□ Placeholder: 10 — Postcards from Ljubljana, Ebook experiment

Ladies and Gentlemen from four different continents —

This dispatch is going to be more picture-laden than words. Let's get going.

I was in Ljubljana, Slovenia just a couple of weeks ago and it was nothing I had expected from a capital city. There wasn't anything urban about the city and yet everything was. From the car free city centre to an enormous emphasis on sustainable development — the city felt like one of the best kept secrets of Europe. It's not as much on the radar of tourists who flock other well known cities like Prague, Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam. The city inhibits a park (covering an area of five square kilometres), a 900-year old castle and a 300-year old cathedral all within a walking distance of not more than 15 mins. 30 mins of drive outside the city would take you to one of the most picturesque lakes — Lake Bled. Another 30 would take you to 800-year old Predjama Castle and Postojna Caves formed by Pivka River over millions of years.

---

## Ebook Experiment

Amidst all this travel frantic, I managed to expand the writings from the original ABC Trek Website and made it into a small booklet containing about 5,000 words. I am calling it — A Short Walk to Annapurna Base Camp.

I wanted to experiment and test out the entire experience of self publishing books. And to my surprise, it was like publishing a blog post on Amazon. The hardest part was sitting down and writing everyday. Once I had the manuscript I simply uploaded the file on Amazon, keyed in some metadata about the book and it was published. Just like that. It's live in all markets and with every sale that I make, Amazon gets about 30% of it. Considering the hassle-free experience and the platform that the company provides, not a bad deal for the occasional writer. I published it last week and haven't told this to single soul — yet I see a couple of purchases everyday. Besides, it also has the option to allow on demand printing of the paperback!

You can check out the book in India, Australia, US and Germany. But honestly, I would advise against buying it. It contains nothing more than the original website.

If you are interested I can send you the ePub directly here and you can give it a read (though you have been warned that it might not be worth your time.)

---

Until next time,