{"id":6714,"date":"2015-09-24T18:00:23","date_gmt":"2015-09-24T23:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/?p=6714"},"modified":"2025-07-29T16:16:05","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T21:16:05","slug":"the-value-of-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/the-value-of-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"The value of knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"An
Knowledge is power. Time is money.<\/figcaption><\/figure>And this is where slogging through Number One\u2019s crazymaking<\/a> was worth this gem: \u201cYou paid for your training in sweat, money, tears, and sometimes blood. Why are you giving it away?\u201d<\/p>\n

As some folks know, my day job is formatting ebooks and designing print books, and otherwise helping authors get where they want to go in the world of self-publishing. I consult with nonprofits, corporations, and churches to manage their in-house publishing divisions.<\/p>\n

Occasionally, someone will come along who wants my help, and they start picking my brain about general things because they don’t know where to start and the plethora of information on the internet is almost as bad as no information at all. No problem. I like helping people, answering their questions. After all, there are people who handed little nuggets of wisdom down to me when I didn\u2019t even know what questions to ask. The companies who hire me pay for all this advice.<\/p>\n

However.<\/p>\n

There comes a point where the potential client is not picking my brain so much as trying to learn how to do my job. I can always tell when they get to that point because they\u2019re asking specific formatting questions, but they\u2019re not asking the right<\/em> questions.<\/p>\n

This is where I stop responding to their emails.<\/p>\n

This summer was difficult for me work-wise. So when a potential client continued to email me to mine my brain after I\u2019d already invested several hours in him, I stopped responding because I simply didn\u2019t have any more time to spare for him.<\/p>\n

And then I got a nasty note berating me for not helping him. He did offer to pay for my \u201cexclusive time,\u201d but not until after he\u2019d had his say.<\/p>\n

This is where my viewpoint differs from Number One\u2019s. I don\u2019t feel like I\u2019m giving my knowledge away for free, I feel like someone is trying is trying to steal from me. They don\u2019t value my knowledge, my time, or my skill, therefore, it\u2019s fair game.<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, today I went googling for a user\u2019s manual for a 40-year-old tool. It was online, free, a scan of the original user\u2019s manual. I don\u2019t know who did that, but I will be forever grateful.<\/p>\n

Knowledge comes with a price. In my case, it was time. I don\u2019t mind donating a little of it, but time (like money) is a finite resource. My family has to eat. And sometimes, an hour makes a big difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And this is where slogging through Number One\u2019s crazymaking was worth this gem: \u201cYou paid for your training in sweat, money, tears, and sometimes blood. Why are you giving it away?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,87,317],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ebooks","category-money","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6714"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16558,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6714\/revisions\/16558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}