I’ve been doing an annual review for the Blue Garret in some form since I started the business, back in 2015, and last year I posted my first public version. Once again, I used Kerstin Martin’s Calm Business Review to work through my highlights and numbers. I hope this peek behind the scenes will be useful for fellow word workers and interesting to anyone curious about the behind-the-scenes workings of the Blue Garret.

Highlights

• I completed another year of being fully booked out. I had fewer leads over the summer months, but when I checked my records for previous years, I could see that a summer dip is normal, and indeed, my in-box filled up with new leads in the fall.

• I did a little bit of writing. Compared to 2022, when I wrote thirty blog posts, in 2023 I wrote only nine, as well as a handful of newsletter-only pieces. I had a lot of family and life priorities that needed to take center stage this year, so I had less time for writing. That said, I did find time in December to start pulling the Novel Study blog posts into a book, so stay tuned for that in 2024 (or join my newsletter to follow along as I document the self-publishing process).

• When I did find pockets of time, I used it on behind-the-scenes systems work. My systems save me time and help me feel more in control, and I needed both of these things more than usual in 2023! I learned some automations and shortcuts in Trello, created a new Trello board for marketing and managing content, overhauled my social media accounts, and spent time installing Word macros and shortcut keys to speed up my copyediting.

• Speaking of systems, I updated my Business Systems for Editors course, moving the content to Squarespace’s new course template and rerecording a few of the videos using Descript, which is a new tool for me.

• I took a week-long bookbinding course, which I’d been wanting to do for years. I made four books entirely by hand, and I loved every moment of the process. (You can read more about it in this newsletter-only piece.) Watch for some extremely limited hand-bound Blue Garret books to show up in 2024!

Let’s take a look at some numbers so you can see how I made money, how I spent my time, and where my projects came from.

I edited over 2.3 million words in 2023!

This breakdown is almost identical to 2022, although I edited slightly more words. Note that I have not yet managed to make that little gray books + courses sliver of pie get any bigger, but that will be a big focus on 2024. Though it’s not visible in this chart, more of the content editing projects I did this year were my more expensive full-service edit rather than my less-expensive manuscript evaluation. And in the copyediting piece of the pie, I had more authors choose the less-expensive author-assisted copyediting service.

I worked about 90 fewer hours this year than last, but because I notched my prices up at the beginning of the year, I actually made a bit more money overall this year than last. I spent a lot of time tweaking my time-tracking systems, folding in email and project management together, which is why that pie piece looks so much bigger this year than last. I also spent a lot less time on writing and course creation than I did in 2022.

I clocked 1,281 work hours in 2023

This chart is almost unchanged from last year: The vast majority of my clients are folks I’ve worked with before. Interestingly, this year I didn’t take on any clients who found me via Google search, though checking my lead stats, I see that I did continue to get many leads that way.

I worked with exactly 28 clients in 2023

Overall, it was a slightly quieter, slower year in my business, and that’s exactly what I needed. One of my favorite aspects of being my own boss is that I get to decide my pace and priorities, and I can make them adjust to my life rather than the other way around.

My plan for 2024 is to keep the editing side of my business humming along just the way it did this year, working on about the same number and kinds of projects. I still truly love my editing work and am thrilled every day to show up at my desk and spend time with the words and stories of other writers.

I want to spend more time in 2024 on my own words, publishing at least one book—and maybe more!