This has been an excellent year for me writing-wise. I got nominated (and subsequently won) my first writing award, I wrote some good fiction I was proud of (though not nearly enough of it), and I made a somewhat-decent amount of money from my writing (for a hobby. Definitely not enough money to live on.)
Here are lots and lots of stats, and some conclusions thrown in:
1) I got to the point where I can consistently sell what i write.
I wrote a total of 13 new short stories this year. Of those 13 I already sold 9. (Of the remaining four, two were solicited: one is very likely to be accepted at the anthology I wrote it for, and the other I haven’t sent in yet, as I want to polish it some more.) In fact, of the 13 stories, seven were solicited and I was spared having to shop them around and collect a bunch of rejections in the process.
2) I’m running out of backlog.
There’s only a handful of stories I still have on submission at this point. That’s because while I wrote 13 new stories in 2014, I sold 19 original stories (I also made fourteen reprint sales, and one original sale for a story I translated from Russian.) All of my original sales were to venues paying $0.05+ per word. About a year-and-a-half ago I decided to no longer submit original work to semi-pro venues (with only one or two notable exceptions). I’m happy to say this has not slowed me down. As I hope to spend a lot of writing time on novels in 2015 and do more solicited projects, I expect my submission volume will decrease further.
Which is not to say I’m not submitting. I was no slouch in 2014. In addition to the 34 abovementioned sales, I gathered around 120 rejections! Most of the submissions were for reprints (and in that I include podcast submissions, foreign language magazine submissions, etc.)
3) The money’s getting better.
I earned a total of $1850 from my fiction writing in 2013. I doubled that number for the total of $3755 in 2014. This is nowhere near the quit-your-job money, but that’s not really my goal. Considering this all comes from short fiction sales (this total also includes $600 I got paid for consulting in my capacity as a SF writer) it’s enough to cover the cost of my books, my convention travel, and anything else I spent money on that’s SF-related. I’ll take that.
This total doesn’t include self-publishing income (i.e. money I earned on Amazon etc from my short story sales) nor any money earned by UFO Publishing from the sale of anthologies: this is purely income generated by my creative writing.
4) Editing and publishing continues to be really fun.
I edited two anthologies this year: UFO3 and Dark Expanse. Both have received solid reviews and enjoy reasonably good sales. I also wrote intros and otherwise prepared for publication my very first short story collection, which is only a month away from it’s release date and I’m extremely excited about its release. I have also done some preliminary work on UFO4. You’ll be hearing lots more about it in the spring.
5) What’s ahead.
In addition to UFO4 there’s another anthology project I’m working on. My agent is negotiating with a major publisher for that one. There’s no deal reached yet, and if one is reached the book will likely not hit shelves until 2016, but you will hopefully be hearing more about it in the coming months.
In terms of writing, I am ready to get back to my novel-in-progress and hope to concentrate on it over the coming months. I’ll still produce an occasional short story, because they’re really fun, and I’ll still translate some stuff, but the novel has to take priority or I’ll never get it done.
I will also attend more conventions this year. I already booked my WorldCon and World Fantasy memberships. You will likely find me at Vericon, Fogcon, Balticon, and Capclave this year, and possibly others, too!
So that’s my 2014 writing recap. And as I post it to the blog at 10:30 on New Year’s Eve, my plan is to go back to writing and only stop around midnight. Because they say how you ring in the new year is how that year is going to go for you. Or something like that.
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Alex Shvartsman's Speculative Fiction 