Friday, February 3, 2017

By the Numbers: The Great Foreign Edition Book Giveaway

A couple of months ago, I offered to give away foreign editions of my books, asking recipients only that they reimburse me for the postage. Here are some numbers associated with the giveaway.
  • 112: Books I had to give away.
  • 70: Books I gave away. (There were no requests for the others.)
  • 65: People who requested books.
  • 37: People I sent books to. (It wasn't possible to satisfy all requests.)
  • 13: People whose requests overlooked the requirement to include a mailing address. (Such requests were moved to the bottom of the priority list. Some still got satisfied, because they were for books for which no higher-priority requests came through. In those cases, I pinged the requesters for mailing addresses.)
  • 21: Countries to which I was asked to send books.
  • 13: Countries to which I sent books. (It still wasn't possible to satisfy all requests.)
  • 26: Requests for Effective Modern C++ in Russian (the most frequently requested book).
  • 1: Copies of Effective Modern C++ in Russian I had to give away.
  • 5: Maximum number of books sent to any single requester. (These books were in Japanese, but the mailing address was in Sweden, and the request came from someone with an email provider in Italy, so it appears that an Italian in Sweden requested books in Japanese :-}.)
  • 905.65: Total cost of postage for books I sent (in US dollars).
  • 75.4: Percent of this cost I've so far been reimbursed.
Scott