2010 in review

Here's what happened in 2010:

59 acceptances (vs. 37 in 2009)

72 rejections (vs. 61 in 2009)

51 short stories published* (vs. 29 in 2009), 2 articles published (vs. 3 in 2009)

I completed 42 short stories (vs. 75 in 2009).

I completed (to final draft) 144,930 words of short fiction (vs. 216,310 in 2009).

That's an average story length of 3,451 words (vs. an average of 2,884); the shortest story was 680 words, the longest was 6,600 words.

I completed and submitted an average of .81 short stories each week (vs. an average of 1.44 each week).

(I only track completed short fiction word counts, not words written for incomplete projects, nor words written for other forms of writing.)

Income from
Editing: Down 3.13%
Fiction (not novels): Down 24.25%
Non-Fiction (not books): Up from $0
Royalties (from all books and, beginning in 2010, from Kindle self-published short stories): Up 46.18%
Seminars/Teaching: Down to $0
Salary: Up 6.45%
Overall gross income: Down 1.91%

Observations:

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

Even though I sold more short fiction in 2010 than in 2009 and even though I had more short fiction published in 2010 than in 2009, income from short fiction decreased because some of my primary markets are behind schedule in issuing payments.

Income from editing went down as a result of decreased work from one of my two primary editing clients.

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*I may update this information later; I’m confident that I’ve had additional stories published but have not yet received my contributor copies.