Because at least one person asked
Oct. 5th, 2009 02:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
megwritesMy good friend ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vanessabrooks asked me via twitter: Why don't you buy the 1000 True Fans theory?.*
If you don't know what the 1000 true fans theory is, you can read about it here. It's, more or less, the idea that you can as an artist create a sustainable career if you have 1000 true fans willing to buy everything you produce (the number thrown around is $100 worth of stuff).
Simple math will tell you that 1000 fans buying 100 dollars worth of stuff gets you $100,000. Not bad, right?
Simple math will lie to you if you let it. The theory assumes too much about the nature of fanship, the economy of artistic production, and the way viral popularity works. Any theory that purports to work the same way for painters, singers, musicians, dancers, and novelists across all spectrum and genres of their various disciplines is worthless on it's face. The idea of "true fans" as a base upon which to build a career is idiotic, artistically speaking.
Viral popularity does not follow the same methodology as revenue-generating popularity. A video that 5 million people view and a book that 5 million people buy do not come about in the same ways.
It's easier to get 5 million people to just look at a video, for free, on YouTube. Since viewing one video does not mean they can't afford to view another, there's no choice to be made. Thus, people are more willing to view a video and pass it on whether they were a big fan or just thought it was "all right".
I can't speak to how the world of recording artists or dancers or painters works. What I do have some basic, working knowledge of is the American publishing industry. So that's where I'll make my case for the failure of this theory.
Books are a purchase, thus a choice because the amount of money any individual customer has to spend is finite. Thus, a certain percentage of those who either hear about or sample the book will choose to buy another book. Ergo, to get 1000 sales you need to get an even greater amount of people to hear about the book and then sample it.
Those are two different ratios, of course. Of the number of people who hear about your book, only a certain number will ever even bother to pick it up in a bookstore and open the cover. And even then once they've opened the damn thing, you still don't have it in the bag.
My own personal, completely arbitrary, non-scientific number is that 1 in 5 people will buy a book after sampling it. Under those conditions, 1 millions sales requires 5 million views. The less well known, the worse that ratio gets and vice versa. I imagine J.K. Rowling probably netted 1 in 2 readers who sampled the Harry Potter books once they became very popular. A brand new author will probably have a 1 in 15 ratio of sales to views.
Of course, that number skews based on the type of publisher you're working with. A large publisher with a greater marketing budget and distribution network can increase word-of-mouth and previews. A small press that distributes only to independent bookstores will have a far smaller network, thus less word-of-mouth/previews. Self publication, obviously, will have yet fewer of those things.
And this is just the theory of sales. We haven't gotten to fans, true or otherwise, yet. Because that's another ratio.
Of the people who buy your book, some will hate it, some will love it, and some will fall in between love and hate. An even split between the three is absurdly generous, I might add. Most readers will probably neither love nor hate your work in the extreme. But let's give you the three way split. If only 1/3rd of those who BUY the book (which is a smaller subset of those who previewed it, which is yet another smaller subset of those who even HEARD about it) you need 3000 buys to get 1000 true fans. In a further vein of generosity, if I assign a 1 in 5 ratio of views to buys, you'll need 15,000 views just to get 1,000 fans. That's being generous and assuming several facts in your favor. It assumes that you're writing in a large genre and marketplace, rather than a niche market.
But even if you get that magical, round number, you run into the other problem. Having $100 worth of stuff available for them to buy. For a writer, that means having enough books in print to equal $100 in sales for yourself.
Let's be really generous and say you self-publish hardbacks at $25 a pop - thus do not have to share sales with publishers, editors, and ages. This is leaving out, of course, newer fans coming along and buying older works still in print. Or that if you write a book a year, in 4 years you'll have "critical mass". Of course, at that rate, ideally, you'll still only have $25,000 in taxes to show for it. So you'd better have a day job or no need to eat on a daily basis.
To get the big bucks, you'd need to be able to come out with 4 hardback books in a year to give your 1000 fans $100 something to buy that year. I can't think of anyone I know of who has had four books come out in one year.
Actually, I take that back. Elizabeth Bear (matociquala) had four books with publication dates in 2007. Dust, Whiskey & Water, Undertow and A Companion To Wolves. One of those was, I should note, co-written. Before anyone gets nitpicky: New Amsterdam was, by length, a novella. Of those, only A Companion to Wolves was (IIRC) released in hardback. The others (AFAIK) were in either trade paperback or mass market paperback.
Still, it proves my point. Even if you aim for such productivity, you're not going to get four hardbacks or four books with a retail price of $25 released in one year. Unless you're self publishing and setting your price at $25, and I somehow doubt your sales will be very promising at that rate.
Most books net relatively little per unit for the author, especially if you're working with a large publisher (which, ironically, is the way in which you up your chances for getting more views, sales, and fans). Writers don't see money directly from the sales of books until they've "earned out" their advance. Meaning, the publishing company will pay the author X amount of dollars against the predicted sales of the book. Only once that book exceeded that amount does the author see royalties. This is in most cases, there are exceptions.
Then we come to the last flaw in the 1000 true fans theory: the word "true". The kind of fan who will be so rabidly supportive of your career as to spend $100 on you within a short enough amount of time for it to be useful to you is rare enough as to be an impossible dream. It certainly isn't a basis for a healthy career.
I think a writer is better off trying to get as many people look at the book as possible. You can't control whether they will be true fans or not. Just get them there. Write a terrific book and spread the word as much as you can. The rest is out of your hands. Don't worry about "true fans", worry about any fans.
*And in case I haven't introduced you to the addictive excellence of her web serial "Strange Little Band", let me do so now. This stuff is truly addictive in the way really good dark chocolate is addictive. Psychics and romance and shenanigans and some occasional lulz. It's got it all! Get thee hence to the website!
vanessabrooks asked me via twitter: Why don't you buy the 1000 True Fans theory?.*If you don't know what the 1000 true fans theory is, you can read about it here. It's, more or less, the idea that you can as an artist create a sustainable career if you have 1000 true fans willing to buy everything you produce (the number thrown around is $100 worth of stuff).
Simple math will tell you that 1000 fans buying 100 dollars worth of stuff gets you $100,000. Not bad, right?
Simple math will lie to you if you let it. The theory assumes too much about the nature of fanship, the economy of artistic production, and the way viral popularity works. Any theory that purports to work the same way for painters, singers, musicians, dancers, and novelists across all spectrum and genres of their various disciplines is worthless on it's face. The idea of "true fans" as a base upon which to build a career is idiotic, artistically speaking.
Viral popularity does not follow the same methodology as revenue-generating popularity. A video that 5 million people view and a book that 5 million people buy do not come about in the same ways.
It's easier to get 5 million people to just look at a video, for free, on YouTube. Since viewing one video does not mean they can't afford to view another, there's no choice to be made. Thus, people are more willing to view a video and pass it on whether they were a big fan or just thought it was "all right".
I can't speak to how the world of recording artists or dancers or painters works. What I do have some basic, working knowledge of is the American publishing industry. So that's where I'll make my case for the failure of this theory.
Books are a purchase, thus a choice because the amount of money any individual customer has to spend is finite. Thus, a certain percentage of those who either hear about or sample the book will choose to buy another book. Ergo, to get 1000 sales you need to get an even greater amount of people to hear about the book and then sample it.
Those are two different ratios, of course. Of the number of people who hear about your book, only a certain number will ever even bother to pick it up in a bookstore and open the cover. And even then once they've opened the damn thing, you still don't have it in the bag.
My own personal, completely arbitrary, non-scientific number is that 1 in 5 people will buy a book after sampling it. Under those conditions, 1 millions sales requires 5 million views. The less well known, the worse that ratio gets and vice versa. I imagine J.K. Rowling probably netted 1 in 2 readers who sampled the Harry Potter books once they became very popular. A brand new author will probably have a 1 in 15 ratio of sales to views.
Of course, that number skews based on the type of publisher you're working with. A large publisher with a greater marketing budget and distribution network can increase word-of-mouth and previews. A small press that distributes only to independent bookstores will have a far smaller network, thus less word-of-mouth/previews. Self publication, obviously, will have yet fewer of those things.
And this is just the theory of sales. We haven't gotten to fans, true or otherwise, yet. Because that's another ratio.
Of the people who buy your book, some will hate it, some will love it, and some will fall in between love and hate. An even split between the three is absurdly generous, I might add. Most readers will probably neither love nor hate your work in the extreme. But let's give you the three way split. If only 1/3rd of those who BUY the book (which is a smaller subset of those who previewed it, which is yet another smaller subset of those who even HEARD about it) you need 3000 buys to get 1000 true fans. In a further vein of generosity, if I assign a 1 in 5 ratio of views to buys, you'll need 15,000 views just to get 1,000 fans. That's being generous and assuming several facts in your favor. It assumes that you're writing in a large genre and marketplace, rather than a niche market.
But even if you get that magical, round number, you run into the other problem. Having $100 worth of stuff available for them to buy. For a writer, that means having enough books in print to equal $100 in sales for yourself.
Let's be really generous and say you self-publish hardbacks at $25 a pop - thus do not have to share sales with publishers, editors, and ages. This is leaving out, of course, newer fans coming along and buying older works still in print. Or that if you write a book a year, in 4 years you'll have "critical mass". Of course, at that rate, ideally, you'll still only have $25,000 in taxes to show for it. So you'd better have a day job or no need to eat on a daily basis.
To get the big bucks, you'd need to be able to come out with 4 hardback books in a year to give your 1000 fans $100 something to buy that year. I can't think of anyone I know of who has had four books come out in one year.
Actually, I take that back. Elizabeth Bear (
matociquala) had four books with publication dates in 2007. Dust, Whiskey & Water, Undertow and A Companion To Wolves. One of those was, I should note, co-written. Before anyone gets nitpicky: New Amsterdam was, by length, a novella. Of those, only A Companion to Wolves was (IIRC) released in hardback. The others (AFAIK) were in either trade paperback or mass market paperback. Still, it proves my point. Even if you aim for such productivity, you're not going to get four hardbacks or four books with a retail price of $25 released in one year. Unless you're self publishing and setting your price at $25, and I somehow doubt your sales will be very promising at that rate.
Most books net relatively little per unit for the author, especially if you're working with a large publisher (which, ironically, is the way in which you up your chances for getting more views, sales, and fans). Writers don't see money directly from the sales of books until they've "earned out" their advance. Meaning, the publishing company will pay the author X amount of dollars against the predicted sales of the book. Only once that book exceeded that amount does the author see royalties. This is in most cases, there are exceptions.
Then we come to the last flaw in the 1000 true fans theory: the word "true". The kind of fan who will be so rabidly supportive of your career as to spend $100 on you within a short enough amount of time for it to be useful to you is rare enough as to be an impossible dream. It certainly isn't a basis for a healthy career.
I think a writer is better off trying to get as many people look at the book as possible. You can't control whether they will be true fans or not. Just get them there. Write a terrific book and spread the word as much as you can. The rest is out of your hands. Don't worry about "true fans", worry about any fans.
*And in case I haven't introduced you to the addictive excellence of her web serial "Strange Little Band", let me do so now. This stuff is truly addictive in the way really good dark chocolate is addictive. Psychics and romance and shenanigans and some occasional lulz. It's got it all! Get thee hence to the website!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-05 09:26 pm (UTC)And I'm lousy at math.
I only know about writing, none of the other arts, but yeah, the economics of publishing (small press, larger press, internet, pod) dictate that in the US most writers earn less than minimum poverty level from their work.
And there are people out there who believe this???
no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 12:58 am (UTC)Whoo boy, YES. There's even a kitschy web 2.no website dedicated to helping people find and extract money from trufans. TRUFAX.