Interview: The Creative Penn’s Joanna Penn on her novels Pentecost and Prophecy, and her work helping other writers

Joanna Penn is the author of action-adventure thriller novels Pentecost and Prophecy, as well as a non-fiction book on career change. Joanna’s site TheCreativePenn.com helps people write, publish and market their books and has been voted one of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers 2 years running. You can follow Joanna on Twitter @thecreativepenn.

Can you remember the first piece of fiction that you ever wrote?

Back when I did English at school, I wrote a piece about a vivid dream I had which I turned into a semi-horror piece. I remember my teacher being appalled at me and that disapproval was part of why I thought non-fiction was more my scene. I really only started writing fiction in NaNoWriMo 2009 when I started Pentecost, after over 20 years of thinking about it.

Your thriller Pentecost has been a hit. Did you ever try pitching it to conventional agents or publishers?

I considered it, but to be honest, as a first time author with a book in the religious thriller genre, I thought it was worth giving it a try as an indie before I pitched anyone. I saw how the success of other indies was leading to book deals and was more interested in being in a strong position before approaching anyone. Now I am two books in with over 35,000 sold and I still haven’t pitched anything. I don’t even know if I want to either as I love the control and independence I have. I prefer spending my time and energy on writing and marketing, rather than chasing something that might not happen.

After Pentecost came Prophecy. Are you working on more books in the ARKANE series?

Yes, I am currently working on #3, Exodus, which is centered around the Ark of the Covenant, ancient Egypt and terrorism in Israel. As the other books, it will be a fast-paced action-adventure thriller with strong historical and religious themes and a high body count!

I have also started a new book, working title Hunterian, which is set in London and will be more paranormal. That’s still in the early stages but I want to finish it this year.

I enjoyed Pentecost and thought there was a hint of Umberto Eco in terms of some of the themes. Was Eco an influence, and are there any other writers who inspire you?

Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum is one of my favorite books and of course, The Name of the Rose started the religious thriller genre, way before Dan Brown arrived on the scene. So yes, I realized that I could weave my fascinations of religion and psychology around a faster-paced plot but I wanted to keep an intellectual level to the book so people would feel they learned something as well. That’s what I like in the books I enjoy.

In terms of other influences, I love James Rollins’ action adventure books, the Preston-Child Pendergast series and Matthew Reilly’s Scarecrow and Jack West books. I do read all genres and a lot of literary fiction too, but I want my books to be an alternative to an action movie, something to entertain people and take them out of their present reality for just a little while.

Most self-published authors set up a Facebook account and a Twitter account to promote their books, but what do you think really sets the successful authors apart from the ones who don’t see many sales?

To be quite honest, I have realized that it is more about the quality of the book, how many books you have and how you can get Amazon to sell the book for you. Plus the book cover and whether you are serving the genre/category you’re launching in. How do you get Amazon to recommend the book? Basically by optimizing your Amazon sales page, ranking highly and consistently over time and getting great reviews. I also think investing in some advertising in places where Kindle and ebook readers hang out is a great way to boost ranking and sales short term but can get the ball rolling. Book blogger reviews are also brilliant. Blogging and social networking is fantastic and I do a lot of it but it is secondary in terms of sales, and more about relationships with fans.

There’s a lot of talk at the moment about Pinterest being a great marketing platform. Do you agree that Pinterest has potential if used properly?

There will always be new and shiny things for people to play with and Pinterest is the latest. I did have a peek at it but I’m a power Twitter user and not ready to jump into something new. It definitely has potential, as do all social networks, as long as you spend time and energy on it. All these things take time.

One author using it for a book in progress is Justine Musk for The Decadents. She has a fantastic Pinterest board here.

Ebooks can now include images, videos, programs and even, coming soon, synthetic smell generators. Do those kind of things interest you, either as a writer or as a reader? Or do you see them as gimmicks?

As a reader, I have an iPad and an iPhone but I still prefer my plain text Kindle device in black & white for reading as escapism. I use the iPad for PDFs that have links to videos and multi-media components. I did try some of the Vook apps on the iPhone that included video in fiction, but basically, I see the enhanced aspect as being more relevant to non-fiction. I already sell multimedia courses from my own site that feature audio, video and text aspects. I also buy iPhone apps that include videos with the author or multi-media extras that I am interested in. There are myriad opportunities in non-fiction but for fiction, I think it is mainly interviews with the author, which aren’t great value-add. As a writer, I will keep my fiction plain text for now.

The traditional image of the author is of someone working on one book for many years, but with self-publishing it seems as if it’s increasingly important to have a strong back-list. Do you think self-publishing rewards those who can write faster, and perhaps those who release serial fiction (e.g. a series of shorter books in an overall series, maybe one instalment a month)?

I think that image stems from literary fiction where authors do spend years on one book and then win a huge prize that sees them through to the next one. But if you look at most authors making decent money, you’ll see how fast they write. Stephen King writes at least one book per year. Nora Roberts writes one every 45 days so they publish some as JD Robb. James Patterson and his team produce a book a month now. So it’s not about self-publishing, it’s about being commercial.

If you want to make a decent living with writing fiction, you have to have a lot of books selling. A lot of the well-known indie authors follow the model of these commercial writers, so want to write at least one per year, preferably two or more. Also, with a series, you already have the characters in place and the broad themes, so it is faster to write books in a series leaving more time for other things.

In terms of writing faster, Dean Wesley Smith covers this in his marvelous series on Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing.

It’s more about consistency and focus, not speed. So if I write 1,000 words per day, I can get a first draft done in 3 months, then move into editing. Most writers who do this seriously are writing more than that, so can output more.

In terms of shorter, serial books, it’s not something I enjoy reading so I am avoiding that at the moment. I am focusing on full length novels for now.

What inspired you to launch The Creative Penn and Author 2.0?

After I wrote my first non-fiction book in 2008, I made a lot of mistakes and lost money and pride in the process. I didn’t know about print on demand so I spent on a local print run. I didn’t know about marketing so I didn’t sell many books. When I did do some marketing, I made it onto national TV and still didn’t sell any books. The Kindle hadn’t launched in Australia at the time so I didn’t know about ebooks. Basically, I did it all wrong. So I started learning and part of learning was sharing with others how they could avoid my mistakes. So I basically started The Creative Penn in order to help others and that is still the focus with the articles, podcast and the multimedia courses now available.

The free Author 2.0 Blueprint came out of the internet marketing model which focuses on generosity in order to build a list of interested people. So I created a little ebook that outlines the model that authors can follow these days. Essentially in the old publishing paradigm, it was all about begging and waiting to be chosen. These days you can choose yourself and use your energy to create, produce and market yourself. It’s a lot of fun!

What’s next? Do you have anything new lined up for 2012?

I’m planning to have 2 novels out this year – Exodus and Hunterian as above. I’m also re-releasing my first book, How To Love Your Job Or Find A New One. It will have a whole section on entrepreneurship and how I moved from a corporate job into fulltime author-entrepreneur. I also have some new multi-media courses coming out and a number of live speaking events. Things are pretty busy these days!

Finally, imagine that you’ve suddenly been put in charge of one of the big US publishers. You have a free hand. On your first day, what do you change first?

This might not seem too exciting but I would make a lot of reporting transparent. There are way too many smoke and mirrors in publishing and a lot of myths that cause bad decisions to be made. Authors don’t know how many books are being sold until months later so they aren’t empowered in terms of marketing campaigns or measuring their own efforts. Nor can they compare themselves to others real data so they get a sense of where they are. It’s also said that publishers lose money on 80% of books. That’s just crazy. Clearly, they need some better business intelligence. I come from 14 years of being a business consultant and this just seems obvious to me! One of the great attractions of Amazon KDP is the brilliant reporting so you can always tell how many books you’ve sold and how your efforts impact those numbers. It’s all about empowerment.

Joanna Penn’s novels Pentecost and Prophecy are available from Amazon, as are her non-fiction books such as How to Enjoy Your Job or Find a New One and From Idea to Book: How to Write and Publish Your Book. You can also visit The Creative Penn and follow her on Twitter.