Publisher’s Note: The 2021 Year in Review

Is it just me, or did this year feel like, well, a lot?

The pandemic didn’t help that, of course. We’re still wearing masks, still weighing the risk of every outing and human interaction, and I’ve gotten more shots in the arm this year than I have since I was a kid.

I’ve also lost two of my furry family members this year. I have two left, but at 17½ years and 16 years, it’s about appreciating each day with them at this point.

Emotionally, this year has been difficult. But I’ve had plenty of work to distract me, thank goodness.

We’re a small but resourceful staff here at WMG. As of the end of 2021, we have three full-time employees. We do contract out some work, but the three of us (me, Gwyneth and Josh) make up the core team.

And the feat this team pulled off this year is nothing short of…I’m searching for the right word here, because insane is what keeps coming to mind.

As I was pulling this blog together, I tallied the number of new titles we released this year (as I do every year for my Year in Review blog).

But this year, just like Santa, I had to check my list twice.

You see, WMG Publishing released 208 new titles in 2021. Two hundred and eight new titles!

Our busiest months were February (28 new titles, or the equivalent of one per day), June (27 new titles), October (27 new titles) and December (39 new titles, more than one per day).

Honestly, if I’d actually added all that up before now, I think I would have collapsed.

To give you a comparison to other publishers, consider these statistics:

Baen Books publishes three to four new titles a month, or 36 to 48 a year. It has 22 employees.
Soho Press publishes 90 new titles a year. It has 5 employees.
Sourcebooks publishes more than 350 new titles a year. It has more than 130 employees.
Scholastic publishes more than 600 new titles a year. It has 8,900 employees.
Hachette publishes about 1,400 adult titles a year. It has 7,500 employees.
Penguin Random House publishes more than 70,000 digital and 15,000 print books each year. It has more than 10,000 employees.

Mind you, these bigger publishers have a lot more infrastructure and sales staff to account for some of those employee discrepancies. And Baen also mines its backlist quite effectively, so they release more books than that number of new titles reflects (but still not as many as we did this year).

Soho Press is our closest equivalent, and in a normal year, we publish about 100 new titles. Still impressive, but considering we more than doubled our normal productivity… Yes, we are very tired <grin>.

So, why did we publish such an insane number of books?

Part of the reason is the pandemic. As you might recall, in 2020, we wound up putting a number of projects on hold (like the rest of the world). We also conceived of several new projects during Kickstarters we launched that year that needed to be fulfilled in 2021.

And then, there was Dean Wesley Smith and his 70@70 Challenge. As the name suggests, he accounted for 70 of those new titles himself! (Also insane, and he’s also tired <grin>.)

Speaking of Kickstarters, we successfully funded six of those this year, too. And participated in nine StoryBundles.

Will we try to top these numbers next year? Not on your life. But am I proud of what we’ve accomplished? You bet I am!

So, take a look at the master list of every new title we released in 2021. And if you see a title (or several) that you missed (who could blame you?), click on the title to go to the WMG store page and add it to your cart.

As for me and the staff, we’re going to take some time off for a much-needed long winter’s nap.

Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.