Grigory Lukin.com

A couple of days ago, I finally got my new driver’s license (after a long and tedious battle with both the DMV and the post office… joy) with my new address, so I guess it’s official – I am now a Vegan! As in Las Vegan. Somebody should come up with a better term, because Vegasite sounds even worse…

The move from Reno (or, technically speaking, Fernley) was surprisingly easy once I decided not to get a Uhaul and only take what I could fit in my Buick. After a chaotic morning of packing, re-packing and re-re-packing, I managed to compress the essentials (clothes, gadgets and books) into my Skylark and that was it. There were no tearful goodbyes, no sad orchestra music, no eye-opening and life-changing epiphanies one always sees in Hollywood movies – I just got in the car, drove for seven hours and became a resident of the weirdest city in the United States. Come to think of it, it was almost too easy. 

My first impressions of Vegas: traffic isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be; drivers are a lot worse than I thought they would be; I miss seeing the stars at night; there are way, way too many hipsters; Fremont Street is perfect – to hell with the Strip and its tourist traps; I could watch the nightly Treasure Island pirate show over and over; it’s not always hot but it definitely beats Reno; having palm trees outside your workplace is amazing. Life is good.

A friend of mine got robbed the other day. The thieves took all of her electronics, including her *ahem* personal massage device. However, they didn’t touch any of the art, some of which was unique and quite expensive. I guess it’s true what they say about reality being stranger than fiction…

I am now closer to 50 than I am to 0. Not quite where I had thought I would be at this age, but it could be worse… Then again, it could also be a whole lot better. Still living with roommates, stuck at a job where I can’t even begin to tap into my full potential, fast-forwarding through time while waiting for things to change. The more I think about it, the more it seems that the TV show Friends was pretty much spot-on with its portrayal of 20-somethings in America.

A few weeks ago, I went on vacation to Las Vegas. Despite having lived in Nevada for eight years, this was my first visit to the city of sin and, well, I fell in love with it! It’s bright, it’s loud, it’s extremely improbable – a sprawling oasis set in the middle of the Nevada desert. A contemporary Babylon, it exists for the sole purpose of entertaining people from all the over world, and it does that well. The sheer amount of eye candy alone is enough to give one diabetes!

I love the city’s casinos and the incredible amount of effort they go to in order to attract tourists – the Egyptian-themed Luxor, or all the gigantic statues at the Caesar’s. I love all the entrepreneurs that I saw on the Strip – free market in action! And then, of course, there’s the weather. A lot of people don’t like the idea of 100-degree weather, but I couldn’t get enough of it. Constant heat and no snow whatsoever – it’s every Siberian’s dream…

And then, of course, there’s the dirt-cheap real estate. Las Vegas was a ground zero for the housing bubble, and there are thousands of unoccupied residences throughout the city. A friend of mine paid $70,000 for a condo that had been selling for $240,000 at the peak of the bubble (the prices have gone even lower since then, to $59,000!), which is a great deal for a property located right next to the Strip. And just a block away, there are small (but still nice) condos selling for just $25,000. When it comes to big purchases, my philosophy is “function over form.” I think of a house as a place to live, not necessarily an investment, and it would be really hard to beat that kind of deal.

The one thing I don’t understand is why on earth it took me eight years to visit Las Vegas. Sure, I live 450 miles away from it (Nevada is a pretty big state), but there were so many other opportunities to visit it… Better late than never, I guess. Fortunately, my company has a facility in Vegas. Transferring there would mean taking a 15% pay cut, but I think it would be better in the long run. If nothing else, I’ll never have to drive through a snow storm ever again (we get quite a few of them here in the northern Nevada). If all goes well, I’ll move there about a month from now. A Siberian living in Las Vegas – how improbable is that?

…Andy! Congratulations, Andy – send me an email with your address, and your gift card will be on its way!!

Thanks for participating in the giveaway, everybody. 🙂

Earlier today, I got bored and happened to find my elusive digital camera. Took a few pictures of myself to relieve the said boredom. Looked at them. Got a bit disturbed. Cameras don’t lie, and they reflect the objective reality a lot better than our own flawed perception system. Even though I thought I looked pretty much the same as I did a year ago, a quick comparison of my archived pictures proved otherwise: turns out, I got some more gray hair and developed fairly odd-looking circles under my eyes. (Caused by lack of sunlight or my nocturnal lifestyle? Or both?)

While neither of these changes is alarming, it got me thinking about the daily self-deception we all indulge in when we look in the mirror. Just like in the boiling frog experiment, changes are almost unnoticeable when they’re small and gradual. By the time they add up, we’re so used to them that we deny their very existence, clinging to the archived, idealized image of ourselves. It can be something as simple as minor changes to our appearance, or something as significant as new personality traits, growing slowly but surely. The simplest way to keep up with your changing appearance is to take pictures of yourself every few months, but how do you discover the changes in your personality? Most of the time, friends and relatives either don’t notice the gradual shift within you or hesitate to point it out. Nobody’s personality is completely static – we always change, if ever so slightly. You are not the same person today as you were a week ago. That version of you is gone, replaced by a slightly altered, though nearly identical duplicate. The question is, how do you track the gradual changes within yourself?..

Apparently, people don’t like free $25 gift cards as much as they used to. Odd. Thus far, my shameless online self-promotion, my announcements on all my social networks, and my giveaway have netted a grand total of *drum roll* one sale. No bueno.

New plan, then: as much as it hurts me to do so, I’ll slash the price to just 99 cents in order to get compulsive shoppers and stingy readers aboard (as well as get mentioned in a few well-read newsletters). The sale would go until June 27th, which should leave a 3-day buffer during which I’ll switch the price back to $2.99. (That way, my sales analysis for July will not be contaminated by the mix of two prices.) With any luck, this will give me a much-needed boost in the ratings. Throw a few reviews on top of that and booya! – another bulletproof source of passive income.

And now, back to work…

I’ve finally published my newest e-book, “Go to college without going broke: 33 ways to save your time, money and sanity” – and to celebrate it, I’m going to do my first-ever giveaway! Do you like freebies? Then you might want to enter my contest, because I’m giving away a $25 gift card to Starbucks! Edit: due to popular demand, I’ve changed the rules! Since some people don’t like Starbucks, the winner will get the gift card for his or her favorite retailer – Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Walmart, etc.

I’m giving it away because I want to spread the word about my e-book, and what better way to do this than with a giveaway? As the title suggests, my book contains advice for college students. Not the old-fashioned, one-size-fits-all advice, mind you – instead of reusing ancient generic advice (“always turn off the lights,” etc.), I came up with 33 tips and tricks that can save college students a lot of time and money. My friends and I used all of those tricks when we were in college, and now I want to pass them on to the next generation of college students.

Here is some advance praise from bloggers:
“This eBook is filled with many practical tips and has something for everyone. Taking a few minutes out of your schedule to try to apply some of these tips will go a long way in helping you save money while in college. With products like this out there’s no need to go flat broke as a college student.”
MD from www.studenomics.com

“Grigory’s e-book is full of unconventional ideas for paying for college.  I was impressed with the unique ideas he came up with.  If you’re an outside-the-box thinker, this book is definitely for you!”
Mrs.Money from ultimatemoneyblog.com

It’s an e-book, which means you can read it on your Kindle or Nook – and if you don’t have them, you can still buy it and read it on your computer. Since I want to make my e-book as accessible as possible, I set a ridiculously low price – only $2.99! (It’s the lowest price I can charge on Amazon and Barnes&Noble and still make some money.) To preview the first 15% of the book and get some idea what it’s all about, click here. Here is the book’s Amazon page and here is the Barnes&Noble page.

The best thing about this giveaway is that you don’t even have to buy it in order to win! Here is how it works:

• No purchase required.
• The giveaway is open worldwide – as long as there’s a Starbucks near you, you can enter to win!
• The giveaway ends in two weeks – the deadline to enter is at midnight on Tuesday, June 21.
• For 1 entry, post this on Twitter: “Help promote an e-book and win a $25 gift card! https://grigorylukin.com/2011/06/07/new-book-and-a-giveaway/ @grigorylukin“
• For 1 entry, write a blog post about the giveaway and post a link to this page
• For 1 entry, post about this giveaway on Facebook (the “Share” button is right under this post!)
• For 2 entries, write a review on either Amazon or Barnes&Noble. (Or both! It’s 2 entries per review.) If you don’t want to buy the book, you can get some idea about its content from this preview. The review doesn’t need to be super-long: a simple “Great book!!!” will work just fine. 🙂
• For 5 entries, buy the book and either email me the screenshot of your purchase confirmation or forward me the purchase confirmation email. My email is grigorylukin at gmail dot com

To submit your entries, click here. Good luck!!!

Just… whoa. I probably shouldn’t be so obsessed with my e-book’s ratings, but there’s something incredibly gratifying in watching the popularity of your creation surge.

The sales numbers started going up faster than ever, so I checked the Amazon page and I liked what I saw: Atheism-101 is currently rated #7,683 among all e-books on Amazon. Seeing as there are over 750,000 of them, I’m in the top 1%! (And there was much rejoicing.) Furthermore, my book is currently the 6th most popular e-book on atheism – at least according to this here list. It could be just a fluke – and it probably is – but at least for the time being, I’m more popular than Richard Dawkins and Stephen Batchelor (his atheist perspective on Buddhism is fascinating – read his books!). The only big-name author ahead of me in the ratings is Christopher Hitchens.

I like to think that complex events can be analyzed or at least broken down into smaller, more manageable parts. Why did my book sales surge? Most likely because of the increased search engine exposure caused by the book’s upload to SmashWords. Why did my book beat most of the competition? I like to think that it’s the combination of a low price and the simplicity of its content. The price is a big factor: when there are so many cheap independent books available on Kindle, the $9.99 price tag might as well be $1,000,000. The lower you price your book, the more sales you’ll likely get. It seems obvious, but apparently greed can cloud one’s judgement. It certainly clouded mine: the first edition of Atheism-101 had the “high” price $4.99. The content aspect is important, too: unlike my fellow authors, I didn’t dissect the Bible or attack organized religion. I merely put together a simple FAQ guide. In fact, I’m still surprised nobody else had done that before me.

I like to think that those two reasons are responsible for my book’s success, but I could be absolutely wrong. Maybe it really is just a fluke. Maybe in a week or so the sales will drop historically low levels. Or maybe, as more and more people are buying Kindles, this is just the beginning of my book’s journey to the bestseller status. Who knows. One thing is certain, however: I’ll always be able to brag that once upon a time I was more popular than Richard Dawkins himself. *g*