1,000 true fans

March 5th, 2008

A lot has been written about the long tail, and how internets is workin’ for businesses like Amazon, who make a good deal of their money off niche sales that are possible because of the large number of customers they can reach with internets. Good old internets.

But you’re probably wondering, What Can Internets Do for Me? Kevin Kelly’s recent blog post 1,000 True Fans aims to find out. The short version:

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

His argument is compelling. He says that the True Fan is someone who will read everything you write, go to all your concerts, buy the t-shirt, everything. If you figure that a True Fan is going to spend $100 per year doing this, that’s $100,000 of income for you, the artist. This works especially well for musicians, who have concerts, t-shirts, mp3s and related swag, but check out the angle for an author. Say your novel is selling for $15. Whether you’re providing a print-on-demand title or have a publisher, if you can get the word out to your 1,000, that’s $15,000 in sales at the cost of keeping a blog, an email list or a forum. That’s enough to make a first-time author significantly more attractive to a potential publisher.

And one thousand is a relatively small number. If you managed to get a few hundred a year, you’d have your thousand in under five years. As I mentioned in an earlier post, word of mouth is still the number one way publishers sell books. That’s 1,000 words. Of mouths. Or just mouths.

It’s a lot, is what I’m saying.

The article also talks about Street Performer Protocol (a term I was familiar with as “ransomware”) and other alternate methods of funding creative projects, including Fundable, a site built to handle the tricky business.

Entry Filed under: ebooks, on publishing, promotion