The ‘wishful thinking’ fallacy?

It’s a concept I learned in my day job.

People think something is successful for a specific reason, but they don’t actually know the cause.

• A successful author has a huge Instagram following. Clearly Instagram is good for selling books.
• The host of a writing podcast sells lots of novels. Podcasts are clearly good for selling books.
• Publishers put ads in the paper and publishers sell lots of books. Ads must work to sell books.

Correlation vs Causation?

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Always ask yourself which came first, the technique or the success.

If you can’t know, don’t rely on it to sell books.

Start with tried and true techniques, then experiment with the things that may work, but aren’t provable.

Notice that most examples you see take a lot of time or money

Is that the kind of wishful thinking you can afford?