This fall I released the book Open Our Eyes: Seeing the Invisible People of Homelessness. The little book tells the stories of homeless people—families, kids, grandparents—and supports the work of homeless advocate Mark Horvath and his site, InvisiblePeople.tv.

All profit from the book goes to Mark. All of it. Here’s a quick report on book sales so we can be an open book:

• October sales: 2 copies, $7.68 profit (we didn’t launch until November, so you folks were ahead of the curve)
• November sales: 57 copies, $218.88
• December sales: 30 copies, $77.59

These are only numbers for print copies and we earn roughly $3.84 per copy from Amazon sales (the numbers don’t add up because sales through other channels have a lower royalty rate).

Ironically, payments for digital versions come later, and I received the first one today:

• November sales: 30 copies, $99.20 profit.

So far I’ve sent Mark two payments. The first was for $226.56 at the end of the year (October & November physical sales) and the second was for $176.79 that I sent this morning (December physical sales & November digital sales).

So to date Open Our Eyes has earned $403.35 to support InvisiblePeople.tv. We’ve also sold 119 copies, which puts us in the top 21% of books published. It’s not vast riches to solve all Mark’s problems, but it’s something. And hopefully it will grow.

Thanks for your support and thanks to everyone who made this book happen. I’d love to keep these payments going for a long time, so please buy a copy if you haven’t already and spread the word.