2018-02-23 18:58:03 +00:00
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---
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created_at: '2015-11-25T07:37:00.000Z'
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title: 1,000 True Fans (2008)
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url: http://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
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author: aaronbrethorst
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points: 47
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story_text:
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 8
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1448437020
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_aaronbrethorst
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- story_10625906
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objectID: '10625906'
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2018-06-08 12:05:27 +00:00
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year: 2008
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2018-02-23 18:58:03 +00:00
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---
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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This is an edited, updated version of an essay I wrote in 2008 when this
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now popular idea was embryonic and ragged. I recently rewrote it to
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convey the core ideas, minus out-of-date details. This revisited essay
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appears in Tim Ferriss’ new book, [Tools of
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Titans](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1328683788/cooltools-20).
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I believe the 1,000 True Fans concept will be useful to anyone making
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things, or making things happen. If you still want to read the much
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longer original 2008 essay, you can get it after the end of this
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version. — KK
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2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need
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millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or
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millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer,
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musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or
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inventor you need only thousands of true fans.
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2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. These
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diehard fans will drive 200 miles to see you sing; they will buy the
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hardback and paperback and audible versions of your book; they will
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purchase your next figurine sight unseen; they will pay for the
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“best-of” DVD version of your free youtube channel; they will come
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to your chef’s table once a month. If you have roughly a thousand of
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true fans like this (also known as super fans), you can make a living —
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if you are content to make a living but not a fortune.
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Here’s how the math works. You need to meet two criteria. First, you
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have to create enough each year that you can earn, on average, $100
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profit from each true fan. That is easier to do in some arts and
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businesses than others, but it is a good creative challenge in every
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area because it is always easier and better to give your existing
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customers more, than it is to find new fans.
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Second, you must have a direct relationship with your fans. That is,
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they must pay you directly. You get to keep all of their support, unlike
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the small percent of their fees you might get from a music label,
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publisher, studio, retailer, or other intermediate. If you keep the full
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$100 of each true fan, then you need only 1,000 of them to earn $100,000
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per year. That’s a living for most folks.
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A thousand customers is a whole lot more feasible to aim for than a
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million fans. Millions of paying fans is not a realistic goal to shoot
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for, especially when you are starting out. But a thousand fans is
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doable. You might even be able to remember a thousand names. If you
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added one new true fan per day, it’d only take a few years to gain a
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thousand.
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The number 1,000 is not absolute. Its significance is in its rough order
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of magnitude — three orders less than a million. The actual number has
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to be adjusted for each person. If you are able to only earn $50 per
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year per true fan, then you need 2,000. (Likewise if you can sell $200
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per year, you need only 500 true fans.) Or you may need only $75K per
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year to live on, so you adjust downward. Or if you are a duet, or have a
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partner, then you need to multiply by 2 to get 2,000 fans. For a team,
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you need to multiply further. But the good news is that the increase in
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the size of your true-fan base is geometric and linear in proportion to
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the size of the team; if you increase the team by 33% you only need to
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increase your fan base by 33%.
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Another way to calculate the support of a true fan, is to aim to get one
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day’s wages per year from them. Can you excite or please them sufficient
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to earn one day’s labor? That’s a high bar, but not impossible for 1,000
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people world wide.
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And of course, not every fan will be super. While the support of a
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thousand true fans may be sufficient for a living, for every single true
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fan, you might have two or three regular fans. Think of concentric
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circles with true fans at the center and a wider circle of regular fans
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around them. These regular fans may buy your creations occasionally, or
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may have bought only once. But their ordinary purchases expand your
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total income. Perhaps they bring in an additional 50%. Still, you want
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to focus on the super fans because the enthusiasm of true fans can
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increase the patronage of regular fans. True fans not only are the
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direct source of your income, but also your chief marketing force for
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the ordinary fans.
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Fans, customers, patrons have been around forever. What’s new here? A
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couple of things. While direct relationship with customers was the
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default mode in old times, the benefits of modern retailing meant that
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most creators in the last century did not have direct contact with
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consumers. Often even the publishers, studios, labels and manufacturers
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did not have such crucial information as the name of their customers.
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For instance, despite being in business for hundreds of years no New
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York book publisher knew the names of their core and dedicated readers.
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For previous creators these intermediates (and there was often more than
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one) meant you need much larger audiences to have a success. With the
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advent of ubiquitous peer-to-peer communication and payment systems —
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also known as the web today — everyone has access to excellent tools
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that allow anyone to sell directly to anyone else in the world. So a
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creator in Bend, Oregon can sell — and deliver — a song to someone in
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Katmandu, Nepal as easily as a New York record label (maybe even more
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easily). This new technology permits creators to maintain relationships,
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so that the customer can become a fan, and so that the creator keeps the
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total amount of payment, which reduces the number of fans needed.
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This new ability for the creator to retain the full price is
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revolutionary, but a second technological innovation amplifies that
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power further. A fundamental virtue of a peer-to-peer network (like the
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web) is that the most obscure node is only one click away from the most
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popular node. In other words the most obscure under-selling book, song,
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or idea, is only one click away from the best selling book, song or
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idea. Early in the rise of the web the large aggregators of content and
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products, such as eBay, Amazon, Netflix, etc, noticed that the total
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sales of \*all\* the lowest selling obscure items would equal or in some
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cases exceed the sales of the few best selling items. Chris Anderson (my
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successor at Wired) named this effect “The Long Tail,” for the visually
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graphed shape of the sales distribution curve: a low nearly interminable
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line of items selling only a few copies per year that form a long “tail”
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for the abrupt vertical beast of a few bestsellers. But the area of the
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tail was as big as the head. With that insight, the aggregators had
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great incentive to encourage audiences to click on the obscure items.
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They invented recommendation engines and other algorithms to channel
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attention to the rare creations in the long tail. Even web search
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companies like Google, Bing, Baidu found it in their interests to reward
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searchers with the obscure because they could sell ads in the long tail
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as well. The result was that the most obscure became less obscure.
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If you lived in any of the 2 million small towns on Earth you might be
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the only one in your town to crave death metal music, or get turned on
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by whispering, or want a left-handed fishing reel. Before the web you’d
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never be able to satisfy that desire. You’d be alone in your
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fascination. But now satisfaction is only one click away. Whatever your
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interests as a creator are, your 1,000 true fans are one click from you.
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As far as I can tell there is nothing — no product, no idea, no desire —
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without a fan base on the internet. Every thing made, or thought of, can
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interest at least one person in a million — it’s a low bar. Yet if even
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only one out of million people were interested, that’s potentially 7,000
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people on the planet. That means that any 1-in-a-million appeal can find
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1,000 true fans. The trick is to practically find those fans, or more
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accurately, to have them find you.
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Now here’s the thing; the big corporations, the intermediates, the
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commercial producers, are all under-equipped and ill suited to connect
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with these thousand true fans. They are institutionally unable to find
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and deliver niche audiences and consumers. That means the long tail is
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wide open to you, the creator. You’ll have your one-in-a-million true
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fans to yourself. And the tools for connecting keep getting better,
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including the recent innovations in social media. It has never been
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easier to gather 1,000 true fans around a creator, and never easier to
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keep them near.
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One of the many new innovations serving the true fan creator is
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crowdfunding. Having your fans finance your next product for them is
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genius. Win-win all around. There are about 2,000 different crowdfunding
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platforms worldwide, many of them specializing in specific fields:
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raising money for science experiments, for bands, or documentaries. Each
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has its own requirements and a different funding model, in addition to
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specialized interests. Some platforms require “all or nothing” funding
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goals, others permit partial funding, some raise money for completed
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projects, some like Patreon, fund ongoing projects. Patreon supporters
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might fund a monthly magazine, or a video series, or an artist’s salary.
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The most famous and largest crowdfunder is Kickstarter, which has raised
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$2.5 billion for more than 100,000 projects. The average number of
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supporters for a successful Kickstarter project is 241 funders — far
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less than a thousand. That means If you have 1,000 true fans you can do
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a crowdfunding campaign, because by definition a true fan will become a
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Kickstarter funder. (Although success of your campaign is dependent on
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what you ask of your fans).
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The truth is that cultivating a thousand true fans is time consuming,
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sometimes nerve racking, and not for everyone. Done well (and why not do
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it well?) it can become another full-time job. At best it will be a
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consuming and challenging part-time task that requires ongoing skills.
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There are many creators who don’t want to deal with fans, and honestly
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should not. They should just paint, or sew, or make music, and hire
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someone else to deal with their superfans. If that is you and you add
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someone to deal with fans, a helper will skew your formula, increasing
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the number of fans you need, but that might be the best mix. If you go
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that far, then why not “subcontract” out dealing with fans to the middle
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people — the labels and studios and publishers and retailers? If they
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work for you, fine, but remember, in most cases they would be even worse
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at this than you would.
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The mathematics of 1,000 true fans is not a binary choice. You don’t
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have to go this route to the exclusion of another. Many creators,
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including myself, will use direct relations with super fans in addition
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to mainstream intermediaries. I have been published by several big-time
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New York publishers. I have self-published. And I have used Kickstarter
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to publish to my true fans. I chose each format depending on the content
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and my aim. But in every case, cultivating my true fans enriches the
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route I choose.
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The takeaway: 1,000 true fans is an alternative path to success other
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than stardom. Instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely peaks
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of platinum bestseller hits, blockbusters, and celebrity status, you can
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aim for direct connection with a thousand true fans. On your way, no
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matter how many fans you actually succeed in gaining, you’ll be
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surrounded not by faddish infatuation, but by genuine and true
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appreciation. It’s a much saner destiny to hope for. And you are much
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more likely to actually arrive there.
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The original 2008 essay follows. It was written before the advent of
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Kickstarter, Indiegogo and other crowdfunding sites, and includes more
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the idea’s history. — KK
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\[Translations:
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[Chinese](https://service.goodcharacters.com/blog/blog.php?id=165),
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[French](http://versionfrancaise.blogspot.com/2008/08/1000-vrais-fans.html),
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[German](http://www.flocutus.de/ubersetzungen/1000-wahre-fans/),
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[Hebrew](http://kk.org/thetechnium/1KTrueFans-Hebrew.pdf),
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[Italian](http://horizonsmusic.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/kevin-kelly-1000-veri-fans-ita/),
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[Japanese](http://memo7.sblo.jp/article/12799892.html),
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[Portuguese](http://www.empreendedor-digital.com/1000-fas-verdadeiros),
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[Romanian](http://webhostinggeeks.com/science/true-fans-ro),
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[Spanish](https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/kk.archive/1%2C000+Fans+Verdaderos%2C+Spanish.pdf),
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[Danish](http://www.stinus.net/da/1000-rigtige-fans/)\]
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The long tail is famously good news for two classes of people; a few
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lucky aggregators, such as Amazon and Netflix, and 6 billion consumers.
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Of those two, I think consumers earn the greater reward from the wealth
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hidden in infinite niches.
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But the long tail is a decidedly mixed blessing for creators. Individual
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artists, producers, inventors and makers are overlooked in the equation.
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The long tail does not raise the sales of creators much, but it does add
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massive competition and endless downward pressure on prices. Unless
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artists become a large aggregator of other artist’s works, the long tail
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offers no path out of the quiet doldrums of minuscule sales.
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Other than aim for a blockbuster hit, what can an artist do to escape
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the long tail?
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One solution is to find 1,000 True Fans. While some artists have
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discovered this path without calling it that, I think it is worth trying
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to formalize. The gist of 1,000 True Fans can be stated simply:
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A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson,
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performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words,
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anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to
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make a living.
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A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and
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everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They
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will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even
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though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for
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your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions
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show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies.
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They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you
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issue your next work. They are true fans.
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![Truefans-1](http://kk.org/thetechnium/TrueFans-1.jpg)
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To raise your sales out of the flatline of the long tail you need to
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connect with your True Fans directly. Another way to state this is, you
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need to convert a thousand Lesser Fans into a thousand True Fans.
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Assume conservatively that your True Fans will each spend one day’s
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wages per year in support of what you do. That “one-day-wage” is an
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average, because of course your truest fans will spend a lot more than
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that. Let’s peg that per diem each True Fan spends at $100 per year. If
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you have 1,000 fans that sums up to $100,000 per year, which minus some
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modest expenses, is a living for most folks.
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One thousand is a feasible number. You could count to 1,000. If you
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added one fan a day, it would take only three years. True Fanship is
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doable. Pleasing a True Fan is pleasurable, and invigorating. It rewards
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the artist to remain true, to focus on the unique aspects of their work,
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the qualities that True Fans appreciate.
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The key challenge is that you have to maintain direct contact with your
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1,000 True Fans. They are giving you their support directly. Maybe they
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come to your house concerts, or they are buying your DVDs from your
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website, or they order your prints from Pictopia. As much as possible
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you retain the full amount of their support. You also benefit from the
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direct feedback and love.
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The technologies of connection and small-time manufacturing make this
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circle possible. Blogs and RSS feeds trickle out news, and upcoming
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appearances or new works. Web sites host galleries of your past work,
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archives of biographical information, and catalogs of paraphernalia.
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Diskmakers, Blurb, rapid prototyping shops, Myspace, Facebook, and the
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entire digital domain all conspire to make duplication and dissemination
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in small quantities fast, cheap and easy. You don’t need a million fans
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to justify producing something new. A mere one thousand is sufficient.
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This small circle of diehard fans, which can provide you with a living,
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is surrounded by concentric circles of Lesser Fans. These folks will not
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purchase everything you do, and may not seek out direct contact, but
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they will buy much of what you produce. The processes you develop to
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feed your True Fans will also nurture Lesser Fans. As you acquire new
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True Fans, you can also add many more Lesser Fans. If you keep going,
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you may indeed end up with millions of fans and reach a hit. I don’t
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know of any creator who is not interested in having a million fans.
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But the point of this strategy is to say that you don’t need a hit to
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survive. You don’t need to aim for the short head of best-sellerdom to
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escape the long tail. There is a place in the middle, that is not very
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far away from the tail, where you can at least make a living. That
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mid-way haven is called 1,000 True Fans. It is an alternate destination
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for an artist to aim for.
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Young artists starting out in this digitally mediated world have another
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path other than stardom, a path made possible by the very technology
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that creates the long tail. Instead of trying to reach the narrow and
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unlikely peaks of platinum hits, bestseller blockbusters, and celebrity
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status, they can aim for direct connection with 1,000 True Fans. It’s a
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much saner destination to hope for. You make a living instead of a
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fortune. You are surrounded not by fad and fashionable infatuation, but
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by True Fans. And you are much more likely to actually arrive there.
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A few caveats. This formula – one thousand direct True Fans — is
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crafted for one person, the solo artist. What happens in a duet, or
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quartet, or movie crew? Obviously, you’ll need more fans. But the
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additional fans you’ll need are in direct geometric proportion to the
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increase of your creative group. In other words, if you increase your
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group size by 33%, you need add only 33% more fans. This linear growth
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is in contrast to the exponential growth by which many things in the
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digital domain inflate. I would not be surprised to find that the value
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of your True Fans network follows the standard network effects rule, and
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increases as the square of the number of Fans. As your True Fans connect
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with each other, they will more readily increase their average spending
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on your works. So while increasing the numbers of artists involved in
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creation increases the number of True Fans needed, the increase does not
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explode, but rises gently and in proportion.
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A more important caution: Not every artist is cut out, or willing, to be
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a nurturer of fans. Many musicians just want to play music, or
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photographers just want to shoot, or painters paint, and they
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temperamentally don’t want to deal with fans, **especially** True Fans.
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For these creatives, they need a mediator, a manager, a handler, an
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agent, a galleryist — someone to manage their fans. Nonetheless, they
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can still aim for the same middle destination of 1,000 True Fans. They
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are just working in a duet.
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Third distinction. Direct fans are best. The number of True Fans needed
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to make a living **indirectly** inflates fast, but not infinitely. Take
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blogging as an example. Because fan support for a blogger routes through
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advertising clicks (except in the occasional
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[tip-jar](http://tipjoy.com/)), more fans are needed for a blogger to
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make a living. But while this moves the destination towards the left on
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the long tail curve, it is still far short of blockbuster territory.
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Same is true in book publishing. When you have corporations involved in
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taking the majority of the revenue for your work, then it takes many
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times more True Fans to support you. To the degree an author cultivates
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direct contact with his/her fans, the smaller the number needed.
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Lastly, the actual number may vary depending on the media. Maybe it is
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500 True Fans for a painter and 5,000 True Fans for a videomaker. The
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numbers must surely vary around the world. But in fact the actual number
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is not critical, because it cannot be determined except by attempting
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it. Once you are in that mode, the actual number will become evident.
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That will be the True Fan number that works for you. My formula may be
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off by an order of magnitude, but even so, its far less than a million.
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I’ve been scouring the literature for any references to the True Fan
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number. [Suck.com](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suck.com) co-founder
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Carl Steadman had theory about microcelebrities. By his count, a
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microcelebrity was someone famous to 1,500 people. So those fifteen
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hundred would rave about you. As quoted by [Danny
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O’Brien](//www.oblomovka.com/entries/2004/08/08#1091959020), “One
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person in every town in Britain likes your dumb online comic. That’s
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enough to keep you in beers (or T-shirt sales) all year.”
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Others call this microcelebrity support micro-patronage, or distributed
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patronage.
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In 1999 John Kelsey and Bruce Schneier published a model for this in
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First Monday, an online journal. They called it the [Street Performer
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Protocol](http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_6/kelsey/).
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> Using the logic of a street performer, the author goes directly to the
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> readers before the book is published; perhaps even before the book is
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> written. The author bypasses the publisher and makes a public
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> statement on the order of: “When I get $100,000 in donations, I will
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> release the next novel in this series.”
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>
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> Readers can go to the author’s Web site, see how much money has
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> already been donated, and donate money to the cause of getting his
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> novel out. Note that the author doesn’t care who pays to get the next
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> chapter out; nor does he care how many people read the book that
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> didn’t pay for it. He just cares that his $100,000 pot gets filled.
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> When it does, he publishes the next book. In this case “publish”
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> simply means “make available,” not “bind and distribute through
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> bookstores.” The book is made available, free of charge, to everyone:
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> those who paid for it and those who did not.
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In 2004 author [Lawrence
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Watt-Evans](http://www.ethshar.com/thesprigganexperiment0.html)used this
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model to publish his newest novel. He asked his True Fans to
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collectively pay $100 per month. When he got $100 he posted the next
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chapter of the novel. The entire book was published online for his True
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Fans, and then later in paper for all his fans. He is now writing a
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second novel this way. He gets by on an estimated 200 True Fans because
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he also publishes in the traditional manner — with advances from a
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publisher supported by thousands of Lesser Fans. Other authors who use
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fans to directly support their work are [Diane
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Duane](http://www.the-big-meow.com/), [Sharon Lee and Steve
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Miller](http://www.korval.com/fledgling/), and [Don
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Sakers](http://www.readersadvice.com/mmeade/scatwlds/sponsor.html). Game
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designer [Greg Stolze](http://www.gregstolze.com/ransom.html) employed a
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similar True Fan model to launch [two pre-financed
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games](http://www.danielsolis.com/meatbot/ransom.html). Fifty of his
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True Fans contributed seed money for his development costs.
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The genius of the True Fan model is that the fans are able to move an
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artist away from the edges of the long tail to a degree larger than
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their numbers indicate. They can do this in three ways: by purchasing
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more per person, by spending directly so the creator keeps more per
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sale, and by enabling new models of support.
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New models of support include micro-patronage. Another model is
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pre-financing the startup costs. Digital technology enables this fan
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support to take many shapes. [Fundable](http://www.fundable.org/) is a
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web-based enterprise which allows anyone to raise a fixed amount of
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money for a project, while reassuring the backers the project will
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happen. Fundable withholds the money until the full amount is collected.
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They return the money if the minimum is not reached.
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![Fundable](http://kk.org/thetechnium/Fundable.jpg)
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Here’s an example from Fundable’s site;
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> Amelia, a twenty-year-old classical soprano singer, pre-sold her first
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> CD before entering a recording studio. “If I get $400 in pre-orders, I
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> will be able to afford the rest \[of the studio costs\],” she told
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> potential contributors. Fundable’s all-or-nothing model ensured that
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> none of her customers would lose money if she fell short of her goal.
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> Amelia sold over $940 in albums.
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A thousand dollars won’t keep even a starving artist alive long, but
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with serious attention, a dedicated artist can do better with their True
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Fans. [Jill Sobule](http://www.jillsobule.com/jetpackintro.html), a
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musician who has nurtured a sizable following over many years of touring
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and recording, is doing well relying on her True Fans. Recently she
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decided to go to her fans to finance the $75,000 professional recording
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fees she needed for her next album. She has raised close to $50,000 so
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far. By directly supporting her via their patronage, the fans gain
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intimacy with their artist. According to the [Associated
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Press](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080303/ap_en_mu/music_making_jill_s_cd):
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> Contributors can choose a level of pledges ranging from the $10
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> “unpolished rock,” which earns them a free digital download of her
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> disc when it’s made, to the $10,000 “weapons-grade plutonium level,”
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> where she promises “you get to come and sing on my CD. Don’t worry if
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> you can’t sing – we can fix that on our end.” For a $5,000
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> contribution, Sobule said she’ll perform a concert in the donor’s
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> house. The lower levels are more popular, where donors can earn things
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> like an advanced copy of the CD, a mention in the liner notes and a
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> T-shirt identifying them as a “junior executive producer” of the CD.
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The usual alternative to making a living based on True Fans is poverty.
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A study as recently as 1995 showed that the accepted price of being an
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artist was large. Sociologist [Ruth
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|
Towse](http://books.google.com/books?id=eDb1GI3Nr-cC&pg=PA96&vq=The+Value+of+Culture:+On+the+Relationship+Between+Economics+and+Arts&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=0_0&sig=9QEYLk6aBQ9Cv39M2AuDDYFQ7NI#PPA99,M1)
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surveyed artists in Britian and determined that on average they earned
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below poverty subsistence levels.
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I am suggesting there is a home for creatives in between poverty and
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|
stardom. Somewhere lower than stratospheric bestsellerdom, but higher
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than the obscurity of the long tail. I don’t know the actual true
|
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|
number, but I think a dedicated artist could cultivate 1,000 True Fans,
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|
and by their direct support using new technology, make an honest
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|
|
living. I’d love to hear from anyone who might have settled on such a
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path.
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**Updates:**
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One artist who partially relies on True Fans responds with a disclosure
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of his finances:
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|
[The Reality of Depending on True
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|
Fans](http://kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/04/the_reality_of.php)
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I report the results of my survey of artists supported by True Fans:
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[The Case Against 1000 True
|
|
|
|
|
Fans](http://kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/04/the_case_agains.php)
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