Welcome to the Creative Pen podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur,

bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, publishing options and marketing ideas for your book.

You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more information at

TheCreativepen.com. And that's Penn with a double N. And here's the show.

Hello creatives. I'm Joanna Penn. And this is episode number 514 of the podcast. And it is Sunday the 1st of November 2020 as I record this.

So today I'm talking to Wendy Jones, who is Scottish, so you will love listening to her accent.

Wendy is also one of the most dynamic and energetic people I know, as well as a consistently positive voice in the author scene,

which we all need. She was in the Royal Navy and the Army and talks about how she got into writing

and blogging. And we are in November now, so it's encouraging to know that she started with fiction

during Nanorimo in 2012. And I also started that way in 2009. If you don't know,

nanorimo.org is National Novel Writing Month and it's in November, which is right now,

if you're listening at that time. So if you want to join, it's still, you can join any time,

obviously, in November, and maybe this is

the month to get into that fiction you've always wanted to write. So Wendy also talks about her

hybrid publishing career, how she manages to juggle writing books for children, like Bertie

the Buffalo, which even has its own cute plush toy, with indie fiction and nonfiction, the pros and cons of

working with the publisher, as well as how she markets all the books differently, plus when

you might need a new edition of a nonfiction book, which is something I'm always considering.

So that is coming up in the interview section.

In publishing news, the hot sheet reports some interesting things from the Digital

Frankfurt Book Fair this year.

Michael Tamlin, CEO of Kobo, said that they've compressed three years of digital sales growth

...