Pikko’s House Year in Review 2018

Okay, so I meant to do this post two weeks ago, but as is typical with the New Year, I was either busy working or busy stuffing my face with New Year’s foods (likely both at the same time), and I never got around to it. And it’s a shame too, because I keep stats throughout the year just so that I can do these, and this is the first time I’m finally getting around to doing a blog post about it.

I started freelance editing in February 2014, so just about five years ago, and I opened Pikko’s House (in other words, revamped what was my personal household blog into my business website) in the summer of 2014, so I have one of those complicated two-part workiversaries.

Last year was a busy year. I took on a high-volume nonfiction client and had to bring four editors on my team for that, so a lot of nonfiction books crossed my desk. Although my official logged word count is less—since I count the words during the year I finish the manuscript regardless of when I did the actual editing—my actual word count goes over 5 million.

Five million in one year! It’s nuts. I’ve come a long way since 2014 and learned a lot, and I hope to have another year just like it. Some numbers:

Novels edited by me: 47
Novellas edited by me: 6
Short stories edited by me: 39
Novels beta read by me: 17

Novels proofread by my team: 30
Novellas proofread by my team: 5
Short stories proofread by my team: 14

Books edited by my team: 34

These stats translated into words is:

4,880,193 words edited by me
1,735,677 words beta read by me
4,207,571 words proofread by my team
919,192 words edited by my team

Edit: My previous word count for the words edited by my team was incorrect due to my sheet not including two of my editors.

This year marked my first full year of editing while all my kids are in school, and it meant an increase of 1.68 million words per year, which makes preschool well worth it. Plus, I’m pretty sure my kid thought I was the most boring mommy in the world, and now I’m a superheroine every afternoon when I go get him. Being able to add so much to my portfolio is another huge plus. I crossed the 100-books-edited mark sometime in October.

Regarding inquiries, I tracked my leads for services on projects with new clients (though I didn’t count Fiverr Pro inquiries, something I’m doing this year). Of those leads, eight are still pending, and six were projects I declined for various reasons.

If I take those out, I achieved a 68% booking rate, which I’m very happy with.

2019 Goals

This year, I’m going to work on honing my focus during the day, trying to be more efficient so that I get my editing done when I’m alone, and leaving the administrative tasks for the evening. In the end, I hope to have time to actually relax. I gave up so much personal time that I normally use for TV, movies, recreational reading, and family time, and it’s earned me a reputation of being “too busy to do anything.”

For the first half of 2018, I worked rather haphazardly, jumping from task to task and getting constantly bogged down by email, networking, and social media. In the latter half, I started setting aside specific blocks of time for it, which made me more organized and led to increased productivity.

With a clear idea of how much focus and efficiency affects my productivity, I’m a lot more motivated to work this way, and so I look forward to a year of improvement on this.

I can’t wait to see the projects my team and I worked on make it into the hands of readers, and I’m so excited about the stories that are yet to come!