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 526 of the podcast. And it is Saturday, the 9th of January, 2021, as I record this.

In today's show, I'm talking to Kate Champion about how it's never too late to achieve your goals,

whether that's because of your age or your fear of technology, or whether you feel like you're late to the indie world,

or any of these things. So that is coming up in the interview section. In Publishing News, a report has just

been released on COVID-19 and book publishing impacts and insights for 2021 from Thad McElroy at

the Future of Publishing, who has been on this show

and to other co-writers. It's a 50-page report which you can download for free and I'm going to

give you some of the highlights and I'm trying to laugh because things are pretty dark at the

moment, which is that obviously COVID-19 is not over and but this is a look back at last year and the impacts and what we might see this year.

So it definitely acts as a sort of what else is going to be happening with publishing.

So Thad says Thad and the co-writers say,

The Big Picture is positive with the pandemic increasing book sales for traditional publishers.

And personally, and from what I've heard from many indie authors, book sales have been very good. In fact, some authors have

had their best year ever in 2020 in terms of book sales, at least. Let's forget about the rest of it.

But at least a silver lining for publishing, at least so far. But the report does say COVID-19 has driven a

huge shift in the retail environment from brick and mortar to online. This is impacting malls.

And of course, this is an American report. Many countries don't have such significant malls as

America. One estimate suggests that more than half of all mall-based department stores will close by the end of

...