Grigory Lukin.com

Every now and then, I come across a product that has an utterly ridiculous name – the kind of name that belongs on The Onion and not on the market. For example, there’s the Time Timer: it’s supposed to be an advanced kitchen timer with a few extra functions thrown in. According to customer reviews, that overpriced ($21!!!) monstrosity doesn’t really work all that well. Worse yet, “Time Timer” is not just a horribly named product – no, it’s the actual company’s name. Somewhere, someone must have thought it was a great idea…

Moving on, we have a fairly cheap tablet computer (“only” $449!) from ASUS, entitled ASUS Eee Pad Transformer. I don’t even know where to begin with this one. First of all, what does “Eee” mean? Is it supposed to be pronounced in a shrieking voice at the top of one’s lungs? (“Eeeeek!!!”) What is that mysterious “Pad” and how does it transform? Does the tablet make a shrieking sound as it defies all known laws of physics and transforms into a bachelor pad? Does it transform pads into something else? Or is it a cleverly disguised transformer named Pad who lives off EEE batteries? (As opposed to, say, AAA batteries.) Looks like this gadget’s power is only exceeded by its mystery.

And of course, one can’t talk about horrible product names without mentioning Apple. It seems like their marketing department has either been playing a prank on all of us for the past few years, or has been outsourced to some third-world country that doesn’t understand the many intricacies of the English language. Case in point: iPad. As in “intelligent pad.” Pad, people – do we all know what that means? Makes me wonder how many women work at Apple’s marketing department… It gets worse, though: the video-chat feature that was introduced in the new iPhone is called – brace yourselves! – “face time.” Yep, they went ahead and called it “face time.” If you don’t know what that means, I won’t ruin your innocence. Go play some flash games or something. Deep inside, I hope that this was all intentional and that Apple is just having a ball: no matter how ridiculous their new invention is named, legions of Apple fanboys will line up and buy it as soon as they can. When you have a monopoly, why bother with things like product names?

The absolutely worst thing about this is that I’m pretty sure each of those product names was created by a PR and/or marketing team, and the “masterminds” responsible for those linguistic atrocities probably got paid for their heroic efforts. Given the caliber of ASUS and Apple (Time Timer seems to be a start-up), they probably got paid quite well. *le sigh* I should have majored in marketing…

According to my SmashWords dashboard page, I haven’t made a single sale through their site. However, the free sample page they set up for me seems to be working great – I don’t see any other explanation for the recent spike in my Amazon e-book sales.

I really wish it were possible to see a day-by-day sales on the Kindle Publishing menu, but it looks like my average sales tripled since I put up that free sample on SmashWords. So far this month, I’ve sold 153 copies, as well as two copies for British Kindle users. If my math is correct, that means I’ve finally crossed over the $300 monthly profit threshold!!! If my new book (which I’ve just finished writing and am currently editing) does just as well, I’ll be making $600 a month in passive income – and that’s just from Kindle sales! I have no idea how much B&N, Kobe and Apple sales will be, but it will probably get me a few extra bucks…

Lessons learned: SmashWords is awesome and should be used by everybody. That, and apparently people love free book samples.

It turns out I was wrong – it takes only two months to get paid for e-book sales, not six as I previously thought. For example, in a couple of days I’ll receive my royalties for March. It still feels like two months too long, but it could be worse.

For those who are curious about this sort of thing, my book sold 119 copies in April. Its rank in the Kindle store is anywhere between 12,000 and 16,000, depending on the day, and it’s usually ranked 13th in the Kindle section on atheism. The royalties for those 119 copies amount to a total of $225.82 after Amazon’s commissions and fees. That’s not too bad, since it’s enough to pay for my student loans and there’s even enough left for a cheeseburger. (Not bad for five hours’ work!)

I’ve decided to expand to other e-readers and uploaded a copy of Atheism-101 to Barnes&Noble. I should have done that a long time ago (ideally back in January), but better late than never, right?.. After that, I decided to scout other, smaller e-book platforms such as Kobe and Apple, but their self-publishing process was a bit too complex for my taste. I ended up setting up an account on Smashwords instead. It’s quite a brilliant service: once you upload a book, they help you format it and then set it up for sale on every single e-reader platform. (I’d never even heard of some of them before.) In exchange, they take a modest cut of your profits. The upside of Smashwords is the ability to manage your content fast, as opposed to dealing with seven different publishers. The only downside is that the payments are made on a quarterly basis. For example, all the proceeds for the sales made in April, May and June will be deposited at the end of July. Sure, it makes for one lump sum, but I’d much rather have regular monthly deposits. If nothing else, it makes budgeting easier. (And yes, I’m well aware that I may be the only 20-something guy that budgets for things.)

Well, damn. I really should have known better. I’ve been online since 1998, and the fact that a seemingly perfect woman messaged me out of the blue should have raised at least one tiny red flag. Three emails later, I finally decided to google her, and lo and behold – it turned out that “she” is a foreign (Nigerian?) scammer that’s been sending out identical emails for years. Apparently, at some point “she” asks for some money in order to confirm that the rube is serious about their relationship.

I don’t want to say I dodged a bullet because, well, if a stranger (even a pretty, almost perfectly compatible one) asked me for money, I would have put that person on ignore right away. Still, though – the truth hurts. (When doesn’t it, though?) Overall, it was a fun experience: for a couple of days I actually felt quite happy, hopeful and optimistic. While day-dreaming about my improbably perfect penpal, I also did some brainstorming and came up with a pretty neat idea on making a small fortune off Kindle books (and Nook books, and Sony e-reader books, and Apple books, and so on). The plan is to flood the e-book market with an unholy number of books priced so low that my competitors wouldn’t be able to, well, compete. Who knows, it just might work… If I spend all my free time working on this project and actually finish it, it might make me famous (and/or infamous), cementing my status as the ultimate shameless opportunist.

I’m not sure if I would have stumbled on this idea had I not been inspired by my fake Internet muse, so I’m dedicating the project Plunder Q to that creative spammer. Time to get to work…

Another year, another pilgrimage to Omaha… It went really well: the flight was completely full but devoid of crying babies, the weather was random but pleasantly so, and Buffett and Munger shared their invaluable advice for hours and hours. According to my notes, they answered 52 questions (give or take). Charlie Munger was far more talkative than he was at the past conventions – he said “I have nothing to add” only once! For an 87-year-old man, he seemed to be in great shape. Here is hoping we’ll all age so well…

I spent most of the Q&A period frantically writing down everything Buffett and Munger said – partly because I wanted to review these notes in the future, and partly because I thought I could compile them into an ebook. Fortunately for everyone involved, Ben Claremon from Inoculated Investor saved the day by posting a very detailed transcript of the Q&A session. Click here to download Ben’s transcript.

The convention’s exhibit hall featured the same attractions it usually does: there was BYD’s electric car, huge section with Buffett-related books, etc. The Coca-Cola booth featured a smart fountain machine that can make sodas with different flavors (for example, strawberry-orange diet sprite), but instead of letting people play with it like they did last year, this time around they just lectured about its features. They did, however, have an amazing mascot: a 7-foot-tall polar bear with fur that felt disturbingly real and whose face actually moved. It was almost surreal – just like cartoon characters drawn against “real world” surroundings in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”

On Friday, the day before the convention, there was a book signing at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. (The locals insist on pronouncing the acronym “U.N.O.” instead of the more logical “uno.”) The event featured pretty much every book written about Buffett, Munger, Ben Graham or value investing in general, with the glaring exception of perhaps the noteworthy book about Buffett – his controversial biography written by Alice Schroeder. Either that was done on purpose, or Schroeder didn’t want to meet hundreds of Buffett’s fans, since it’s no secret that a lot of them hated her frank portrayal of their idol.

There was also a small discussion panel on value investing that was put together by the UNO’s business school students. This was the first time I ever heard about it, even though it’s an annual event that started in 2009. I should have done more googling before my trip, because I missed a series of lectures on value investing that was held at the UNO on Thursday. Just another thing to keep in mind for the next year’s convention…

Each year, I travel to Omaha, Nebraska to attend the annual Berkshire-Hathaway shareholder convention. It’s sometimes referred to as “Woodstock for capitalists,” and that’s a pretty good way to describe it: thousands of tuxedo-clad rich people hanging out together and listening to Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger speak.

I’m not a shareholder – I just buy my tickets on ebay for $5, since Buffett makes them available to everybody who wants to attend. The convention weekend is always filled with all sorts of Berkshire-related activities, such as special sales at Nebraska Furniture Mart (owned by Berkshire-Hathaway) or the famous jewelry store Borsheim’s (ditto). The main event, though, is a 7-hour-long Q&A session with Buffett and Munger. This year, 46,000 people (!) came to Omaha to listen to an 80-year-old investor and his 86-year-old sidekick speak for seven hours. On a good year, some of the questions they answer provide a priceless insight into the world of finance, investing, etc. Then again, there are always random questions about their favorite sports teams, blatant requests for stock tips (asked by seemingly intelligent people such as Tim Ferriss), and so on.

This year’s Q&A (which starts in just 10 hours!) should be mighty interesting. Buffett’s rogue biographer, Alice Schroeder, has a pretty good write-up of things to expect from tomorrow’s meeting. Given the sheer number of controversies and new developments that took place over the past year, this just might turn into a roast of Warren Buffett. There is reason to believe that he’ll try to divert everyone’s attention from the Sokol scandal by unveiling some new developments – this week’s gradual growth in Berkshire’s stock value suggests that I’m not the only one expecting good news.

I went to the annual book-signing event earlier today – it’s essentially a meet-and-greet opportunity where one can buy autographed books about Buffett and chat with their authors. (And there’s free ice cream as well!) Walking through those aisles, I was amazed by the sheer number of titles that were essentially clones of one another, regurgitating the same old information that anybody can find online in less than five minutes. Some guy even wrote a book about the grocery store that Buffett’s grandfather used to own. Lessons learned: people will buy anything that has Buffett’s name on it. I should look into that…

A few of the books got my attention, but instead of buying an overpriced physical book (as opposed to a Kindle download), I simply wrote down their titles and will look for them at my local library. Judging by the long, long line of shareholders who lined up to buy those books,  Buffett’s number-one principle (“Never lose money”) is not so easy to follow… I might buy those books if I really like them after I’m done reading them (after all, that’s what libraries are for) – I’m not the sort of a greedy mooch who would rather photocopy a book than pay for it – but if there’s a legal way to access information without paying for it, I’d try it first.

My new addiction is checking my Kindle Direct Publishing page. Whenever somebody buys a copy of my e-book, the sales counter in my account goes up. It’s fascinating, really: I wake up in the morning, check the sales numbers, go to work, check the numbers again in the evening and voila! – a few more sales, and a few more dollars. The money won’t actually get deposited in my bank account until six months from now (some intertubes are longer and more jammed than others, I suppose), but it’s still fun. In a way, it’s like a pregnant piggy bank that just keeps on growing and growing.

If I had more than just one e-book, this observation process would have been even more fun… *goes off to find motivation*

The good news: the second edition of Atheism-101 has finally gone live.

The great news: I’m not sure how or why, exactly, but people bought seven copies over the past few hours. I’m pretty sure my blog isn’t that popular (yet), so I guess I’ll just chalk it up to luck. I know, I know – seven sales is nothing to be excited about (at least in the “real” world), but hey – I only managed to sell 52 copies in March, so that’s quite a big spike in volume. That probably explains why my book’s rank jumped all the way to #13,277. That’s not exactly the coveted Top-100, but it’s not too bad, since there are over 750,000 books available on Kindle.

The not-so-great news: even though this is the second decade of the 21st century, it appears that the Internet is still really slow when it comes to updating things. Or maybe it’s just Amazon… I got a couple of blurbs for the book and didn’t want to upload them while the sloppy first edition was still up for sale. Now that the second edition is up, I decided to post the blurbs in the “reviews” section, but Murphy’s Law struck again. Turns out, it takes at least three days for the blurbs to get processed. That’s strange, since blurbs (or “reviews,” as Amazon insists on calling them) can’t be over 250 characters long, but hey – it’s their playground.

And now it’s time to start shameless self-promotion…

Even though it’s been five days since I uploaded the second edition of Atheism-101, it still appeared to be in the draft stage. The Kindle Publishing Platform (or KDP) usually takes 24 hours to process a new e-book. At first, I thought it was a glitch. Then I thought that maybe the second edition went live, but my notification got lost somewhere in the intertubes. Finally, I decided to investigate further and, well, this is a bit too awkward to admit, but here is hoping some other Kindle author will find this useful: when you upload a book, make sure to click “save and publish” as opposed to just “save.” And when you do click “save and publish,” make sure that little spinning Flash-based widget actually changes its status from “publishing” to “published.”

You gotta love those Flash widgets… Because of a minor glitch (which, in all honesty, I should have double- and triple-checked), the Kindle world is going to get my second edition a week too late. Sorry, Kindle people!

Lessons learned: verify – always verify.

For some reason, I have a strong psychological aversion to sitting down and actually writing a book, even if it’s an e-book. I can write long emails, or fairly long book reviews, and I’ve spent quite a few years sharing my opinions on online message boards, but there’s something about writing for a broad audience that kills my enthusiasm… I guess I’m going to have to work on that.

Thus far, the only Kindle book I’ve written is Atheism 101: Answers, Explanations and Rebuttals. It’s a product of a long and boring night when I couldn’t fall asleep and thought “hey, I might as well write something.” Atheism-101 is not an encyclopedia or a manifesto of some sort. It’s more of a reference guide that would be useful for those who are curious about atheism, those who consider joining the dark side, and those who, like me, have always considered themselves atheist but could use a reference guide to, well, refer to during a debate. It’s either that, or carrying copies of the Constitution, Treaty of Tripoli and Declaration of Independence on you at all times. (Note: if you actually carry those with you 24/7, you’re my hero.)

And so my first book was born. It had a horrible cover that was created in 3 minutes in Microsoft Paint, it had no blurbs, and I did no advertising whatsoever – apart from slashing the ridiculously ambitious price of $4.99 to $1.99 in order to be featured in this newsletter. A friend of mine was shocked by my cover’s design and made me a better cover (the current, black-and-white one), but that was about all the work I did for my little e-book. And yet, it managed to make quite a bit of money and even became the 32nd most popular book in the Kindle’s section on atheism!

Here are the figures:

January: no sales
February: 47 copies sold; my profit is $48.54 and £1.30 for the one copy sold in the Kindle UK store (look, ma! I’m an international author!)
March: 52 copies sold;  total profit $104.68

The difference between my February and March profit is due to different pricing: for most of February, the e-book was priced at $1.99, and I received only 35% from every sale. I then switched to the 70% royalties model by raising my price to $2.99, which is the lowest price one’s book can be to qualify for 70%. In the future, I may lower the price all the way to $0.99 to see if it can generate more buzz and sales.

For now, though, I’ve submitted an improved, slightly larger second edition, got a couple of blurbs from prominent bloggers/writers, started this site (its long-term usefulness is currently questionable, but it can’t hurt), and I’m about to start spreading the word about the book in relevant online communities. If a short e-book that I wrote in one day (well, technically it was night) made me over $150 in just two months with no advertising whatsoever, I have a feeling my efforts just might pay off…

Meanwhile, I’m going to start psyching myself up for my next project.