John Y’s Musings from the Middle: The Fear of Too Much Success

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My second book and the fear of too much success.

I almost have enough new posts to put out a second book of Musings from the Middle before Christmas. But am not sure I have the time to risk having a blockbuster best seller.

It made me think of the time as a teenager I was shooting craps with friends and had failed to roll a pass for 10 consecutive rolls.

My logic before doubling down my bet for the 11th roll was “Since I had failed to roll a pass 10 times in a row I had much greater than usual odds to succeed on my 11th roll.” But I didn’t and lost my last dollar.

Later a math teacher explained to ne that if I flipped a coin 10 times in a row and it was heads each time on the 11th flip it would still only be a 50-50 chance of it being tails. I never liked that math teacher and always thought he was overly pessimistic about life.

So since my first book only has sold in the very high two digits (almost low three digits) and is ranked, like, two trillionth in sales rank on Amazon.com my old logic is returning and telling me if the first book was a complete sales failure the chances of a second book being a great success is pretty much guaranteed. At least if you look at the numbers, understand my logic, and have an optimistic mathematical view of the world, unlike my former math teacher.

Sometimes you just have to go for it and take the risk in life even when logic dictates you won’t have the time to handle your overehelming success. Just do it anyway and figure it out later.

And besides, what’s the worst that can happen? Sales jn the high two digits again? Heck, that would only means a third book would likely be a sure NY Times best seller.