My Flagship Book
How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free
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Over 475,000 Copies Sold and Published in 11 Languages
Finally, Finally, Finally!
After 25 years of establishing itself as the "The World's Best Retirement Book" — based on three important metrics — the 25th Anniversary Updated Edition of How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free has been published.
With it having sold over 475,000 copies, the original edition of HTRHW&F proved itself as an excellent book — but the new edition is far superior.
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How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free has been published in 10 languages besides English:
Published in Greek by Kedros Publishers, Athens.
Published in Spanish by Editorial Amat, Barcelona.
Published in Chinese (simplified characters) by CITIC Publishing House, Beijing and in Chinese (traditional characters) by Yuan-Liou Publishing, Taipei.
Published in French by Stanké, Montreal and Paris.
Published in Korean by Like a Wild Flower, Seoul.
Published in Japanese by Open Knowledge Corp, Tokyo.
Published in Russian by Livebook Publishing, Moscow.
Published in Hungarian by Park Publishing, Budapest.
Published in German by Wiley-VCH Verlag, Weinheim.
Published in Vietnamese by R Books Co. Ltd, Ho Chi Minh City.
Published in Audio by Brilliance Publishing., Grand Haven, MI.
Purchase Wiley Publishing's German Edition of HTRHW&F at Amazon
HTRHW&F Has Outsold These Two Forbes Retirement Books by a Factor of 120 to 1 in the US Bookstore Market
Vietnamese Edition of How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free
From the Above Article in the Financial Post about HTRHW&F and Ernie Zelinski
"To be sure, retirement books are a glutted field, but most focus on money and financial planning. They view the finish line as the last day of employment. That's where Zelinski's begins."
— Jonathan Chevreau, Financial Post
IMAGES USED IN THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF HOW TO RETIRE HAPPY, WILD AND FREE
HOW TO RETIRE HAPPY, WILD AND FREE displayed in the Barnes & Noble Bookstore in the Ala Moana Shopping Center in Holoululu
Purchase at Amazon
Purchase at Barnes & Noble
Purchase at Books a Million
Purchase at Bookshop.org
Purchase at Indigo
Purchase at Amazon.UK
THE WORLD’S BEST RETIREMENT BOOK
HOW TO RETIRE HAPPY, WILD, AND FREE
(Retirement Wisdom That You Won’t Get from Your Financial Advisor)
In 2002 Ernie Zelinski made an affirmation (declaration) while writing a retirement book to add to his signature book The Joy of Not Working:
“I am with Intention effortlessly and successfully achieving my goal of writing and self-publishing the best book in the world on handling retirement called How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free. I will then get a US publisher and 15 foreign publishers through which I will sell 500,000 copies.”
Do affirmations work? Who knows? Nevertheless, this international bestseller has now been published in 11 languages and has sold over 475,000 copies in all its editions even though it was rejected by over 35 British and US publishers. Ernie couldn’t initially get a US publisher but both Random House and Wiley later offered to take over publication of the book.
Because Random House and Wiley wouldn’t match the generous royalties that Phil Wood, owner of Ten Speed Press, offered for The Joy of Not Working (now over 325,000 copies sold), Ernie decided to keep self-publishing his landmark retirement classic. These are the results so far:
TOTAL SALES OF How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free
♥ Print Sales: 424,801 (US Bookstore sales, Amazon sales, Canadian sales, Premium sales, and Foreign Rights sales)
♥ Apple eBook Sales: 3,723
♥ Kindle Sales: 35,319
♥ Kobo Sales: 706
♥ Brilliance Audio Sales: 22,304
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ TOTAL = 486,853
When an executive editor with Andrews McMeel Publishing recently suggested to Ernie that he consider writing a new retirement book for the publisher, he did some research that surprised even him. He can now claim that How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free is arguably The World’s Best Retirement Book.
First, he discovered in October 2025 that the review site Goodreads rated How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free No. 1 out of over 1,450 retirement books. (The Joy of Not Working was No. 10.)
With further research, Ernie found out using the official Report for US bookstore sales that How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free is the bestselling book in the “retirement” or “retire” categories in the US beating out all retirement books published by major US publishers, having outsold the New York Times bestsellers in these two categories such as Washington Post correspondent Stan Hinden’s How to Retire Happy published by McGraw Hill. (Ernie’s HTRHW&F has outsold Stan Hinden’s New York Times Bestseller How to Retire Happy by a ratio of five to one.)
The third metric that makes How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free the World's Best Retirement Book is that it has the most foreign publishers of all retirement books — with eleven — except for The Joy of Not Working — which has twenty-one.
In September 2014 the AARP (American Association of Retired People) posted on their website as well as in the print edition of the AARP Bulletin an article titled 6 Retirement Books You Should Read Now.
These were the six books recommended:
1. Roadmap for the Rest of Your Life – AARP – Bart Astor
2. Can I Retire – Mike Piper
3. Money for Life – Steve Vernon
4. Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning – Taylor Larimore
5. How to Retire Happy – Stan Hinden (Washington Post Writer)
6. How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free – Ernie J. Zelinski
As it turns out, How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free has outsold all the other five books combined by a ratio of more than three to one. The mention by AARP resulted in an additional 15,000 copies of HTRHW&F being sold, more than any of the other books.
A lot has to do with the title. Ernie paid Author Marketing Strategist Charlie Hoehn $1,000 for a one-hour consultation session. Charle has developed a title tester with the highest score being 75. How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free came in with a score of 69. Charlie said that only two or three other books had tested this high, one being The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. This is another reason Ernie can claim How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free is the World's Best Retirement Book — it has a title and a subtitle that is much better than the competition.
Interestingly, Ernie compared two retirement books published by Forbes Books, which is actually an author-funded publisher. According to the website Self-Publishing.com, authors pay between $125,000 and $250,000 to have their books published with this name brand publisher — but with no guarantee of major sales in the US bookstore market. Forbes emphasizes their brand as an important factor for authors having their books published with them.
So much for the brand factor. How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free outsold the two Forbes retirement books put together by a factor of 120 to 1 in the US bookstore market.
In regards to brands, Ernie agrees with marketing guru Seth Godin who wisely pointed out:
"I am not a brand. You are not a brand. You're a person. A living, breathing, autonomous individual who doesn't seek to maximize ROI or long-term brand value. You have choices. You have the ability to change your mind. You can tell the truth, see others for who they are and choose to make a difference. Selling yourself as a brand sells you too cheap."
Clearly, Ernie didn't try to sell himself as a brand. That would definitely cheapen what he has to say. For the record, Ernie started by spending $1,175 for the layout and cover design and another $8,760 for printing the first 5,000 copies of the US Edition of his book. Indeed, a far cry from $125,000 to $250,000 that authors pay to have their books published with the Forbes brand which normally end up with dismal results.
How did Ernie manage to get the remarkable sales results for The World’s Best Retirement Book? First, it has a remarkable title. Second, it has remarkable content. Third, it has had remarkable promotion by the author that the vast majority of books don’t get.
Ernie has used over 75 unique marketing techniques in promoting HTRHW&F that 95 percent of writers and book marketing experts — not to mention AI — are not creative or clever enough to come up with. These marketing techniques involve what his competitors are NOT doing — instead of what his competitors are doing.
For example, which other author of a retirement book has managed to get Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary (Mr. Wonderful) to proudly hold up their book and have him joyfully pose for a photo? Ernie has!
Ernie has promised that he will come up with many more unique marketing techniques to promote the 25th Anniversary Updated Edition of How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free. He has already created several blockbuster ones – but there are many that he won’t think of for at least a year or two! What are some of them? It's a secret for several reasons. This is the main one: As famous pilot and bestselling author Richard Bach said in his inspirational fable Illusions: "Learn what the magician knows and it's not magic anymore."
The 25th Anniversary Updated Edition of HTRHW&F will be released in October 2026 by Ernie's US distritubor Simon and Schuster.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ THE WORLD'S BEST RETIREMENT BOOK:
♥ HTRHW&F shows people how to be happy in retirement regardless of how much retirement income and resources a retiree has.
♥ HTRHW&F helps people adequately overcome feeling useless in retirement with a number of techniques.
♥ HTRHW&F features The Get-a-Life Tree, an important retirement planning tool that shows you how to generate interesting and fulfilling activities to pursue in retirement. See Pages 84 to 89.
♥ HTRHW&F utilizes The EZ Rule of Life to show retirees how to avoid boredom. See Page 19.
♥ HTRHW&F advocates for early retirement and gives you the courage to retire early — in fact, the earlier the better. See Pages 22 to 27.
♥ HTRHW&F helps you identify — and then overcome all the fears that you have about retirement. See Pages 15 to 17.
♥ HTRHW&F utilizes cartoons, quotations, diagrams, and letters from readers (of the original edition) to appeal to the many different learning styles that people have. READ THE WHOLE BOOK!
♥ HTRHW&F has been a perennial bestseller for 25 years in a market supersaturated with retirement books.
♥ HTRHW&F identifies the importance of 3C Vision vs 3D Vision for experiencing a happy and fulfilling retirement. See Page 145.
♥ HTRHW&F teaches you how to always get what you want in a split nanosecond in Zen-Like fashion — and why your absolute needs have always been provided for, and likely will be in retirement. See Pages 211 to 214.
♥ HTRHW&F tells you why today's Internet may make you Dumber instead of Smarter. See Page 144.
♥ HTRHW&F teaches you how to matter and make a difference in your retirement without having to be Mother Teresa. See Pages 203 to 207.
♥ HTRHW&F shows you why a small retirement home can hold more happiness than a large retirement home. See Page 193.
♥ HTRHW&F advises why it's better to be hated for one's eccentricity than to be loved for one's mediocrity. See Page 199.
♥ HTRHW&F reveals to you the most Endearing and Enduring Legacy that you can leave to your family, friends, and the rest of the world — that costs the least amount of money. See Page 226.
♥ HTRHW&F stresses the importance of lifelong learning : “Be a LEARNER First; become a MASTER Second; and remain a STUDENT Forever”, which is the author's personal mantra first introduced in his Life's Secret Handbook. See Page 135.
♥ HTRHW&F makes the perfect retirement gift because it has a title and content that celebrates retirement.
♥ HTRHW&F is the only retirement book that has been published in 11 languages — except for the author's signature book The Joy of NOT Working which has been published in 17 foreign languages. See the Copyright Page.
♥ HTRHW&F is the only self-published retirement book that is distributed by Simon and Schuster — simply because it's The World's Best Retirement Book, which has sold over 475,000 copies. See the Back Cover.
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