2009 in review

Here's what happened in 2009:

37 acceptances

61 rejections

29 short stories published, 3 articles/essays published

I completed (to final draft) 216,310 words of short fiction. (I only tracked completed short fiction, not words written for incomplete projects, nor words written for non-fiction, advertising, or public relations projects).

That's an average story length of 2,884 words; the shortest story was 10 words, the longest was 6,600 words.

I completed and submitted an average of 1.4 short stories each week.

Income from
Advertising & Public Relations: dropped to $0 (My primary client for A&PR put me on payroll in 2008 and I did not seek freelance A&PR work in 2009)
Editing: Up 6.77%
Fiction (not novels): Up 20.49%
Non-Fiction (not books): dropped to $0 (I did not seek non-fiction assignments in 2009)
Royalties (from all books): Up 175.86%
Seminars/Teaching: Down 15.85%
Salary: Up 50% (See Advertising & PR above)
Overall gross income up 6.45%

Observations and lessons learned:

Although I am now employed part-time, I still earn the majority of my income from freelancing.

My rejection rate was much higher this year than in years past. This is, in part, because I attempted to break into new markets in 2009. (Woman's World, for example, generated 12 of my rejections. Although many of the rejections included a personal note from the editor, thus encouraging me to continuing attempting to break into this market, a rejection is still a rejection.)

Income from short fiction increased, in part because I sold to fewer low-end markets and to more mid-range markets.

Income from editing went up as a result of additional work from one of my two primary editing clients.

There's an old cliche that says, "Do what you love and the money will follow." Maybe there's some truth to that statement. My gross income was higher in 2009 than in any year since 1996, and I still love what I do.