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 672 of the podcast, and it is Saturday the 27th of January,

2023, as I record this. Can you believe it's almost February?

In today's show, I'm talking to Steve Piper about selling books direct.

Why it's a good idea, even if you're're starting out and how it empowers you to be really

independent and take control of your author business, as well as why Steve writes under a pen name

and also for a tiny segment towards the end, we talk about why he's excited about NFTs as a musician

and an author. Now I know I haven't mentioned NFTs for a while

as the news has been all about AI, but I still think digital original assets will be important

for our future businesses. It's just taking its time to get here. And remember, I'm usually

five years early. So I started talking about AI in 2016,

and it really took off in 2022. And I started with NFTs on this show in March 2021. So we've got

some time before it's likely to be mainstream. But Steve's certainly excited about it too. But most of the interview

is on selling direct on Shopify. So that is in the interview coming up.

In publishing and book marketing news, well, this week there was an email from ACX, which is the

self-publishing platform for Audible. And it said, starting today,

Audible is reducing prices on titles, including ACX titles, across the site. While we cannot make

projections on a title-by-title basis, we anticipate that price reductions will lead to

increase sales for titles overall. In tandem, as the vast majority

...