Yearly Roundup: 2023 In Numbers

Welcome to 2024 – it’s a new year, so as usual (and like almost every blogger/reviewer out there) I’m taking a look back at the last year in numbers. This isn’t just a new year for me though – the end of 2023 marks 10 years of Track of Words, which is a milestone I never expected to be writing about. I’m planning on writing a couple more end of year/start of year posts soon, including a retrospective of the last 10 years, but for this article I’m going to stick with looking back at 2023 in numbers. I’m going to look at various types of numbers – two sets of site stats, in terms of articles/words written and pages viewed, a breakdown of the different kinds of posts I published in 2023, and my reading stats for the year.

Often when I’ve written these roundup posts in the past, I’ve also looked back on various goals (for the site, and for my reading in general) that I set at the start of the year, and reflected on how well (or otherwise) I did in keeping to them. This time around though, let’s forget about goals and targets. My perspective has changed quite a bit over the course of 2023, and from 2024 onwards I’m going to be making major adjustments to how I use Track of Words, and how much time I put into the site (see an upcoming article for more about that), so for now let’s just take the usual look at numbers.

2023 in numbers

Let’s start off with the biggest numbers, as those are always the most fun to talk about. So with that in mind, here are the overall Track of Words viewing stats for 2023:

• Page views: 332,858 (an increase of about 13% over 2022)
• Site visitors: 187,504 (an increase of about 19% over 2022)

Given that I posted fewer times than almost ever before in 2023, I’m very pleased to see that the top-level stats have continued to grow year-on-year. We’re not talking startling growth, but I wouldn’t expect that – any growth is great to see! I’ve reached a point at which I simply don’t have the same kind of energy to commit to Track of Words that I used to (again, watch out for an upcoming post on this topic), but it’s nice to know that people are still visiting the site even though I’m winding down how much I post.

Speaking of posting frequency though, let’s have a look next at those stats:

• Total number of posts: 113 (12 fewer than 2022)
• Total number of words: 181,878 (22.4k fewer than 2022)

I went into 2023 aiming for somewhere in the region of two posts per week, so 113 feels about right (taking into account my Advent Calendar series, and a few fallow weeks). It came as a real surprise though when, as I was putting this post together, I spotted that I published the same number of posts in 2023 (year 10) as I did in 2014 (year 1). There’s a pleasing symmetry to that, I think!

And as for the number of words…compared to over 310k in 2018 (honestly I’ve no idea how I did that) it doesn’t seem like a vast number, but when you consider that it’s the equivalent of a couple of decent-length novels I think that’s pretty good!

2023 posting breakdown

I always find it interesting to look back at the previous year’s posts and break things down into the different kinds of posts – reviews, interviews, articles, etc. So here’s how 2023’s 113 posts shake out:

• 44 reviews, of which:
  • 29 regular book reviews
  • 10 Short and Sweet review roundups
  • 4 short story reviews
  • 1 A Few Thoughts On… review
• 15 interviews, of which:
  • 7 regular author interviews
  • 3 Writing For Black Library group interviews
  • 3 Rapid Fire interviews with Black Library authors
  • 1 Publisher Interview (with Brandon and Vince Rospond from Winged Hussar Publishing)
  • 1 in-depth interview (with Tim van Lipzig, discussing the Horus Heresy Omnibus Project)
• 54 articles, of which:
  • 18 assorted articles
  • 14 guest posts
  • 5 Original Fiction Spotlights
  • 5 excerpts
  • 11 Monthly Roundups

A few interesting things to pick up on here. Firstly, that’s far fewer short story reviews than I’ve managed in the past – compare 2023’s 4 short story reviews with the last few years, for example: 9 in 2022, 19 in 2021, and a whopping 48 in 2020! I’d attribute that to simply reading far fewer short stories in 2023, not least because I’ve hardly read any Black Library shorts (I could write a whole article on that topic!). Maybe I’ll try to read a few more SFF shorts in 2024 – although I’m not likely to review many, if I’m honest.

Next, the number of interviews I’ve run has gradually been dropping over the last few years – 15 is pretty low for me, compared to 22 in 2022, 39 in 2021 and 66 in 2020. That’s not something I’m particularly happy about, so let’s see if I can’t ramp things back up a bit in 2024! Again, I think my reduction in BL consumption is having a big impact on this (not to mention BL/GW making it pretty difficult to interview their authors), but there’s absolutely no reason why I can’t do more in the way of broader SFF interviews.

Lastly, something I am happy about is the number of articles I posted, especially in the context of generally not posting as much. 54 articles works out as 48% of 2023’s posts, which is great! Comparing this with previous years – 44 in 2022 (35%), 54 in 2021 (32%) and 45 in 2020 (20%) – that’s definitely more like it, and a trend that I’m expecting to see continue into 2024.

Reading in 2023

Every year I set myself a goal of reading 52 books, using the Goodreads Challenge function to keep track of how I’m getting on (although, like the book nerd I am, these days I also have a spreadsheet). The last few years I’ve found myself reading ever larger numbers of books, helped considerably by my enthusiastic adoption of audiobooks since 2020, and in 2023 Goodreads tells me I read 152 books! In actual fact it’s 154 (as per my spreadsheet), because I read twice through the first draft of a good friend’s novel, but that obviously isn’t on Goodreads…yet! I did also read and review a couple of novelettes last year, but as they’re super short (kinda long short stories, really) I didn’t include them.

154 is…lots. In fact it’s probably the top end of what I can realistically read in a year while still really enjoying my reading. I’m pretty sure I said this last year, but for 2024 I’m not expecting to read as many as that – I think I’ll probably level out at a slightly lower total…but we’ll see! I’ll definitely be blitzing the audiobooks again, but I think it might be healthier if I spend a little less time sitting quietly at home reading and a teeny bit more time living in the real world. Maybe.

Anyway, let’s forget about any specific reading goals I might have set last year, and just look at some broad numbers of how those 154 books break down.

• 80 physical books, of which
  • 45 paperbacks
  • 25 hardbacks
  • 10 ARCs (advance review copies)
• 41 audiobooks
• 33 ebooks

I’m not sure I have any meaningful inferences to draw from those numbers, other than mild surprise that I actually listened to fewer audiobooks last year than either 2022 (47) or 2021 (43). My other half pointed out that I did less walking in 2023 than the previous years, as part of reducing the impact of plantar fasciitis, so that was probably the main factor as I do most of my listening while out walking.

A couple of additional reading stats to look at, however, include the number of books I chose with a view to reviewing, as opposed to reading purely for the fun of it. Including books I talked about in ‘Short and Sweet’ review roundups, as opposed to full reviews:

• 58 books read for review (of which I still need to write about two!)
• 97 books read purely for fun

That’s actually quite a lot more than I expected, to be honest, working out as 38% of my total reading. I feel like I did a lot of comfort reading last year, so 58 books for review feels pretty good! It’s going to be a considerably smaller proportion this year…

Lastly, let’s talk about Black Library. Over the years my BL consumption – and therefore coverage – has varied quite widely, but last year I really took quite a big step away from Warhammer fiction.

• 25 Black Library books
• Of which 13 were 2023 releases

That works out as Black Library comprising 16% of my total reading, which is my lowest in the last 10 years – more of this in a future post. It’s not that I’m not enjoying BL fiction any more, just that I’ve found myself a little less enthusiastic about it overall, with regular SFF proving more appealing most of the time. I enjoyed what I did read (even if I’m still not fully convinced about The End and the Death), and I’ll undoubtedly read at least a few this year, but again I’m expecting it to be a relatively low proportion.

Anyway, that’s it on the reading front. I’m not going to set any goals beyond my usual target of 52 for the year, but I’ll use Goodreads as always and – obviously – keep my spreadsheet updated! If you’ve set yourself any reading goals though, I’d love to hear about them, so do let me know.

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So that’s 2023 in numbers. Not too shabby, I reckon, and a decent way to round off a decade of being a book blogger, reviewer, author interviewer, and so on! As always, I’d like to say a massive thank you to everyone who’s visited the site over the last year – and over the last 10 years – I really appreciate it, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it.

And thanks for reading today, if you’ve got this far! If there’s anything else you’d like to know about how 2023 went for me and/or Track of Words, or if you want to share any of your own reading/writing numbers for last year, please do let me know in the comments or find me on social media!

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