If you make lots of money selling bazillions of copies of a mass-produced work that appeals to and entertains a large segment of the population, you're a hack w

If you make lots of money selling bazillions of copies of a mass-produced work that appeals to and entertains a large segment of the population, you're a hack who makes trite garbage. If you make lots of money selling one work to one very rich person or corporation, you are a Fine Artist, and anyone who thinks what you made is ugly (which is very often a large segment of the population) is an uncultured fool. There's a range somewhere between these two extremes where you make enough money off of your art that it pays your bills, but doesn't require you to cater to the whims of the catastrophically rich. I'm in that range and it's pretty nice.