Written by Ken Walker
In the past, when someone asked, “What kind of year did you have?” my reply tended to center on one thing: how much money I made. A revenue increase meant a good year. If business had decreased, it equated to a bad year.
After my second consecutive annual decline in 2025, I have learned to avoid measuring value solely by dollars and cents.
For one, had I been able to complete a ghostwriting project by the end of last year, I would have been about even with 2024. However, the author didn’t provide me with resource material fast enough to meet a December 31 target.
In addition, although 2025 didn’t see a boost in income, it included some of the best books I have ever helped write or edit.
One example is the book that is about to release: The Toybox Rewired: Turmoil in the Toybox 40 Years Later. The subtitle of author Phil Phillips’s book comes from his original 1986 release, which sold 350,000 copies and generated nationwide interest.
I landed the editing job through the Christian Editor Connection, and it wasn’t just one book. As soon as I finished, Phil sent me Build the Man Before the World Breaks the Boy. It’s the second of a five-book series he has planned. I’m expecting the manuscript of the third in the near future.
The first book I finished rewriting and editing in 2025 was Dr. Rodica Malos’s The Truth Un-Masked (Never Again): How Authorities Silenced Doctors Who Embraced Truth and Freedom and Saved Lives During the Pandemic.
Until I worked on it, I wasn’t aware of the censorship and dictatorial-type methods exerted by health authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic. They were egged on by news media serving as pro-lockdown propaganda cheerleaders.
Several months after editing her book, I read another eye-opener: In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us.
The authors are two Princeton University professors who—by their own description—come from a liberal viewpoint. Yet they say the same things as Dr. Malos: there was a wealth of pandemic censorship, groupthink, biased media coverage, and misguided policies created by elitists who didn’t really know what they were doing.
Their book validated Dr. Malos’s, making me feel that I had helped bring a substantial message to light.
No sooner had I finished editing The Truth Un-Masked than I started a substantive edit on Chasing Rich by Nicolas Schwartz.
The title comes from a friendship the author forged with a homeless man named Rich. It led to such amazing results it inspired Nick to search for other anecdotes of men around the world who had seen God move in miraculous ways. The subtitle, Stories of Men, Miracles, and the God Among Us, says it all.
I so enjoyed working on this book that I felt keen disappointment when I finished. I connected Nick with a literary services firm; an agent has been shopping the manuscript in recent months.
There were other satisfying projects, like the final edit I did on a history of the Battle of Midway, a crucial World War II skirmish that helped turn the tide in America’s favor, and a handbook for college graduates, written by a friend and longtime associate, that is packed with good information for twenty-somethings. Add to that the excellent business leadership book I began ghostwriting last fall that is nearly complete. The final tally is a great year, no matter what the numbers say.
Ken Walker is a freelance writer and book editor with more than 4,700 article bylines to his credit. He has coauthored, edited, or contributed to more than 100 books. Three of his substantive editing projects have been released in 2025, and two more are to be published soon.