Earlier this month, UK-based author and indie champion Joanna Penn (The Creative Penn) announced she is establishing Curl Up Press, aimed primarily at building her own print presence and expanding the licensing of her work. Her husband, Jonathan Bleier, will be directing rights. Notably, in this effort, she is not looking to publish others—only her own work.
Long an indie-proud ISBN refusenik for ebooks, Penn is upfront about the need now to use the international identifier that makes it possible for retailers and libraries to find, order, and purvey her work. With her usual wry sense of humor, she writes, “If you want to get your print book in front of bookstores, libraries, and other bastions of the traditional book industry, then you do need your own set of ISBNs.”
In another insight into the maturing structure of her 21-book writing-and-speaking business, Penn is straightforward about the fact that, even now, many booksellers don’t work with Amazon and that IngramSpark has advantages that make using both services for print worthwhile. IngramSpark, for example, offers hardback formats. With IngramSpark’s services, Penn can also ship boxes of her books ahead to her speaking engagements (to sell and sign); she can offer booksellers the discounts they’re accustomed to from publishers; and she expands her international reach in print. She also looks ahead to the services of Aerio, which Ingram acquired last year; Aerio is expected to make it possible for authors to sell their own and others’ books from their sites.
Penn tells Publishing Perspectives that, if at some point Curl Up Press does work with other authors, it’s likeliest to be in the rights arena. Rather than publish other writers, she says, “It’s more likely that we’ll expand into rights licensing and work with successful indie authors to expand their markets.”
Bottom line: There’s an interesting parallel here to what many trade publishers are doing. At each of the major international trade shows, the rights centers—huge halls in which agents rent tables to offer their clients’ books rights—have been steadily growing in prominence. Rights revenue is seen as a way of shoring up sagging book sales. Penn’s new, structured focus on this, along with the move to raise her print profile, shows that she’s detecting a need parallel to the trade’s. At her high-output, high-profile end of the indie spectrum, as Penn puts it, “The outsider becomes the mainstream.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
