Grigory Lukin.com

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*

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.