) but are essentially out of my control. These are not 2025 ‘goals,' but I'm sharing them as context as they shape some of my business decisions.

Get a traditional book deal (in English). I have had deals in foreign languages before.
See one of my books/stories as a film or on TV.
Win an award for my fiction as J.F. Penn (I'm an award-winning author as J.F. Penn for my memoir, Pilgrimage, and I've been a finalist for the ITW awards for best ebook original for Destroyer of Worlds).

I can't guarantee that any of these things will ever happen. The only thing I can do is create the conditions by which they are most likely to occur and keep putting myself and my books in the path of possible success.

Since 2009, while I have written some stand-alones, I've been primarily writing fiction in series — my ARKANE action adventure thrillers (13 books), Brooke & Daniel crime thrillers (3 books), and Mapwalker dark fantasy thrillers (3 books).

the first books in my 3 main series as J.F. Penn

Writing in series is a key pillar of the indie author business model.

Essentially, write books in a series and promote the first in series with free or cheap ebooks and price promotions, plus bundle deals and upsells.

But series books are not so well positioned for my three bucket list items above. Stand-alones are easier to pitch for all three of those goals, which is why I'm changing my strategy in terms of what I'm writing and how I publish. I'll certainly be writing more books in series as well, but for now I am focusing on the following:

Blood Vintage will either get a deal in which case it will likely come out in 2026, or I will self-publish it myself sometime in 2025. If I self-publish it, I will also narrate the audiobook, since the main character is a woman from my area of England.
I will write ‘the desert book' and give it to my agent, Renee, to submit to publishers for a potential deal. Again, depending on timing, if everyone passes, I will self-publish that, too. I've already started the draft so it is underway.
I have another stand-alone idea which I might get to — working title, the tallship book. It's based on a trip I did back in 1999 when I sailed on the tallship Soren Larsen from Fiji to Vanuatu in the South Pacific.
I still have all the research for the gothic cathedral book and a stonemason character who needs a story so that may turn into a crime series, or a fantasy book, or something else. I'm still noodling on what to do with it all …
I'll be pitching at London Screenwriters Festival again, and also continuing to network in the film/TV world. In many cases, it's about connections and serendipity so it's about being out there.
As an over-arching practice, I will keep reading different kinds of fiction, and keep working with my editor, Kristen Tate, on improving my craft, and keep experimenting with short stories as well as longer works. I'll also keep filling my creative well in order to keep creating sustainably for the long term.

J.F. Penn short story collection — Kickstarter

I'm super excited about this, and it will probably be my next Kickstarter campaign. My fifth campaign in a fifth genre — why the hell not?!

I currently have 8 short stories that are not in print, and if I write 2 more exclusive for the collection, I could do a special hardback beautiful print edition, as well as the usual ebook, (self-narrated) audiobook, and paperback.

I love writing short stories, and I love reading them. I've backed a number of collections and anthologies on Kickstarter, and I think they're awesome as a way to experiment with different ideas. Mine span crime, horror, dark fantasy, archaeology, science fiction, and elements of literary fiction.

One of my new stories is inspired by The Hardy Tree. It's a real tree, or at least it was until it fell down in a storm a few years back. It was in St Pancras Old Church near Kings Cross Station in London. Here's a picture I took in 2017 and then revisiting the pile of gravestones in 2024.

The story goes that Thomas Hardy, author of Tess of the D'Urbevilles and many other classics, worked at the station in his early years, and his job was to move some graves which were in the way of the lines. He arranged them around a tree, but it's unclear what happened to the bones, or whatever else he might have found, or buried, there.

I studied Tess at school, as well as Far From the Madding Crowd, and Jude the Obscure was one of the reasons I wanted to go to the University of Oxford (Jude's Christminster). I'm pretty obsessed with Hardy and I've had an idea noodling about the tree for years — so that will be one of the exclusive stories in the collection, plus another one yet to arrive in my brain.

The Creative Penn Podcast and my Patreon Community

Every year I consider if the show is useful enough to make it worthwhile continuing, but in 2025, I am sure it's still useful. There is so much change coming in the year ahead and I want to keep paddling as we surf the wave rather than drown in it!

I also love the interaction we have in my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn, so I'll continue with my demos and office hours, extra training and articles over there. (You can join us for less than the price of a coffee per month!)

Double down on being human. In-person events, speaking, and travel

I'm going to do more in-person stuff, with a variety of things planned. We've kept a lot of space for various family things that are happening, so there will be more trips, but I'll talk about them later. (You can always find pictures on Instagram @jfpennauthor)

I'm doing a Library event in Bath on 22 Feb, then I'll be away for my 50th in March, doing a retreat with Orna Ross just outside Dublin, Ireland in April, and I'll be back in Las Vegas for Author Nation in November.

Health & fitness

I'll continue to lift weights twice a week and improve my dead lift, squat, and bench press. I will likely enter the same powerlifting competition that I did last year and improve my weights on every lift. But the main goal is to get stronger and not get injured!

weightlifting author, made by joanna penn on midjourney

I'll also continue calisthenics, with the goal of being able to do a freestanding handstand, a ‘skin the cat' movement on the rings, a one minute dead-hang, and a pull-up by the end of 2025. I can do variations of all those right now, but it would be a hell of a progression to get to the full movements.

If you’d like to share your goals for 2025, please add them in the comments below — and remember, I’m a full-time author entrepreneur so my goals 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!

All the best for 2025 — let’s get into it!

The post My 2025 Creative And Business Goals With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

The Gothic Cathedral Book

Mentioned by

Mentioned in 1 episodes

The AI-powered Podcast Player