On August 1 at 8:00am EDT, I checked my Amazon readership stats — the ones that show me how many pages Kindle Unlimited or Kindle Lending users have read my books.

Someone had read 300 pages of Baker’s Dozen in fewer than eight hours, all of them overnight.

Whoever you are, thank you. I hope you also choose to review the book.

Stats are really interesting to me. I check my website stats every weekday morning, as well as my Amazon stats. Sometimes they can be depressing, like when the Amazon numbers don’t increment even a little bit; sometimes they can be exciting, like when I get a lot of unique views on my site. Even my Reddit post stats are interesting — especially when I post personals*, because I can see the reach I’m getting.

* I haven’t posted a Reddit personal in a bit; that’s what happens when you have two full-time partners and a third person you’re building a relationship with. There’s only so much of me to go around.

In my day job, I have several dashboards full of stats that I review daily, most of them around ticket fulfillment. I make the graphs colorful so that when I have to send out reporting it keeps people interested; there’s nothing worse than a boring visual. I keep track of my main checking account in both a check register (kids, ask your parents) and a budget spreadsheet that feeds into a separate tab tracking where my money goes (a surprising amount goes to food purchases).

I’m a nerd. I admit that. But stats are cool. Including this one: