Grigory Lukin.com

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.

Hey there!

My name is Grigory Lukin, and this is my blog. I know, it’s a weird name (all Russian names are a bit weird). When you pronounce it correctly, it rhymes with “glory win.” Yes, I know, it’s a real tongue-twister. Moving on… I’m 24, originally from Siberia, and now I live in Nevada. How is that for a paradox?

I got a degree in political science just when the Second Depression Great Recession destroyed the economy, so instead of getting a cushy political job I got a cushy blue collar job. It’s a fairly fun gig, but I’m always on a lookout for new opportunities, as well as fun ways to make cold, hard cash. One of my many goals in life is retiring early (let’s say by the time I’m 30-ish), which is why I obsess over personal finance, investing, and other topics that would make your eyes glaze over. For now, this blog is mostly a chronicle of my attempts to become a bestselling Kindle writer, partly an ongoing log of my entrepreneurial projects and, in a small way, a record of my improbable life.

Aside from retiring early, my other goals include becoming one of the Top 100 Kindle writers by August 2013 (the 10th anniversary of my move to the States), getting a pet platypus (improbable but not impossible!), and observing the aurora borealis from a hot tub. I know I’m an odd duck, and this will probably be an odd blog, but hey – at least I gave it a try.