Man, but this was an uneven month. This will be entirely unreadable if you don’t click on it:
On the plus side: 73 downloads, which is about 20 more than last month, and with fewer days in February besides. Also on the plus side: Feb. 7th was the first day I have ever gotten a double-digit number of people to pay me for stuff I wrote, which was a nice little barrier to break through. Another milestone: a streak of seventeen days, going back into January, with no 0 sale days. That’s great.
“Sales” at Smashwords also went pretty well– that three-day streak of five downloads a day was especially gratifying. I also found out I had some movement at OpenBooks, and even made some money off of it. Note that they’re currently in closed beta; I don’t know if you can get in without registering yet. I’ll tell y’all more about them once the beta actually ends.
Not-so-good stuff: even without clicking you can probably see all the red on the back half of the month. The back part of January and the first part of February were fantastic; the back half of February, not so much, and I’m currently on a three-day slide with nothing happening. So blech. Also, no sales of the print edition of Skylights, which is disappointing but really not surprising. I suspect for me print sales are going to be mostly a vanity project for a while, although I’m starting to ramp up for my first signing event and those sales will appear on here when they happen.
On to March! Hopefully the overall upward trajectory will continue.
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Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com 
The second half of February for me was terrible, particularly the last week I’ve only had 1 sale. January and the first half were very good, beating my goal of an average of a sale a day. While I’m only slightly off of that if I average February, the sudden drought as of two weeks ago was weird.
I have a promo campaign that’s hitting on March 11th, and I’ll be curious to see how that changes my numbers. I need to find the time and share them like you are.
Always appreciate the info,
Adam
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That’s actually really good to know. Part of the reason I’m being as detailed as I am with that spreadsheet (right down to days of the week) is so that in the future I have some historical data for market-level changes. If the end of February is down for everyone, that’s useful to know, because it’s not something I did. 🙂
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Two other authors I’ve spoken to have referred to this February as “the worst month I’ve ever had.”
Maybe people spent longer (Nov through Jan) than usual, and now have to pay for it and read what they bought.
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Fascinating. In that context, I had a better month than I thought. (And, honestly, it WAS a good month– just annoyingly front-weighted.)
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Luther, thanks for mentioning OpenBooks.com. The service indeed requires registration at this stage, however it is fully operational for writers and readers, who can download eBook with just one click, read it and then pay as much as they believe it is worth. They can even copy eBook to share it with friends who can also pay for it using embedded payment link.
You may want to invite your readers to publish your book reviews and win iPad or Kindles.
All the best,
Bartek
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Well, hey, streaks on anything but zero-sale days are great to see.
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We all need a bit of good luck so here goes………………….:)
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