Challenge: Publish a book a week for a year

I seem to have inadvertently fallen into a bit of a challenge to myself to publish a book a week for a year. I could say I’ll start in January 2022, but the truth is, I started at the end of October. (Have I been boring you with the weekly publication day posts?)

On 29 October I published The Most Scariest Night of the Year. A brand-new story that was supposed to be Book 2 in my rebranded Wordsworth Shorts, which is a series of standalone short stories. But it ended up coming out first.

It was also originally scheduled to be published just over a week later, but I suddenly realised that I was missing a trick not publishing it before Halloween, and so I brought it forward to the Friday before Halloween.

Only 3 days later, on 1 November, I published The Spirit of the Wind. This was Book 1 of the rebranded Wordsworth Shorts and was supposed to be the first one off the blocks. I could have swapped it with Book 2, but I left it to publish on 1 November. Then I brought everything else forward by a week.

A week later, on Monday 8 November, I published The Ace of Wands. This is another short story but it’s the first in a series of standalone but connected stories, Short Tarot Tales.

The week after that, on Monday 15 November, I published Mardi Gras, the first in a series of novellas starring my time-travel duo Toni & Bart (and a couple of others).

On Monday 22 November, I published The Girl on the Bench, which was another brand-new short story. It also came out as a Wordsworth Shorts.

Finally, on Monday 29 November, I published Project Management for Writers: Gate 1, the first in a 5-book series of new writers’ guides.

When I realised that was the last one for a while, I felt a bit… meh! I’d published 6 books in 6 weeks and on 1 October I’d already published another one, Words Worth Reading: Issue 1.

So I looked at my schedule for November, and I realised I wouldn’t have time to publish anything longer than a short story if I decided to continue into December. Plus, I also had to write a new novella, and November was NaNo month too.

With two books to ghostwrite as well, it was too much.

So I plumped for another 4 short stories: Dancing on Ice; Happy Christmas, Santa, Careful What You Wish For, and New Year’s Revolution. These are all previously published stories that have been rebranded for the new Wordsworth Shorts series.

I even have another Words Worth Reading lined up for 3 January. For that I need the new novella, a new standalone series story, and two brand-new short stories. I already have the novel to serialise, some book reviews to choose from, and a story from the archives.

So that’s another 5 books, in one form or another, published over 5 weeks.

Now, when I say ‘book’, I don’t necessarily mean a full-length novel or book. That would be a bit silly. So for the purposes of this challenge, which will now end in mid-October 2022, ‘book’ can mean a:

• novel
• novella
• short story
• serial episode
• series episode
• anthology
• collection
• writers’ guide
• non-fiction book

If there’s one thing that annoys me, it’s people who say, “Oh, I published 23 novels this year,” when, in fact, they might have published 4 novels, which is still great, but the rest might have been novellas or long short stories.

I won’t be doing that. I’ll be calling it whatever it is. Why am I doing it? to stock my ‘magic bakery‘.

The above picture is the December schedule. They’re all short stories, and one of them, Careful What You Wish For, will also be in the January Words Worth Reading.

With the markets for short stories in particular dwindling at the moment, why don’t you join me and try and publish something every week? For me, it’s going to be 52 books in a year. You could maybe do 12 books if 52 is a bit daunting.

If you kept hold of your copyright, you can do it with any short story you’ve previously had published as well. Or, you can choose to write a new story instead. Each week.

Drop me a comment if you think you might join in.