The book Shut Your Monkey by Danny Gregory caught my attention with its description. We all have doubts, and that inner voice often tells us unpleasant things that can sometimes make us give up. Danny Gregory suggests visualizing this panicky voice as a monkey that lives inside us and holds us back from growing and achieving success.
The author worked in creative fields for many years, and this is evident in the book’s design: it’s full of sketches and illustrations, with white pages alternating with black ones. It’s clear that he was aiming to create not just a book but a creative piece of art.
While there are some interesting ideas, the book as a whole didn’t captivate me because it lacks a clear, cohesive approach.
It feels more like a notebook where the author jotted down his thoughts and artistic sketches “on the subject” and then decided to publish the whole notebook as a book. Perhaps because of this, it reads quickly and easily—there are no long chapters, just short paragraphs on one thought before moving on to the next.
Unfortunately, that’s where the positives end. At some point, I even found myself thinking that the book felt like the speech of an American preacher: short, concise, emotional, but with an obvious underlying agenda—selling a form of religious fanaticism.
You can read it to reflect on how you deal with your own inner panic monkey, but don’t expect much more from the book.
Amazon, with its Kindle platform, has done a tremendous job in promoting eBooks. Unlike physical books, the production cost of an eBook can essentially be considered zero. Why? Because it’s created once and then requires no additional resources (while each copy of a physical book uses paper and ink at the very least). After that, you can sell 10 copies or a million without incurring any further direct costs.
That’s why I’ve always said that selling eBooks is, in many ways, selling air. And it’s for this reason that the pricing model for them is so intriguing. Typically, the price is comparable to that of the equivalent paperback book. After that, various local factors come into play: who the publisher is, how well-known the author is, which country the book is being sold in, and so on.
The approach to selling eBooks also differs from country to country. Just recently, writer Alexey Pehov mentioned that in Germany, eBooks might be released before the printed version, with similar pricing, and publishers there don’t believe it impacts print sales. In Russia, however, it’s the opposite: there’s always talk that releasing an eBook “kills” print sales (although I’ve never seen direct proof of this). As a result, sometimes you have to wait several weeks, or even months, for the eBook version to come out after the print release.
But yesterday, I discovered that even within the same book, prices can vary. This came as a surprise to me, and I found out quite unexpectedly.
I decided to buy the Kindle version of a book on Amazon. I found it, saw the price—$6.13. I noticed I was browsing anonymously, so I logged into my account. And then, surprise! The price for the same book was now $6.30. Let me emphasize—it was the exact same eBook!
The difference wasn’t huge, but it piqued my interest. So, I tried searching for the same book anonymously, accessing the site via a VPN from different regions. From Russia, the price was also $6.30, but when I accessed the store as if from Chicago, USA, the price nearly doubled to around $12.
I did some research online and found that I’m not the only one who has noticed this discrepancy. However, Amazon doesn’t comment on the situation. Judging by posts, sometimes their support team even shuts down such inquiries with a note saying, “case closed” (which I find odd, as my experience with Amazon’s customer service has always been great—they’re usually very customer-oriented).
Some speculate that this might be related to local taxes or other factors (similar to how Steam now includes VAT for purchases from Russia). But this explanation seems unclear, especially given my own experience: I checked the book price from Cyprus while browsing anonymously, then logged into my account again from Cyprus—and the price changed. Yet, there’s no clear link between an Amazon account and a specific country (there’s a billing address, and I have several cards linked, so it’s unclear how they choose). And in Russia, where VAT is now applied, the price was the same.
So, this is just another example of a strange and still unclear approach to pricing for a digital product.
The book Product Management with Scrum by Roman Pichler was recommended to me by some great colleagues with the comment, “it’s clear and to the point.” It’s hard to disagree with that assessment, but my expectations, based on such a recommendation, didn’t quite match the book’s content.
No, it’s not that the ideas or methods described in the book are wrong—everything is fine in that regard. However, I’m left wondering who the target audience is. Who exactly is this book for?
The book’s main goal is to explain Scrum from the perspective of the role of the Product Owner. It begins by describing who the Product Owner is, then goes on to detail what is expected from them at different stages of working on a product using the Scrum methodology.
Many people have a mixed attitude toward Boris Akunin’s History of the Russian State series, accusing him of oversimplification and highly personal interpretations. However, I still believe that the author has achieved at least one great thing—he got many readers interested in history who otherwise might not have wanted to delve into it. Take me, for example: I’m interested in history, but I can’t handle purely historical works. Akunin, with his style, usually makes such narratives engaging.
The volume Tsar Peter Alexeyevich is already the fifth book in the series, and it’s entirely dedicated to just one ruler, unlike the previous volumes.
However, this is the first volume that disappointed me more than it pleased. You’d think, with such a monumental figure like Peter the Great—arguably the most well-known tsar in Russian history—there would be plenty of material for an engaging story. With all his adventures and his breaking of traditional norms, there should be so much room for a captivating narrative.
