Barefoot Investor makes history with best-selling kids book

Barefoot Investor Scott Pape has smashed records following the release of his hit new book for kids to help them save money.

The path to kids’ financial success mapped out by Barefoot Investor Scott Pape has made history – becoming the fastest selling book by an Australian author in 20 years.

His brand new money making guide – Barefoot Kids: Your Epic Money Adventure – aimed at kids aged between 7 and 14 years old – has sold 128,600 copies alone in its first week since hitting the shelves.

Published by HarperCollins, this makes Barefoot Kids the biggest ever Australian-authored children’s book release and the biggest release of 2022 since hitting the shelves last week.

It is now the highest selling week for an Australian-authored book since BookScan Australia records began in December 2002, and the most successful title since JK Rowling released Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in Australia in August 2016.

Speaking to News Corp Australia about the book’s overnight success since its launch on November 7, Pape said the book’s success can be chalked up to families’ hunger for a book that is the first of its kind – one that speaks directly to kids.

He said he has been inundated with letters of gratitude from children flexing their new-found financial knowledge after reading the handy, adventure-like guide from cover to cover.

“It’s a really unique book, in that I don’t know of any other book where there’s, you know, 50 or so kids aged between five and 14 that are telling their stories.

“It’s about the power of possibility.”

Barefoot Kids: Your Epic Money Adventure by Scott Pape.

Financial Adviser and author Scott Pape at his property in Chitin Victoria. Picture: David Geraghty.

Pape said the sales showed a clear demand among parents to arm their children with money skills that would give them the best start in life amid the rising costs of living and ballooning inflation.

“Parents are voting with their wallets and they are saying this is important,” he said.

It comes after Pape’s previous success with the release of Barefoot Investor for Families, which also had a record-breaking first week of sales at over 74,000 copies sold.

HarperCollins Australia chief executive Jim Demetriou said: “This is history-making publishing”.

“Our entire team and company are so proud of Scott and to be the publisher of his book.”

Ryder and Alexis are among the children with businesses featured in Barefoot Kids. Picture: Supplied.

The Barefoot Investor said the book has begun to cut through the financial knowledge gap in Australian schools, where there is currently no central financial literacy curriculum by informing kids on money smart practices outside the classroom.

“Finance and money is a language, so if you don’t learn it at school, and if you don’t speak that language at home, we just naturally expect kids at 17 or 18, to start speaking this foreign language,” he said.

“Kids like learning from other kids and hearing about a kid who gets paid to walk dogs, or who bought a boat, or who set up their own school. It’s pretty inspiring stuff, so I think that’s what the kids have gelled with.

“I just wanted every kid to open the book and say: ‘That could be me. I could do that’.”