I’ve lived on Maui a long time. I’m used to it. The resident population here is perhaps 140,000. It’s a small town compared to the 900,000-plus resident population of Honolulu — which in turn is small compared to the great assemblage that is Los Angeles — almost 10 million people in Los Angeles County according to the US Census Bureau.

This meditation on relative scale was inspired by a recent trip to Palm Springs via the Los Angeles airport. We hit the freeways in the late afternoon on a Friday — need I say more? There must have been more people in their cars, trying to get elsewhere, than exist on the entire island of Maui. (Did I used to call that little slow-down on the way into town “bad traffic”?)

My day job involves work on a tourist-oriented website, so the first thing that occurred to me was what a tiny percentage of Los Angeles-alone we would have to attract to be a raging success.

My next thought was what a tiny percentage of Los Angeles-alone an author, or even a genre, would have to attract to be a raging success. Anyone trying to sell anything must entertain the same thought. It’s the million dollar marketing question.