"Smalltopia: A Practical Guide to Working for Yourself" by Tammy Strobel: An Ebook Review

Tammy Strobel was recently featured in both the New York Times and Yahoo! Finance for her minimalist life. She has written two ebooks about her experiences, Simply Car Free and her most recent offering, Smalltopia: A Practical Guide to Working for Yourself, which will be available for purchase on August 31, 2010.

Tammy was gracious enough to allow me to review her book prior to the release date, and I began reading the copy last night.

"Smalltopia: A Practical Guide to Working For Yourself" by Tammy Strobel: An Ebook Review

What is in This Ebook?

This 156 page ebook starts out with her personal story and how she managed to escape the rat race by minimizing her possessions and downsizing while simultaneously starting her own small business. She follows with the list of lessons that she learned during her journey.

These lessons are short but very practical. Classic truisms like "give more than you receive," are nestled alongside getting enough sleep, sticking to a schedule and limiting your time on social media websites.

She discusses the three essential items one needs to accomplish to make dreams into reality, covering six tools anyone can use to make it work. These tools range from the simple "make a life list," to focusing on daily intentions and to "start loving life now." She explains each of these tools in simple, clear language, in a way that makes the reader believe "hey, I could do that!"

Her next section discusses what she describes as "stupid work" and three hints how to stop doing it. She points out that your definition of stupid work may be different from hers, but that all of it emanates from the same place, preventing you from doing what you love.

Bravely she covers our growing addiction to staying constantly connected to the world through email and other social media, pointing out that the world will not end if we fail to check our email every five minutes but our lives can be richer by increasing our self-control in this area. This subject segues into the need to quiet our minds and focus on what needs to be done, and the benefits of a single word: no. Tammy even gives helpful tips on how to use that two-letter word gracefully and to our advantage, helping us to avoid becoming a workaholic and defeating the whole purpose of becoming a small business owner.

This book continues on to discuss the benefits of minimizing our life and expenses, keeping our business small and minimal but diverse enough to protect against income dips in one area or another-something that is rarely done in our "one job at a time" society. This one tip alone earns this book 5 out of 5 stars for content, even more so when paired with the other useful information she has within.

"Smalltopia: A Practical Guide to Working For Yourself" by Tammy Strobel: An Ebook Review

What are the Best Features of this Ebook?

This book contains practical advice from someone who has "been there, done that and bought the tee-shirt." This book not only covers Tammy's experiences, but offers real-life case studies from successful entrepreneurs like Leo Babauta, Chris Guillebeau, Jessica Reader, Everett Bogue and several others, who explain how they managed to start and run their own successful small businesses. Her case studies not only contain people who have successfully left the rat race behind, but the story of Victoria Vargas, who still works full-time but is using many of Tammy's strategies to prepare for her leap into self-employment.

This book contains links, hints and instructions not only to just start a small business, but on paring down your life so that you won't have to struggle so hard to make it work as you begin. The layout is clean and simple, with text that is easy to read and understand. This reviewer sat up until almost 3 in the morning absorbing the work and even though I was tired, the text was able to shine through without difficulty. This book gets 5 stars out of 5 for clarity, readability, and research.

Ms. Strobel not only did her homework on this book, she went out of her way to provide resources to help anyone interested in leaving the public sector and striking out on their own. The only concern this reviewer had was the price of this particular work. While I agree that it is worth her asking price of $27 based on the information contained within, this reviewer is concerned that the price alone may place it out of range of those in most need of the information it contains. She does balance this by allowing affiliates to earn 60% of the sale priceif they sign up on e-junkie. By selling two of these books a fan could pay for their own copy with a little extra for their time. With regret, I find I must give 3 stars out of 5 on price, because while the content is excellent, the market tends to favor lower-priced digital volumes. That said, I would consider this price quite reasonable should I have the opportunity to leaf through a hard copy at a bookstore, but I do have reservations on this price point for a digital copy.

"Smalltopia: A Practical Guide to Working For Yourself" by Tammy Strobel: An Ebook Review

Where Can I Get a Copy of this Ebook, and How Much Does it Cost?

This ebook will not be available until August 31, 2010, but after the release date it will be available by clicking this link. The price is $27, and delivery is immediate. She has her other book, Simply Car-Free, available on Amazon, so at a later date the reviewer hopes that she will release this new book in the Kindle format as well to increase the visibility of this text.

"Smalltopia: A Practical Guide to Working For Yourself" by Tammy Strobel: An Ebook Review

Overall, this book is an excellent introductory text for those who feel the need to escape the public sector. While specific in some areas, she does not bog the reader down with terms and explanations that would intimidate those unacquainted with business administration or internet marketing. The text is clean and easy to understand, while not talking down to the reader. As a result, this book earns 4 stars out of a possible 5, with the reviewer's only concern being one of price.

I have enjoyed taking this journey into Tammy's new release, and have asked to review her other book, Simply Car-Free. She has graciously consented, so look for a review of this ebook in the near future. Thank you Ms. Strobel, for allowing me the privilege of reviewing your delightful ebook. I have no doubt that you are helping to spearhead what is currently an entirely new business model.

Source:

Review copy of "Smalltopia: A Practical Guide to Working For Yourself" by Tammy Strobel