Wait, is getting really rich the standard? Because not all languages are equal in their ability to ring this bell at any given time. Right now, English is king -- its the lingua franca of half the world or more, and has a disproportionate number of populous rich countries using it as their first language -- America is conspicuously important in this regard.

Writers in other languages are at a severe disadvantage in terms of ability to cash in on their local popularity and influence. I understand that Russia, for instance, takes poetry very, very seriously; but its legal and economic system is not capable of giving its poets their honors in the form of money. For example, Yevgeny Yevtushenko is a big deal, and he's not starving as far as I can tell. But neither does he make anything like a tenth of what cheesy American hack (not hacker -- the bad, journalistic kind of hack) Dan Brown makes.

Speaking of Dan Brown -- he's a huge financial success, but he's the non-thinking man's version of Umberto Eco, who, from a financial point of view, made the extremely unwise decisions to be Italian and not to pander to the lowest common denominator among his potential readers.