I once read advice by a successful author, who claimed that if you want to build up a loyal fanbase, then you want to have people who absolutely hate your work, because if nobody cares enough to hate your books then they're not distinctive enough and nobody will love them either:
The best way to find your target audience is to write something original! When you’re truly original, the mainstream readers of that genre will often consider your work outrageous, or shocking, or insane, or unique, or weird, or all these things, but that’s okay. If it’s your original voice, stand proud and pick one of your books to slam down the throats of the entire obvious audience. Then be strong enough to deal with the high percentage of hate reviews you will certainly get from those who don’t “get” your work. A lot of authors can’t handle hate reviews. But a bad review simply means someone outside your target audience found your book. The angrier the review, the further removed from your target audience they are. But along with the hate reviews, you’ll get some great ones.
The reason you’ll get some great reviews for your original writing is because I don’t care what you’re selling, there’s a market for it! What I’m saying, if you’re not offending a significant number of readers, your writing is probably not very original. And the less original you’re writing, the less loyal your fan base will be. [...]
Yes, Saving Rachel was my third book, but when I wrote it, I realized it would be the key to finding my target audience, because it divided people like crazy. Most either hated it or loved it. If I had known then what I know now, Saving Rachel would’ve been my first book. But that’s not important. What’s important is that you write a unique, original book that will divide the reading world into two camps: those who love your writing and those who hate it. Those who hate it will give you angry, spiteful reviews. That’s the bad news. The good news is they’ll never buy your books again, so that will end their angry reviews!
I know what you’re thinking: “Why is alienating half the book buying audience a good thing?” The answer is it proves you’re original. And the more unique and original your writing, the deeper and more loyal your target audience will be. I mean, there’s a limit—you don’t want everyone to hate your work! Ideally, you’d hope for 60% to love your Target Book, 30% to hate it, and you’ll always have 10% who can’t decide, which means they’re probably open to trying another of your books.
Once you know your target audience you’ll write directly to them. If you don’t get a lot of bad reviews with your Target book, you’re not original enough. I’m not talking about your initial reviews. Almost all of those will be positive. I’m talking about the reviews you get after your book starts moving up significantly. That’s when the bad reviews start creeping in. But that’s a good thing because it will help you identify and grab the attention of your Target Audience.
Locke, John (2011-06-15). How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months! Telemachus Press, LLC. Kindle Edition.
(That said, according to the Amazon reviews of that book, most of his success came from paid reviews, so might want to take what he says with a grain of salt.)
I once read advice by a successful author, who claimed that if you want to build up a loyal fanbase, then you want to have people who absolutely hate your work, because if nobody cares enough to hate your books then they're not distinctive enough and nobody will love them either:
Even assuming that that's true, phrasing it that way tempts people to think "well, no fans hate my book, so I should do things that make fans hate my book".
It's a bad sign that nobody pays for your product with a stolen credit card too, for a similar reason: if your sa...
Stephen Bond, "Objects of Fandom":
"Uh oh," I said to myself on first reading this, "Is this why my fans are more intense than Robin Hanson's fans? And if I write a rationality book, should I actually give in to temptation and self-indulgence and write in Twelve Virtues style, just so that it has something attackable for fans to defend?"
But the second time I turned my thoughts toward this question, I performed that oft-neglected operation, asking: "I read it on the Internet, but is it actually true?" Just because it's unpleasant doesn't mean it's true. And just because it provides a bit of cynicism that would give me rationality-credit to acknowledge, doesn't mean it becomes true just so I can earn the rationality-credit.
The first counterexample that came to mind was Jack Vance. Jack Vance is a science-fiction writer who, to the best of my knowledge, I've never heard accused of any great sin (or any lesser sin, actually). He is - was - the supremely competent craftsman of SF: his words flow, his plots race, and his human cultures are odder than other authors' aliens, to say nothing of his aliens. Vance didn't have his characters give controversial political speeches like Heinlein. Vance just wrote consistently excellent science fiction.
And some of Vance's fans got together and produced the Vance Integral Edition, a complete collection of Vance in leather-bound hardcover books with high-quality long-lasting paper. They contracted to get the books printed, and when the books arrived, enough Vance fans showed up to ship them all. (They referred to themselves as "packing scum".)
That's serious fandom. Aimed at work that - like Animal Farm or the Well-Tempered Clavier - is merely excellent, without an aspect of monumental badness to defend.
Godel, Escher, Bach - maybe I'm prejudiced here, and I've heard a word or two said against it, but really, I don't think the fandom that it has stems from it being frequently attacked. On the other hand, there aren't annual conventions for fans of self-referential sentences, so maybe it's not as much of a data point as I might like.
Star Wars really did have something going for it that Raiders of the Lost Ark didn't, namely, it introduced a lot of impressionable minds to science fiction. Or space opera, if you like. The point is that the romance of space is not the romance of archeology.
On due reflection, I'm not sure that utter ridiculous monumental badness is all it's cracked up to be.
But there are annual Star Trek conventions. And there are not annual Jack Vance conventions. Douglas Hofstadter might be far more widely beloved - but Ayn Rand has more fanatic fans.
If Jack Vance had been so clever as to keep all the poetic phrasing and alien societies, but now and then have his characters make crazy political speeches - if he had deliberately introduced an aspect of monumental badness - would he now be worshiped, instead of just loved?
Can anyone think of a true, pure counterexample of a reasonably fanatic fandom (to the level of annual conventions, though not necessarily suicide bombers) of something that is just sheer good professional craftwork, and not commonly criticized? And of course the acid test is not whether you think it is just sheer good craftsmanship, but whether this is widely believed within the broad context of the relevant social community - can you have fanatic fans when their object of worship really is that good and the mainstream believes it too?
I do think that Stephen Bond's Objects of Fandom is pointing to a real effect, if not the only effect. So in the same vein that we should try to be attracted to basic science textbooks and not just poorly written press releases about "breaking news", let us try to be fans of those merely excellent works that lack an aspect of monumental awfulness to defend.