> Every thing made, or thought of, can interest at least one person in a million — it’s a low bar. Yet if even only one out of million people were interested, that’s potentially 7,000 people on the planet. That means that any 1-in-a-million appeal can find 1,000 true fans. The trick is to practically find those fans, or more accurately, to have them find you.
No. This is not how anything works, as almost anyone attempting to work in the art world implicitly understands. If there are 7,000 people globally who might be interested in your work, it would take a massive global campaign to find them. Which most people can't afford, especially not for a "this appeals to 7,000 people" idea.
> Now here’s the thing; the big corporations, the intermediates, the commercial producers, are all under-equipped and ill suited to connect with these thousand true fans.
No, they are the ones most empowered to connect with those thousand true fans. They have resources and global reach.
For normal people without those resources, "true fans" generally come from personal connections, in my experience. And even if one gathers up thousands of personal connections, it can be really hard to convince even close friends to be interested in spending their time or money on what you're doing.
> The takeaway: 1,000 true fans is an alternative path to success other than stardom.
No, it is stardom. you don't have 1,000 true fans without having 10,000 or 100,000 casual fans.
Argh.
Anyway, I'm not saying passionate people can't support themselves on their art or personal project or whatever -- obviously it's completely possible and people do it all the time. But this "1000 true fans" thing is not a useful tool for getting there, in my very humble opinion.