Tag Archive: e-book


Giving away my brand new e-book! “Pacific Crest Tutorial: Your Handy PCT Guide”

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November 5, 2023

After months of writing, editing, re-writing, and re-editing, my newest brain baby is ready to meet the world. I present to you my Pacific Crest Tutorial: Your Handy PCT Guide! If you’re not in the US, please search for “Pacific Crest Tutorial” on your country’s Amazon site, and you will see it there as well.

As usual, I’m giving it away for free for 3 days. I’m doing the giveaway to help my fellow hikers, both the hopefuls and the returning ones. (And if anybody feels like leaving a nice review on their shiny new book, that’s a bonus!)

It will remain free until 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time on Tuesday, November 7th. Once the giveaway ends, I’ll remove the link from this post, so no one would accidentally pay for it. There are 2 buttons on that link: don’t click the yellow “Read for free” button at the top because that would start a Kindle Unlimited subscription, which would charge you $10 a month (and you wouldn’t even get to keep the e-book if you cancel!). (I mean, unless you already have Kindle Unlimited.) You’ll want to click the second, orange button that says “Buy now with 1-Click” right underneath the $0.00.

You do not need a Kindle to read this e-book: you can either read it using the free Kindle app on your phone, tablet, etc – or on your computer using the Kindle Cloud Reader. Unlike all the other PCT books, which are 100% advice and 0% journal, my e-book combines them both: it’s roughly 75% journal describing local towns, and 25% advice on everything else. The journal part is a travelogue with detailed descriptions of PCT-adjacent towns: the best and worst places to eat, where (and how!) to hitchhike, etc. It also has more subtle stuff, like making sure you don’t zero in Etna on a Sunday (the whole town shuts down!), or visiting Carson, WA, aka the friendliest PCT-adjacent town in Washington, though it doesn’t appear in most guides. And much, much more.

The other 2 sections consist of a loooong list of my PCT advice to aspiring thru-hikers, and a very detailed PCT FAQ. The FAQ has 92 different questions with a variety of answers, both my own and from all over the web. It covers topics from “Is it safe to hike alone?” to “How do I poop with all these mosquitoes?” – and everything in between.

My hope is that the end result is an e-book that would be incredibly useful for PCT hopefuls, or just for those curious about thru-hiking. The town travelogue, based on my 2022 thru-hike, should be useful to all those who hiked the PCT before and want to try it again. (As I myself will someday…)

I hope you enjoy my e-book, and I hope it proves useful on your amazing, mind-blowing, life-changing adventure. Please feel free to share the link with your friends or with PCT facebook groups (I hang out exclusively on Reddit). As always, I look forward to your feedback. 🙂

Happy reading, and happy trails!

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My first-ever paperback!

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July 30, 2023

I’ve come a long, loooong way from my first awkward e-books. (In fact, I deleted and then completely remastered the very first one: it was frankly embarrassing.) I’ve gone from short-length FAQs to compendiums of public-domain literature to an actual, real-length book, eh.

I used to write about early retirement on my mostly abandoned personal finance blog. Then I turned all of that into an actual e-book with advice on retiring early: Let’s Retire Young. And after remarkably great reception and reactions from multiple people, I did a bunch more formatting work and voila – it’s turned into a paperback! Amazon, as always, takes most of the profits, but still, this is mind-blowing: there will be actual books with actual unique content (none of which is from public domain, for once) bearing my name, spreading my thoughts around the world.

For all our fancy technology, paper books still last a helluva lot longer than their digital counterparts. (Go ahead and try to open a Microsoft Word file from 1983…) This feels rather surreal: I’ve made something that could quite possibly outlive me, and/or gather dust in some library collection for decades and centuries. That is, of course, if people buy it: it’s not a fancy publisher deal, just a print-on-demand operation that’s run by Amazon. (That said: fancy publisher people – feel free to reach out to me!)

To celebrate – and generate a little ranking boost – I’m giving away the e-book version for free for the next three days. The giveaway will end at the end of Tuesday, August 1st. Ditto for most of my other e-books: you can find them over here. As always, feel free to share the links with your friends, and I’d really appreciate it if you left a 5-star review if you like what you see. (Even a single sentence will suffice.)

Thanks in advance, and happy reading, eh!

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New e-book! And a giveaway! :) “Let’s Retire Young: Embrace Simplicity, Escape the Rat Race, and Achieve Lean-FIRE”

Filed under: writing — 2 Comments
June 1, 2023

Okay, so the title is a bit of a mouthful, but you gotta be thorough with those things. Also, there are zero other e-books that have “lean-FIRE” in their title, and that’s just a damn shame, eh. (For the uninitiated: “FIRE” stands for “Financial Independence, Retire Early” – and lean-FIRE is the frugal version of that movement.) You can download my shiny new e-book over here. It’ll stay free until the end of Friday, June 2. I may do another giveaway in the coming weeks… If you like the e-book, please leave a 5-star review so others would be able to find it too!

As for what the book is about, I’m just going to shamelessly plagiarize my own e-book description here…

I retired at 34. I can teach you how.

My story doesn’t involve huge inheritances, rich relatives, or cushy jobs obtained through the Good Ol’ Boy Network. I’m a double immigrant: from Russia to the US when I was 16, from the US to Canada when I was 32. I never made six figures, never got huge scholarships, and my first job after college was as a box packer at an Amazon warehouse. (Thanks, recession!) Over the years, and by necessity, I mastered the art of frugal living and taught myself how to earn more, spend less, and invest the rest.

This book grew out of my personal finance blog, with a few extra chapters thrown in. Consider it your instruction manual for achieving frugal early retirement, aka lean-FIRE. (FIRE is a financial movement: it stands for “Financial Independence, Retire Early.”)

This book is written in a conversational and informal (sometimes too informal) style, and it has something for everyone who wants to improve their financial situation. Even if you don’t replicate my journey entirely, you’ll still be able to avoid some huge mistakes and boost your savings rate.

This e-book is hands down the most book-like e-book I’ve ever written: for one thing, it’s long (317 pages, woot!), and consists entirely of my own writing, unlike so many of the public-domain e-books I’ve spliced together. In theory, I could’ve tried to pitch it to publishing houses to get it printed like an actual real-life book, but from what I understand about the industry, nowadays they prefer authors with huge social media platforms, and that’s not something I care to maintain. (You, dear reader, are part of a small and exclusive club!) So e-book format it is, then.

This e-book has a lot of rather personal information that average people never really share with one another: money permeates so many aspects of our lives, yet it’s considered faux pas to bring it up, especially so when you’re doing better than those around you. Not gonna lie, I had some doubts about releasing it, even as I cleaned up all my old blog posts and wrote a couple of new chapters.

I ended up clicking that “Publish” button anyway, and that’s due to two simple reasons. First, no one will remember any of us 150 years from now: our internal struggle, shame, or awkwardness don’t matter one bit in the grand scale of things. And secondly, if my e-book can help at least one person (and ideally, many more) streamline their financial situation and retire earlier, then all of this will be worth it. In fact, one of my PCT hiking buddies has already thanked me profusely: he’s a lawyer, but he never got a chance to learn the ins and outs of personal finance – until now. Looks like I’ve already accomplished my absolute-minimum goal – let’s see how many more I can help, eh?

And so, without further ado, head over here if you’d like to download the e-book for free, and please feel free to share the link with all your friends: my e-book has something for everyone. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope even more to get a shiny 5-star review from you afterwards. Have fun!

P.S.: To celebrate my e-book’s release, I’m also doing a two-day giveaway on most of my other e-books over here. Personally, I highly recommend 50 shades of yay: great thinkers on happiness. It contains useful perspectives on happiness from great thinkers across the millennia. (We could all use that in this stressful time!)

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Giving away my newest book – “50 shades of yay: great thinkers on happiness”

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November 18, 2014

It’s been a while since I published a new book on Kindle, so I figured I’d celebrate by doing a good ol’ giveaway! Today and tomorrow only, you can download a brand new, absolutely free (as in cheese!) copy of my latest book, 50 shades of yay: great thinkers on happiness.

As the snarky title explains, it’s about the nature of happiness. What is it, what is it not, why don’t I have it, and where can I score some – those are just a few questions that are covered in 50 different essays, poems, aphorisms and philosophical reflections on the topic. You’ve probably heard of some of the featured writers (Emily Dickinson, Abraham Lincoln, Socrates), but some of the others will definitely be a pleasant discovery. Consider Christina, the 16th-century queen of Sweden, whose insightful notes and memoirs are virtually forgotten these days.

This book has a little bit for everyone: serious discussions on the nature of happiness and short, snappy soundbites; serious philosophical texts and thought-provoking poems; viewpoints from both optimists and pessimists. 50 shades of yay has something for everyone, and certainly something for you to help you on your personal quest toward that most elusive goal, happiness. Happy reading and best of luck!

Download link

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