The Problem With Eating Your Golden Children

 am revisiting an old favourite of mine, The Richest Man in Babylon, a 1926 book by George S. Claso. In this parable about the seven rules about money, the king of Babylon appoints Arkad, undoubtedly the richest man in Babylon, to teach the inhabitants how to make money, keep it and multiply it.

In this time period, the economy was very much based on the use of slaves and so it is time appropriate that Arkad calls coins slaves and children of slaves. In these times, if a slave had a child, they were owned by the master to do their bidding.

Arkad’s students tell him that when they receive good fortune, they go out and buy clothes and have a feast. But their teacher explains that feasting when you get more money is like eating your golden children and ‌thus losing your army of golden slaves. He also paints a picture that people who do not learn the art of creating wealth in some ways, even though they are free men, live worse off than slaves. It made me re-look at how authors earn their money and how they spend it.

In my experience, most authors write a book, load it onto Amazon and sit and wait. Then they wait some more and then ultimately, unless they simply write for the love of writing, they quit. After all, why would you spend time on something that does not bring in a return?

A quick peek into an author’s KDP account sometimes paints a different picture of what I hear in my initial consultation. I see that they have not invested time or coin into discovering what keywords they should be using. If they are exclusive to Amazon, they have neglected to add their book to Kindle Unlimited and thus; they have run none of the promotions that are exclusive to KDP Select. Sometimes they tell me they have tried advertising, and it does not work, and then when I look into their Amazon AD account, there is no history of any ads.

I have learned the hard way that thinking about something and actually doing it are two entirely different things. There have been days where all I did was stare at my KDP book sales page, wishing that somehow a miraculous spike would manifest itself on the page. But it never did. The only results I have ever seen is when I spend time and, yes, some money on creating promotions. Doing the right things and doing them consistently reaps rewards. This is one of the lessons the Richest Man in Babylon taught his students. Self discipline and consistency in earning and multiplying golden coins, is a cure for a lean purse. If we swap the word purse with the word readership, we can see how consistently working at finding, attracting and converting readers should be the regular discipline of every author.

So this week I encourage you to re-look at your activity. How do you spend your time and your money? Put aside some time and‌ money resources towards your book career and build an army of golden children that will bring you royalties for the future.