1% sounds bad, but compared to pre-internet days it's pretty good. Consider a large city newspaper: probably hundreds of journalists and letter writers, but millions of readers, so much less than 1%.
Also speaks to the nature of influence and power throughout history. Usually it's only around 1% of the human population that can reach and impact the lives of more than a few hundred others (roughly the size of a small village where you can get to know everyone) and expand their influence over countries and empires of millions. Likewise, history only records the details of the lives of far less than 1% of all people that have ever lived. If you were one of the peasant masses, your entire life is summarized by whatever tidbits of trivia historians can glean from the artifacts from the grave of the one lucky person that they happened to find. Same idea, 1% of all the graves that ever existed serve to illustrate the lives of the rest of humanity to future historians.
Really gives you a perspective on where an individual's life fits into the grand scheme of things. If you don't make it into the history books, in a 100 years once everyone who ever knew you as a person has passed it'll be as if you never existed at all.
