The Illusion of Success

Why We Forgot to Ask “Why”

What does it really mean to be a “best seller”? And what does it say about us that we care so much? These questions have been rattling in my mind ever since I learned how shockingly easy it is to slap that label on a book. We talk about success in publishing as if it’s measured in best-seller titles and shiny emblems but what if those are just symbols we’ve been conditioned to chase? What if our idea of success is a story we inherited, never stopping to ask why we believe it?

The Best-Seller Illusion

Not long ago, I discovered a hard truth hiding in plain sight: “#1 Amazon Best Seller” doesn’t always mean what we think. In fact, an enterprising author once proved how hollow this title can be by turning a single photograph of his foot into a book and buying a few copies. That stunt was enough to make it a No. 1 Best Seller in its category on Amazon.com. Three copies. That’s all it took to grab the coveted orange “Best Seller” banner on the world’s largest book marketplace. I remember sitting back, stunned and a little disillusioned. Here was something I’d aspired to for years, bestselling author, exposed as a game of algorithms and category hacks rather than a true gauge of literary impact.

How is this possible? For one, Amazon’s bestseller rankings update hourly and are sliced into thousands of niche categories publishdrive.com. This means at almost any given moment, there are countless “#1 Best Sellers” on Amazon in some micro-genre. In a single day, dozens upon dozens of books can rotate through the top spot of their slice of the market. In other words, you can be a best seller by afternoon and forgotten by midnight. The title isn’t a lasting achievement; it’s a momentary status in a system designed to give out blue ribbons by the hour. With so many categories and constant refresh, being an “Amazon Best Seller” has become a participation trophy of the publishing world – there for the taking if you play the system right.

The New York Times Best Seller list, that grand old pillar of publishing prestige, isn’t immune to manipulation either. Many assume it’s purely the top-selling books nationwide, but in reality the list is curated, not a strict sales ranking reddit.com. The editors at NYT choose which books to include from a selection of reporting retailers, and they’ve been known to leave out titles that rack up huge sales outside their traditional channels. (Yes, it’s true, you could technically outsell half the list and still not be on it if your sales came from “the wrong place” or in a way that raises an eyebrow.) So the emblem “New York Times Best Seller” doesn’t strictly mean highest-selling book; it means a book that the Times chose to recognize, with all the subjectivity and industry politics that entails.

Realizing this was equal parts freeing and disturbing. On one hand, it confirmed a suspicion I’d long harbored: these accolades are, to a large extent, illusions. They’re symbols we’re told to strive for, and yet the way to attain them often has more to do with timing, category choice, or marketing blitzes than with substance. On the other hand, I had to face a tough question: Why did I want this badge so badly in the first place? Why did I, and so many authors like me, feel that without a best-seller label our work didn’t count?

Part of the answer is cultural. To be a “bestselling author” is to wear a badge of legitimacy. It suggests that the collective voice of society, through purchases or endorsements, has deemed your work worthy. It’s like a gold star on your homework from the universe. I’ll admit it: when I published my first book, I dreamed of that orange banner or a line in the Times. It felt like the gateway to being taken seriously. But that dream has a dark underbelly. I’ve watched authors (including myself) contort their launch plans purely to chase those lists, sometimes spending thousands on ads or gimmicks for a fleeting spike. We pour so much time and money into engineering a moment of “bestseller” glory that we forget to ask if it truly matters.

Here’s a sobering truth: about 90% of authors never sell more than 250 copies of their book. Still, I see so many writers pouring money into bestseller campaigns, hoping the label alone will launch them into that elusive 10%. I almost did the same. After selling just 77 copies through traditional channels, I got my first royalty check six months later, for $150. It was humbling. I had the “published author” title, a couple nice reviews, but the result? Crickets.

What saved me was selling direct. I launched a Shopify store, moved hundreds of books myself and made thousands of dollars, without a middleman. That contrast lit a fire in me. Not just because I saw a better way, but because I realized how many authors never even get the chance to. That’s what drove me to build something different. Something fair. Something that puts authors first.

In fact, that was a big part of my motivation for founding Focus On Words, a little publishing experiment I hoped would reshape how we define success as authors. I envisioned it as a place where writers could sell directly to readers, get paid quickly, and actually see who was buying their books and why. The idea was to give the power (and profits) back to the people who create the words, rather than the platforms that merely distribute them. It was, and is, an uphill battle. But every time an author on our platform hits a milestone, whether it’s 100 copies sold or a fan email that isn’t filtered through a corporate PR machine, it feels real in a way that a fleeting best-seller tag never did. Focus On Words was my attempt to put substance over symbol, to reward actual connection over algorithmic positioning. And it’s taught me that success can look very different when you stop outsourcing your meaning to someone else’s scoreboard.

Outsourcing Meaning: A Culture of Symbols Over Substance

I sometimes think back to grade school, when I was that annoying kid who constantly asked “why.” “Why are there silent letters in word spellings?” “Why do we have to use the cursive nobody can read?” “Why exactly is Pluto not a planet anymore?” Most adults eventually find these persistent whys endearing or exasperating enough to curb. In my case, one day a teacher finally sighed and said, “Because that’s how it is, okay? Let’s move on.” The message was clear: stop asking why. Just memorize the facts, accept the rules, trust the framework handed to you. I didn’t realize it then, but that’s when a tiny part of my free-thinking spirit curled up and went to sleep. I had been officially initiated into the unspoken pact of our culture: don’t ask too many questions of the system that’s trying to stamp you into shape.

From childhood onward, we are conditioned to outsource meaning to institutions and symbols. Get the good grades (even if you didn’t actually learn much), because the report card matters more than your curiosity. Get the diploma, because the degree on your wall will speak louder than what you actually know. Get into the “right” college, not necessarily to expand your mind, but because society nods approvingly at the brand name. We learn early that appearing successful often gets rewarded more than actually developing the substance behind it. It’s a pattern that sticks: comply, achieve the marker, collect the trophy and never pause to ask why that marker matters or what its true value is.

This pattern doesn’t just live in schools or publishing; it’s everywhere in western culture. We’ve become specialists in consuming prepackaged meaning. We see an “Amazon’s Choice” label on a product and assume it’s the best option without really researching alternatives. We scroll through Netflix and click on whatever’s trending #1 in the U.S. because surely 100 million binge-watchers can’t be wrong (and we don’t want to feel left out). We measure our worth in Instagram likes, view counts, or job titles, as if those were absolute proofs of value rather than social signals we’ve collectively agreed to exalt. In essence, we let external symbols, algorithms, badges, lists, endorsements, tell us what is good, what is true, what is “successful.” It’s a sort of cultural peer pressure on a grand scale.

I catch myself doing it too. I’ve bought books simply because they had that little “Best Seller” sticker on the cover, as if it were a seal of quality, sometimes only to find the content mediocre or derivative. I’ve caught myself trusting a news article just because it was from a “reputable” outlet, forgetting that even established institutions can miss the mark or carry biases. It’s so much easier to assume the system knows best than to do the uncomfortable work of critical thinking. After all, if a million people before me have validated something, it must have merit, right?

But here’s the truth. Relying on these symbols too much erodes our critical thinking. It’s like a muscle we neglect. The more we trust the labels and the less we question, the more we hand over our agency. We let the collective momentum of society direct us. They dictate what to read, what to buy, what to believe, while our own ability to scrutinize atrophies. And when we do that, we make ourselves vulnerable. Because sometimes, the crowd is wrong. Sometimes the authority is flawed. Sometimes the unicorn is real, even if everyone around you insists you’re crazy for seeing it.

When Trust Backfires: Vioxx, OxyContin, and Other Cautionary Tales

It’s one thing when trusting a hollow metric leads you to buy a dull book. It’s another thing entirely when it harms lives. Consider the realm of medicine, where trust in institutions is quite literally a life-and-death matter. For years, people took the painkiller Vioxx because it was FDA-approved, doctor-prescribed, and massively marketed as a safe, effective treatment for arthritis pain. Who were we, as laypeople, to question the experts and the data on the label? Then the truth came out: this “trusted” drug had a horrible secret. Research later estimated that 88,000 Americans had heart attacks from taking Vioxx, and 38,000 of them died npr.org before the drug was finally pulled from the market. It was one of the worst pharmaceutical disasters in history, and it happened not just because a company made a dangerous drug, but because millions of us assumed they wouldn’t. We assumed if it was on the shelf, it must be okay. We assumed someone smarter, somewhere, had asked all the “whys” on our behalf.

The tragedy of OxyContin follows a similar script. Purdue Pharma, backed by medical professionals and a glossy marketing machine, assured everyone that their new opioid was different,“less addictive” than others, a breakthrough for pain management. We wanted to believe it. Doctors wanted to believe it. And so this powerful drug was handed out like a miraculous candy, with prescription rates soaring through the late 1990s and 2000s. The result? A nationwide opioid addiction epidemic that has claimed nearly half a million American lives from 1999 to 2019 dph.sbcounty.gov. Half a million lives, gone because of a story that started with “Trust us, this is safe. We know what’s best.” In hindsight, the warning signs were there; a few stubborn voices did ask “Are we sure about this?” But they were drowned out by the chorus of institutional confidence and commercial success. It was a #1 Best Seller in pill form, until it wasn’t.

These examples may seem far afield from best-seller lists and publishing accolades, but to me they are all connected by the thread of unquestioned trust in symbols and systems. Whether it’s a best-seller badge, a prestigious list, a doctor’s prescription pad, or a corporate logo, the underlying psychology is the same: we outsource our judgment. We place faith in the idea that if something has the right stamp of approval, it must have earned it, it must be good. And certainly, often those stamps are earned. (There are amazing books that truly do sell millions because they resonate deeply; there are life-saving drugs and brilliant doctors worthy of our trust.) But when we accept the symbol without question, we risk mistaking facade for reality. We risk swallowing poison painted gold.

Think about it: how often have we seen systems fail because people stopped asking basic questions? Financial markets have crashed under the weight of “trusted” ratings and complex schemes that almost nobody questioned until it was too late. Food pyramids and dietary guidelines swung wildly for decades (eggs are bad, no they’re good, wait just the whites), because we’d follow one authority’s say-so until another authority contradicted it. Even in everyday workplace scenarios, how many bad decisions get rubber-stamped because someone in charge said “this is the best practice” and no one dared say “why are we doing it this way?” We humans are excellent at convincing ourselves that the current consensus must be the truth. It’s comfortable. It saves time. And it absolves us of responsibility. Hey, everyone else agreed this was fine.

The Cost of Not Asking “Why”

There’s a metaphor I keep coming back to: imagine seeing a unicorn in the woods, only to be told by everyone around you that you didn’t really see it. At first, you insist on what you saw. Hooves, horn, shimmering mane and all. But the crowd is adamant. Impossible, they say. Unicorns aren’t real. You must have been mistaken. Over time, their confidence erodes yours. You start to doubt your own eyes. Maybe it was just a trick of the light, you think. Eventually, you might even convince yourself it was definitely not a unicorn, because life is easier when it fits the accepted narrative. You’ve just experienced the quiet tragedy of surrendering your own perception of truth to the collective insistence of others.

Living in a society means there will always be shared narratives and common beliefs, we can’t question everything all the time, or we’d paralyze ourselves. But when we never ask “why,” we pay a price in personal freedom and authenticity. We end up living by scripts written by others. We chase accolades that may leave us empty. We follow rules that don’t make sense to us, and swallow “truths” that deep down might not sit right in our gut. We can go through life doing all the “right” things, ace the tests, land the job with the fancy title, earn the gold stars, buy the safest rated car, take the doctor’s pills, and still feel somehow that we missed something essential. That something is the voice that whispers why, the voice we shushed in the back of our minds so long ago.

I’ll be honest: writing this is as much a confession as it is a call to arms. I’m reflecting on my own compliance as much as anyone else’s. I know how to play the game of appearing successful; I’ve played it, and at times I’ve won at it. I got the degrees, I worked for the respectable companies, I even snagged a couple of those little honors that are supposed to make you feel you’ve “arrived.” But each time I reached a summit, I found it oddly hollow. The view from the top was never as breathtaking as promised. And always, that pesky question returned: Why am I doing this? Whose definition of success am I fulfilling?

The beautiful (and scary) thing about asking “why” is that it can unravel things. Once I started tugging at that thread in my life, a lot of assumptions came undone. That’s how I eventually found the courage to step away from a traditional publishing path and try to build something different with Focus On Words. It’s how I began to redefine what success meant to me, not as an Amazon ranking or a Times list, but as something more personal and authentic: a reader reaching out to say a chapter touched their heart, a fellow writer finding inspiration in my journey, or even just the feeling of pride I get when I know I’ve written the honest truth as I see it. None of those things come with a neat badge or certificate. There’s no bestseller list for integrity or intellectual honesty. But they mean more to me now than any title I could slap on a LinkedIn profile.

So, what’s the takeaway from all this soul-searching and system-bucking? I think it’s a plea for balance and awareness. By all means, celebrate the best-seller lists and the awards when they reflect genuine achievement, there is real joy in broad recognition. Trust your doctors and teachers and leaders when they’ve earned that trust. But never stop engaging your own critical mind alongside that trust. Never stop asking “why” when something feels off, or even just as a routine exercise to keep yourself honest. Question the things everyone else takes for granted once in a while, if only to remind yourself that you have the right (and maybe even the responsibility) to do so.

At the end of the day, I return to the central thesis: Our understanding of success has been hijacked by hollow metrics and symbols. We see the badge and not the effort, the title and not the substance. And this reflects a broader habit of our culture to follow the script without examining the story. The danger is not just that we’ll be duped by a fake best seller or a bad drug. The deeper danger is that we’ll wake up one day and realize we never truly lived our own lives; we lived according to trophies and titles that didn’t ultimately mean what we thought. Are we truly free, after all, if we never ask why we believe what we believe or want what we want? Who are we, if our identities are patchworks of unexamined hand-me-down definitions of success, safety, happiness, and truth?

These days, I’m trying to rekindle that childlike part of me, the one who saw magic in the forest and wasn’t afraid to believe it, who kept asking why until he either understood or was told to hush. I’m relearning how to see the unicorn and trust that I saw it. It’s a process, a journey of unconditioning. And with each “why” I dare to ask, I feel a little more like me. A little more free.

So the next time you see a best-seller badge, or any shiny emblem of success, take a second and ask: Why does this matter to me? What’s behind it? You might still decide it matters, a best-seller can indeed be a great book; a degree can represent real knowledge; a medication can save your life. But at least you’ll know why, and that makes all the difference. In a world all too ready to tell us what to think and value, asking “why” is its own quiet act of rebellion, a way to reclaim our minds and, perhaps, our very selves. And if we stop asking “why,” we risk far more than a disappointing book or a misleading accolade, we risk our freedom to define success on our own terms, the integrity of our identity, and the truth of our experience. Isn’t that too high a price to pay for fitting in?