Grigory Lukin.com

I decided to give away my e-books for 24 hours (give or take), but if you’re reading this, chances are you’ve just finished reading them and decided to follow the link at the end. (Thanks for that, by the way.) If you liked the e-book(s), I’d really appreciate it if you left a quick review over here for the “Go to college without going broke” book and over here for Atheism-101. If you hated them, please leave a comment here or send me an email with your suggestions, and I’ll do my best to implement them. 

Thanks for stopping by!

This Tuesday, January 17, from 2-3pm Pacific time, I’ll be doing a live Q&A session on CollegeBookRenter.com’s facebook page to promote my “Go to college without going broke” e-book and help even more people save money. If there’s anything at all you want to know about making college more affordable and less stressful, head over yonder on Tuesday and I’ll do my best to help. Better yet, if you submit your question on Tuesday (just post it on CollegeBookRenter’s wall), you’ll be entered to win an iTunes gift card! If that’s not a win-win, I don’t know what is. See you all there!

When I get bored, I doodle… In Microsoft Paint. Haven’t seen anything like this on the Net before, so who knows – maybe it’ll become the next big thing. Or not. *le shrug*

Seeing as my “Go to college without going broke” book keep climbing up the ranks (it’s currently ranked #1,549 out of about a million Kindle books!), I figured I’d post this on the off chance anybody wants to hire me. I would love nothing more than to become a full-time contributor/blogger/columnist/whatever on the topic of personal finance, especially if it’s aimed at young people (students and recent graduates). Leave a comment on this post or go to my “contact” page if you’re interested. I also do birthday parties. *g*

The 3-day-long giveaway of my “Go to college without going broke” book worked even better than I’d expected: as of right now, it’s been downloaded 14,747 times – and no, that’s not a typo. I can’t even visualize that many people… When I wrote my first book, Atheism-101, I used to get anxiety attacks after I sold a few hundred copies. After all, scores of strangers around the world would get a glimpse of my mind, and my creation would live on forever in all those Kindles, smart phones, computers or whatever it is people use to read their books these days. In a way, it’s kind of like Tom Riddle’s diary in the second Harry Potter book: when you write a book, you create a hard copy of a certain part of your mind, a snapshot of yourself that will never change or grow older.

I find it funny now that I used to worry so much about “only” a few hundred sales. Now that my “Go to college” book has been downloaded almost fifteen thousand times, I’m not even sure what to think. I’m nonplussed. A bit nervous and quite impressed. This giveaway was a win-win idea: if the book sales didn’t take off after the giveaway’s end, I still would have helped thousands of people save millions of dollars on their college degrees. If, on the other hand, the book became a bestseller, I would have helped others and earned some money. Looks like it’s the latter: according to the most recent statistics, my book is ranked #2,315 in the Kindle store (out of about a million books out there) and it’s the 12th most popular personal finance book on the web. With any luck, it’ll go a bit higher, make its way into the top 10, and I’ll be able to add “bestselling personal finance author” to my long, long list of achievements.

Life is good…

A week or so ago, I enrolled my e-books in Amazon’s KDP Select program. Long story short, it allows Amazon Prime users to borrow my books for free and (supposedly) results in more sales. It also lets me give my books away for free for five days every three months. The logic is simple: give your books away for free, get higher sales ratings, more reviews, and so on, and after the giveaway ends, your book will start making you a lot more money. Also, fame and/or glory. Maybe. Who knows.

Aaaanyway, I decided to give away my “Go to college without going broke” book today and tomorrow just to see what would happen. I just woke up and logged it into my KDP menu to see what the sales are like and, well, let’s say it’s a good thing I wasn’t drinking my morning tea because HOLY COW, 614 DOWNLOADS!!!! The number grows every time I click “Refresh,” so it’s probably a safe bet that it will reach several thousand by tomorrow midnight. Just to give you a rough idea, my other book, “Atheism-101,” never sold more than 320 copies a month. And the truth is, whatever happens after the sale ends, it doesn’t really matter. I don’t care if “Go to college” will plunge back into the depths of Amazon’s ratings, with hardly any sales save for on occasional bored reader. Sure, the money would be great, but what matters the most is that 639 people (just got 25 new downloads in the past two minutes!) will have read my book and learned my money-saving secrets.

Even if only 10% of them actually follow up on my advice, that’s still 64 people that will end up saving time and money and beating the system. It’s such an odd feeling – knowing that right now, over 600 people are reading something I wrote months ago, essentially tapping into my mind and learning about the college shortcuts I’d come up with years ago. It’s an odd feeling – odd but not unpleasant. I wonder what will happen next. Right now, at 8:04am Pacific Time, there have been 681 downloads, and the book is currently ranked #3,195 Free in Kindle Store. Eight hours down, 40 more to go!

And to all those who found my site from the blurb at the end of the book – welcome! Leave a comment, say hello, and I hope all that atheism-related stuff doesn’t scare you away. *g* 

“A high percentage of people who wear their religion on their sleeve tend not to follow their religion’s teachings in everyday life.”

(I know, I know – I am very humble.) That happens all the time, all around us: people who are loud and vocal about their religion and who randomly bring up their faith in conversation often turn out to be hypocrites. Granted, there are those who are vocal about their religion and walk the walk – kudos to them, as long as they don’t oppress others in the name of their faith. The people I’m talking about range from petty, backstabbing coworkers who praise Jesus whenever they can and wear giant crucifixes, to famous politicians who play the faith card and claim to be holier than thou, all the while cheating on their wife (or husband!), embezzling funds, and doing all sorts of other decidedly un-Christian things.

It’s quite ironic that our society is far more willing to accept hypocritical loudmouth religious people (not just Christians, mind you – every religion has them), while bashing atheists who lead perfectly moral, law-abiding lives and whose only sin is their refusal to believe in God. Why does it have to be this way? Why is vocal hypocrisy accepted when quiet dissent is demonized? Is it merely because of the religion-based “us versus them” association and unwillingness to punish somebody from your own camp? Is it because this kind of hypocrisy is so ancient and ubiquitous that at this point it’s almost a way of life?

I don’t know, and I doubt anybody can come up with a definitive answer… What I do know is that earlier tonight a highly religious but otherwise average buddy of mine revealed his true colors and, well, let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. I didn’t bother pointing out that what he did was just about as un-Christian as it gets. I doubt he would have understood, and if he had, he probably would have just ignored it and moved on…

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…