00:00Hello everyone. My name is Elvira Berry. I am originally from the USSR. As any proper
00:07Soviet girl, I am completely rational and don't believe in miracles. And yet, miracles
00:13keep happening to me. It was December 1990. I went to the cinema three times to watch
00:19Gone with the Wind, which had just made its way to the USSR. By then, the United States
00:25was our friend, so we, the common folk, were allowed to see American classics from the 1930s.
00:33The film left me absolutely shaken. And I began frantically searching for the book.
00:40It had been mentioned on TV that it had already been translated into Russian.
00:45Of course, it wasn't available in stores. Do you think I was the only one inspired by
00:50the story of a beautiful woman who overcomes devastation and societal rejection and eventually
00:57conquers the world? My looks were fine. I just needed the right dose of inspiration.
01:04But the same thoughts were racing through the minds of thousands of girls my age,
01:09which is why Gone with the Wind was selling like hotcakes at that train station kiosk.
01:15I found the book for a reseller who dealt in rare and hard-to-get titles near Lenin Square,
01:20but he only had the first volume. The second one was nowhere to be found.
01:27I devoured the first part in just a couple of days and decided then and there that I had to
01:33get my
01:34hands on the second part no matter what. The treasure was finally located at the Lenin Library in downtown,
01:41an hour-long bus ride from my home. A quick aside. In my city, half of everything that required a
01:48name
01:49was called Lenin. Libraries, streets, children's organizations, metro stations, you name it.
01:56This happened because many of these places were originally named after other leaders. But over time,
02:04those leaders either fell out of favour as enemies of the people, or were deemed unworthy of their
02:11positions. To avoid the hassle of renaming everything, it was simpler to just call it all after Lenin.
02:18Lenin was the safe choice. The tried and true comrade who wouldn't let anyone down. A treasure-like
02:26gun with the wind was obviously not available for checkout, so every day I made the icy track on a
02:33freezing bus to the library. There, I'd retrieve the battered, black-covered volume and settle into a
02:41corner near the warm radiator. And that's when the magic began. One moment I'd be crying my eyes out,
02:48the next I'd be stiffly laughed so I wouldn't disturb the students at the neighboring tables.
02:54My hair was long back then, and I'd let my braid down to hide my tears-streaked face.
03:00I remember one kind old man asked me, Miss, are you all right? Oh, I was more than all right.
03:08I was euphoric, experiencing catharsis, soaring to the stars on wings of joy. And the most astonishing
03:15thing was that nothing in the outside world had changed. How could Margaret Mitchell, a woman who had
03:21died 30 years before I was even born, create something that had such a profound effect on me?
03:29There, next to that warm radiator, beneath a frosted-over window in the reading room of the Lenin library,
03:36I made a heartfelt wish. I want to be like Margaret Mitchell. I want to possess that magic. I want
03:44to
03:44create like that. And I want to become a famous American writer.
03:51You see, in 1990s, being a Soviet writer was seen as hopelessly uncool. And where was I?
04:01A scrappy kid from their other factory district. And where was America?
04:07My dream was insane and utterly unrealistic. I had no money, no knowledge of English, and my family
04:14had no useful connections. Unless you count my mom's friend who occasionally let us borrow her German
04:20fashion magazines. But the wheels of the universe were already turning. And somehow everything started
04:30to fall into place. I really did become a writer. My first book was published by Exmo, the most
04:38prestigious publishing house in Moscow, when I was 25 years old. And then, bam, I moved to America.
04:47Because a real American IT guy fell in love with me. We met on the internet and it turned out
04:53he spoke Russian.
04:57I worked hard to charm him through a mail because there were no video calls back then and I couldn't
05:04rely on my looks every day. My American received a funny letter from me and my writing did its magic.
05:13I moved to California, but there was a problem. I barely knew English.
05:20So, how could I become an American writer under those circumstances?
05:26Translation was prohibitively expensive, between $6,000 and $10,000 per novel.
05:34A good literary translator is usually a university professor who not only knows Russian well,
05:41but also writes beautifully in English. Such people don't work for minimum wages.
05:48I traveled the world to gather materials for the most compelling historical novel I could imagine.
05:54My books were published in Moscow and translated into European languages. But America remained out of
06:02reach. In Europe, publishers factor translation costs into their budgets. Apparently, they have some kind
06:08of tax incentive system. But in the US, nothing like that exists. This is why less than 3% of
06:17books on
06:18the American market are translated literature from around the world. It simply does not reach the
06:23shelves because of the staggering cost of translation. To afford the translation, I started teaching creative
06:33writing. It worked out because I already had a reputation as a guru in Russian. Three novels from my Russian
06:40treasure series were translated into English, and all that remained was to save for marketing.
06:47Let's face it, without promotion, even the most brilliant book suffers the fate of Moby Dick. It flops in
06:53sales, only to be discovered decades later by some literary critic who exclaims,
06:58How did we miss such a masterpiece? But by then, the offer is long gone and doesn't care.
07:07I browsed Amazon's Russian historical fiction category and realized I could not manage without
07:13a marketing budget. Books in a specific genre sell well when there are many offers creating collective
07:20demand. But my colleagues in that category were authors of romance novels where the heroine fell in love
07:30with the head of the Russian mafia. I resolved to save up and achieve my goal anyway. But then, the
07:40war in
07:40Ukraine began. My Ukrainian students had more pressing concerns than literature, and my Russian students were
07:49unable to pay me because of sanctions. Everything I had built collapsed. And it took me two years to recover
07:58and figure out how to move forward. It wasn't just about my business. Many of my Russian students joined the
08:06dark side and began using the techniques I taught them for war propaganda.
08:12I didn't just lose my business. I lost my identity. That's why I developed the Sphinx method, a system to
08:21help
08:22people find themselves. If you are curious, visit my website at alvirabari.com. It's all explained there.
08:28At some point, a wild idea struck me to start making YouTube videos with zero audience, poor English, and no
08:39marketing budget.
08:41I had nothing to lose. So I decided I'd record video regularly and maybe, just maybe, gather a thousand
08:49subscribers by April. A thousand subscribers came with a few days. If someone had told me I'd have my own
08:58YouTube channel in English one day, I wouldn't have believed them. What? Actual English-speaking people would
09:07listen to me laugh at my jokes and even leave comments. No way! It turns out the universe gently
09:15nudged me forward. Go on. Remember that wish you made 34 years ago? Well, it's already. You can make it
09:23happen now. Don't be afraid. I'm with you. If you are with me too, give this video a thumbs up.
09:29And if you are
09:30curious about my Russian treasure series, join my waiting list to receive notifications about the
09:36book's release. It has everything we love. Great historical events, discoveries, and heroes you
09:43all fall in love with. And not a single Russian mafia boss. That's my promise.
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