If you have been following me for any length of time, you probably notice that I try to advertise my e-books from time to time. I have been writing books about macOS and iOS since 2012. My first book was OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Server Review, which coincidentally is my overall best selling book. However, it is not the one that has sold the most during its release year, but more on that later.

I do no often post about how well my books are selling. This is not necessarily because I do not want people to know how well they are doing (not as well as one might think), nor is it because I care if people know how much I make from them (again is not nearly as much as one might guess). The reason I do not post more about them is because it may not be that interesting to many individuals. The last time I shared my e-book sales it was in 2014, when I released my iOS 8 e-books, and that was only because it was anomalous.

I thought I would look back at my entire sales history of all of my e-books. Part of the impetus for doing so is to determine where I should focus my attention for my books. Should I focus more on iOS or more on macOS? I tend to try and release my e-books on the day that the new version of iOS or macOS is released. This is likely due to the highest amount of interest being near the release of the operating system.

The Process

The first thing I had to do, in order to be able to gleam any information about my e-book sales, was to create a database of all of my books and then I needed to pull all of the sales information from both Apple and Amazon. Thankfully, being the data driven companies that they are, I was able to pull in the information, after a bit of tweaking.

There are still some issues with the way that I have it all setup and some aspects require manually adding some records to get the correct information, but given that my sales are not as large as you might assume, it is not a big deal. I will eventually fix it, but for now it is not an issue.

There were a few specific areas that I wanted to look at. The first was I wanted to compare release year totals, to "all-time" totals. The second was which country sold the most, after the U.S. To answer each of these required a different report to be created. Because I can program webpages for my day job, and because web programming has been a hobby for much longer, it was not a difficult task to accomplish. What I found was interesting.

macOS vs. iOS

The first thing that I found was the breakdown of macOS vs. iOS e-books. For just sales during the release year, which for most books is three to three and half months. Apple is 59.54% macOS vs. 40.46% iOS. Amazon is 69.40% macOS vs. 30.60% iOS. Overall the breakdown is 63.99% macOS vs. 36.01% iOS. This tells me that I need to focus on the macOS release more than the iOS release; which is the exact opposite of the amount of time I spent on each of the latest versions of my e-books.

Now if we look at all-time sales, this is where it really becomes interesting. For Apple sales, the macOS vs. iOS breakdown is 72.44% vs. 27.56%. For Amazon it is similar, 75.57% vs. 24.43%. The overall percentages are 73.71% vs. 26.29%. What this tells me is that the long tail for macOS e-books sales is much longer than for iOS. This is borne out with the next group of statistics.

Release Year

The next group we will look at is the percentage of sales that are release year sales. As mentioned above, I suspected that most of the sales were near the time when the new version of each operating system is released. From Apple, for macOS the percentage of sales that are from the release year only is 53.36% for macOS versus 95.30% for iOS. If I look at Amazon, it is even higher at 71.27% for macOS and 97.22% for iOS. The total for each is 60.88% and 96.01% respectively for macOS and iOS.

This statistic is the one that surprised me the most. This ultimately lets me know that once I am done with my iOS books, I am effectively truly done with them. Not many people end up buying iOS books beyond the initial release year. While I did not look into this specifically, it would not surprise me if the iOS books did not really sell beyond the first 60 days and possibly even the first 30 days. I could create a report to look at this, and I might at some point in the future.

Similarly, it might be a good idea for me to update the macOS books as new features, if any, are added. With the annual release of macOS, it may not be worth the effort to do this, but I will think about that in the future. Along side this, the Mac is a very mature operating system and the number of new features in each release is minimal.

After some thinking, it does not surprise me as much that macOS has a longer selling life than iOS. This is because many users upgrade their iPhones every year or two, so they may only be looking for a book about the version of iOS that comes with their upgraded phone. Conversely, users likely upgrade their Macs every three to four years, if not longer. So it would make a lot more sense that users may be looking for information about the latest version of macOS. At the same time though, it is also possible that users wait much longer to upgrade their Macs and want information about the latest version before upgrading. Next, let us look at the breakdown of sales by country.

Sales by Country

The last statistic we will look at is which countries, besides the U.S., do my books sell the best? One might suspect that the United Kingdom or even Australia as the second best selling market, after the United States, due to the language being the same. However, for whatever reason, this is not the case. In fact it is Germany that is the second best selling market, followed by the United Kingdom, France, and then closely by Canada.

Physical Books

In 2017, I decided to add physical books as an option. This was done as a means to increase sales and as another option for those who prefer physical books instead of e-books. For each book there is a color and a black and white version. I opted to provide both as a means to see how well each would see. Naturally, as one might suspect, the color version is a bit more expensive than the black and white version.

Given that this is the first year for physical book sales, I do not have any historical data for comparison. I published these through Amazon's CreateSpace platform. It is possible to publish a physical book alongside a Kindle e-book, but CreateSpace offers a couple of additional features beyond the Kindle Direct Publishing platform.

I opted to go through CreateSpace because it allows distribution by more than just Amazon, but also through third-party resellers, like your favorite book store. This also allows libraries to purchase copies as well. A vast majority of sales have come through

With that in mind, for sales through the end of December are as follows. The macOS versus iOS sales percentages are 82.69% for macOS and 17.31% for iOS. The breakdown of black and white versus color is 65.38% black and white and 34.62% color copies.

Anomoly

There was one statistic that I intuitively knew, but did not have quantitative information for. That statistic was that 2014 was an anomalous year for my e-book sales. This happens to coincide with an anonymous year for iPhone sales too. I do not know if there is any causation, but there is a correlation. In 2014, 41.10% of my "all-time" sales of my iOS e-books, were for my iOS 8 book.

Overall Sales

The overall sales of my e-books have not been too bad. Not nearly as many as I would like, but I cannot complain too much. They will not allow me to quit my job and become independent wealthy, that is for sure. I do not know if any of the advertising nor any of the sales that I have done over the years have helped or not. If you would like to support the website, you can always purchase an e-book or two, or even a physical copy.

I was going to write a long and lengthy rant on how we need gun control in the United States. It just didn't seem right. We need more than control. We need an actual solution to the problem. Before we get into that, let us determine the actual facts that we know as of this writing.

Facts

From: ABC
• 26 people were killed
• Six of them adults.
• Twenty of them are children
• The Gunman is Adam Lanza (Not Ryan Lanza as previously reported)
From AP
• The Guns used were a Sig Sauer and Glock (Not a 233 Caliber Rifle as reported)

These are the facts as we know them right now.

As with any tragedy, there will also be some reactions. Below are a sampling of the reactions to the shooting.

Reactions

https://twitter.com/wilw/status/279644627445878784

https://twitter.com/BuffaloGypsy/status/279673802718326784

https://twitter.com/steveferris/status/279687389306298368

https://twitter.com/gothamity/status/279693183569494016

https://twitter.com/TarpsTwin/status/279706698720108545

https://twitter.com/gothamity/status/279713583481368577

https://twitter.com/nadsmat2diworld/status/279720032286683136

Other Facts

https://twitter.com/kate_sheppard/status/279708990433267712

https://twitter.com/ellengustafson/status/279712744352141312

https://twitter.com/chartier/status/279714107303792640

https://twitter.com/lonelyguyprobs/status/279714364926341120

https://twitter.com/LisaFrame/status/279716583759282176

https://twitter.com/joelhousman/status/279719346060800000

https://twitter.com/joelhousman/status/279719413115129856

https://twitter.com/joelhousman/status/279719518543171584

Thought provoking Tweets

https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/279691332618944512

https://twitter.com/akmcquade/status/279700130725240834

https://twitter.com/ryancates/status/279709365349539840

https://twitter.com/smalera/status/279712576693211136

https://twitter.com/RonanFarrow/status/279720343743127552 We don't need more empty rhetoric or broken promises. We need to put partisanship aside and truly find a solution. I'm not saying we should ban all guns, that would violate the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution. Instead we need to figure out, as a society, a compromise that ALL parties can live with. No, it will not be an ideal solution for any side of the debate, but it will be a compromise that will allow us to become a better nation and reduce the needless violence that is occurring.

Do I have ideas, sure. But they're only ideas. There are people much smarter than myself who actually have solutions. We know something has to change. This is not the first mass shooting this year, let alone this WEEK. This year alone we have had sixteen mass shootings. They are:

From The Nation.org February 22, 2012—Five people were killed in at a Korean health spa in Norcross, Georgia, when a man got into an argument and opened fire inside the facility. February 26, 2012—Multiple gunmen began firing into a nightclub crown in Jackson, Tennessee, killing one person and injuring 20 others. February 27, 2012—Three students at Chardon High School in rural Ohio were killed when a classmate opened fire. March 8, 2012—Two people were killed and seven wounded at a psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when a gunman entered the hospital with two semiautomatic handguns and began firing. March 31, 2012—A gunman opened fire on a crowd of mourners at a North Miami, Florida, funeral home, killing two people and injuring 12 others. April 2, 2012—A 43-year-old former student at Oikos University in Oakland, California, walked into his former school and killed seven people, “execution-style.” Three people were wounded. April 6, 2012—Two men went on a deadly shooting spree in Tulsa, Oklahoma, shooting black men at random in an apparently racially motivated attack. Three men died and two were wounded. May 29, 2012—A man in Seattle, Washington, opened fire in a coffee shop and killed five people and then himself. July 9, 2012—At a soccer tournament in Wilmington, Delaware, three people were killed, including a 16-year-old player and the event organizer, when multiple gunmen began firing shots, apparently targeting the organizer. July 20, 2012—James Holmes enters a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises and opens fire with a semi-automatic weapon; twelve people are killed and fifty-eight are wounded. August 5, 2012—A white supremacist and former Army veteran shot six people to death inside a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before killing himself. August 14, 2012—Three people were killed at Texas A&M University when a 35-year-old man went on a shooting rampage; one of the dead was a police officer. September 27, 2012—A 36-year-old man who had just been laid off from Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis, Minnesota, entered his former workplace and shot five people to death, and wounded three others before killing himself. October 21, 2012—45-year-old Radcliffe Frankin Haughton shot three women to death, including his wife, Zina Haughton, and injured four others at a spa in Brookfield, Wisconsin, before killing himself. December 11, 2012—A 22-year-old began shooting at random at a mall near Portland, Oregon, killing two people and then himself. December 14, 2012—One man, and possibly more, murders a reported twenty-six people at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, including twenty children, before killing himself.

This is sixteen too many. These are not the first shootings to occur at a school. See Jonesboro in 1998, Columbine in 1999, Virginia Tech in 2007, Northern Illinois University in 2008, Virginia Tech in 2011. There are a couple of examples that did not occur in schools. Most Notably the Aurora, Colorado shooting in July 2012.

What is the answer. Is controlling the guns the answer? Is controlling the bullets the issue? That is for America to decide, not me. Yes, I have my input, but I'm just one voice.

Safety

I know that nothing is 100% safe. Regardless of how much protection we put in place. Why is nothing 100% safe. That's simple, nothing is life is guaranteed to be safe. We can put in as many safeguards as possible, but we know it's never truly enough.

Regardless of the entire debate, the events that occurred in Newtown, Connecticut were tragic. They never should have happened. Twenty children and six adults needlessly lost their lives today. The following tweet sums it up quite well. https://twitter.com/NikAff21/status/279688338670247936 There's nothing more to say about the subject now.

Below is a video of President Obama on the shooting on Newtown Connecticut.

Words cannot describe the grief. Via Infotainmentnews.net

Here are some videos by Yahoo about reversing the stereotypical gender roles. It's quite interesting. "In a Relationship"

"At the Gym"

"At the Bar"

This is a video by SuliBreezy on YouTube

I've been single well over a year now, exactly 404 days. Yeah, something's missing... Any who, My ex didn't move out until December 9th, despite breaking up on Halloween. Me being the chivalrous type I didn't sign up for any dating sites until after she moved out. I joined Match.com and paid for the 6-month subscription with guarantee. This means that you have to email five different people every month and always keep your profile visible. It's not something difficult to do. If you do this and don't meet anybody they give you a free six months free. Needless to say, I haven't met anybody yet and my subscription was coming up for renewal. Since it hasn't worked I decided to not renew it.

With match.com you can keep winking and viewing your matches. You can't see who has visited your profile, but nobody initiates contact with me anyway, so it's not a big loss for me.

During the cancellation process they asked for a reason. They provide a few options, including 'other'. Other was the only one that fit for me. I provided some reasoning and continued my cancellation. I was then prompted to answer a couple other questions. The questions were "In your own words, how can we make finding love better?" and "How likely are you to recommend match.com to a friend?" My responses are below:

In the eternal words of George Carlin, "I'm using the same words as everybody else, I do not have my own words." First suggestion, provide a cheaper solution. It's already too expensive. It shouldn't be that expensive. Second, Provide more options. Allow users to hide matches who are not paying. If they don't pay, and you are, they aren't shown nor matched. Third, explain winking better to new customers. Many don't understand its intended purpose and how to really use it. Fourth, The biggest annoyance is in the "What's New" section. Do not have MatchMobile display as a "new" item if a user is already signed up. I had been signed up from the beginning and was irritated whenever I did see "1 New" item and it was only match mobile. It's misleading and deceptive and should be removed entirely. If I had a choice, I'd give the question "How likely is it that you would recommend Match.com to a friend?" a -10 due to the horrible results and a complete waste of time and money it truly is.

Suffice to say, match.com didn't work for me. Will I pay again, I'm not sure. Only Time will tell.