Computer Graphics
These works are done solely by Justin Won and nobody can take credit of the works other than Justin Won, the original artist, himself.
The Creation of The Martian
I just started posting stories and serials and stuff to my website.
How in the Heck Andy Was Able to Make ‘The Martian’ into Something So Big
Andy Weir: Right. I wrote the book as a hobby. Like you said, I was a computer programmer. I did that for 25 years. I just quit my job last year to go full time on writing. At the time I wrote ‘The Martian,’ I had always enjoyed writing. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. But I also wanted to eat regular meals and not live under an overpass and stuff, so I went into computer programming.
I always liked writing stories, and so I did it as a hobby. There was a part earlier in my life where I did take three years off of work and try to break into the world of writing. I couldn’t break in, and I went back into computer programming. So I turned it into a hobby. I just started posting stories and serials and stuff to my website. ‘The Martian’ was just one of three serials that I was working on at the same time. I’d just post a chapter whenever I wanted, get feedback, adjust it a little bit.
Then, when I was done, I thought that was it. I thought, “Okay, I’m done with that, move on.” Then, I started getting email from readers saying, “Hey, I love your story, but I hate reading it in a web page. Can you make an e-reader version?” I did that. I posted it to the site. I’m like, “Here, now you can download an e-reader version.” Then, I got email from them saying, “Oh hey, I love that there’s an e-reader version, but I’m not very technically savvy. I don’t know how to download things from the Internet and put then on my e-reader. Can you just put it up on Kindle where I can get it?”
I did that, and Amazon requires you to charge $0.99 because they’re a business not a free hosting service. I set the price at $0.99 and said, “Okay, you can read it for free on my website, or you can download for free from my website, or you can pay Amazon a buck to put it on your Kindle for you.” More people paid the buck than got it for free because people just really hate technical hurdles. They’re happily willing to pay a dollar to avoid them.
It started working its way up the Amazon Best Sellers, got a lot of good reviews. Then that got the attention of Random House and Fox Studios. All of a sudden, I had an agent, a print deal, and a movie deal. I was like, “How did that happen?”
Jim Kukral: Let’s backtrack a little bit because I find this fascinating. I want to get into the details of that exact process. This is the, really, to me, a very interesting part of this story, the success story, is that I want people to understand. You had no intentions of really putting this on Kindle. You were just posting it on a blog. Was that like a Tumblr blog? Was that your website? You were just posting the chapters?
Andy Weir: It was just posted to my website.
Jim Kukral: Then, how did you get readers? You had fans already who were reading your website? How were people getting turned on to the stories?
Andy Weir: Well, I had been writing just fiction in various forms and posting it to my website for 10 years before I started ‘The Martian.’ Going way back to when I first started posting creative anything, I made a web comic called ‘Casey and Andy.’ Back around 1999 is when I started that I think. I had something like 50,000 regular readers for that once it got into its full swing.
Then, also, another web comic later called ‘Cheshire Crossing.’ I had a mailing list. That brought a lot of people to my site. I started writing short fiction, short stories, and serials. I had mailing list, and just over the course of 10 years, I slowly accumulated about 3,000 readers. It took me three years to write ‘The Martian.’ It was nights and weekends. Right around the time I started the book, I also wrote a short story called ‘The Egg,’ which was very popular online. It’s like a thousand-word short story that just takes like five minutes to read, and people really liked it. That brought a lot of people to the site, too. That’s where my initial audience came from.
Jim Kukral: It’s really interesting to point this out to people. There was a base built. There was a platform built. So many authors think that it’s just going to happen completely organically. I guess that’s my question to you is, without that base of people who verified your work and pushed for you to put it on Kindle, do you think that this would have happened?
Andy Weir: No, I don’t think it would have happened at all. I owe everything to my initial readers. For starters, this is may be less interesting to you from the business perspective, but for starters, just knowing that there were a couple of thousand people waiting for the next chapter motivated me to continue working on it. That was a big deal for me. The biggest challenge for me as a writer is motivating myself to get off my butt, or rather get on my butt, and actually write.
From the popularity standpoint, having a core readership of like 3,000 people is enough to start the snowball, the critical mass. They recommended it to their friends and so on. Also, a big part of it, I’m sure, when I first posted it to Kindle, pretty much all of them, all of my regular readers, went and bought a copy even if they had already read. Because, for years, they’d been saying, email me saying, “Oh, can I donate to your site or something like that?” I always said, “No, I’m a computer programmer. I make plenty of money. I don’t need donations. If you really want to donate, then just go donate to cancer research, something like that.”
But now, they’re like, “Aha! An avenue to give Andy money.” They all went and bought a copy. The initial sales were surprisingly strong for a self-published first work. That helped get them up into the, “Oh, you might also like” list and so on. So, yes, absolutely, having that core group of readers was critical.
Jim Kukral: Let’s break it down from the point that it was put on to Kindle. It’s starting to grow organically because of the ‘Also…’ box and people are just spreading the word. When you have great content, people just spread the word, obviously. But it was self-published at that point. At what point was the tipping point? Is the book still self-published? Are you with a publisher? At what did someone contact you about publishing the book?
source: http://rainmaker.fm/audio/authorpreneur/andy-weir/
Andy Weir: Right. I wrote the book as a hobby. Like you said, I was a computer programmer. I did that for 25 years. I just quit my job last year to go full time on writing. At the time I wrote ‘The Martian,’ I had always enjoyed writing. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. But I also wanted to eat regular meals and not live under an overpass and stuff, so I went into computer programming.
I always liked writing stories, and so I did it as a hobby. There was a part earlier in my life where I did take three years off of work and try to break into the world of writing. I couldn’t break in, and I went back into computer programming. So I turned it into a hobby. I just started posting stories and serials and stuff to my website. ‘The Martian’ was just one of three serials that I was working on at the same time. I’d just post a chapter whenever I wanted, get feedback, adjust it a little bit.
Then, when I was done, I thought that was it. I thought, “Okay, I’m done with that, move on.” Then, I started getting email from readers saying, “Hey, I love your story, but I hate reading it in a web page. Can you make an e-reader version?” I did that. I posted it to the site. I’m like, “Here, now you can download an e-reader version.” Then, I got email from them saying, “Oh hey, I love that there’s an e-reader version, but I’m not very technically savvy. I don’t know how to download things from the Internet and put then on my e-reader. Can you just put it up on Kindle where I can get it?”
I did that, and Amazon requires you to charge $0.99 because they’re a business not a free hosting service. I set the price at $0.99 and said, “Okay, you can read it for free on my website, or you can download for free from my website, or you can pay Amazon a buck to put it on your Kindle for you.” More people paid the buck than got it for free because people just really hate technical hurdles. They’re happily willing to pay a dollar to avoid them.
It started working its way up the Amazon Best Sellers, got a lot of good reviews. Then that got the attention of Random House and Fox Studios. All of a sudden, I had an agent, a print deal, and a movie deal. I was like, “How did that happen?”
Jim Kukral: Let’s backtrack a little bit because I find this fascinating. I want to get into the details of that exact process. This is the, really, to me, a very interesting part of this story, the success story, is that I want people to understand. You had no intentions of really putting this on Kindle. You were just posting it on a blog. Was that like a Tumblr blog? Was that your website? You were just posting the chapters?
Andy Weir: It was just posted to my website.
Jim Kukral: Then, how did you get readers? You had fans already who were reading your website? How were people getting turned on to the stories?
Andy Weir: Well, I had been writing just fiction in various forms and posting it to my website for 10 years before I started ‘The Martian.’ Going way back to when I first started posting creative anything, I made a web comic called ‘Casey and Andy.’ Back around 1999 is when I started that I think. I had something like 50,000 regular readers for that once it got into its full swing.
Then, also, another web comic later called ‘Cheshire Crossing.’ I had a mailing list. That brought a lot of people to my site. I started writing short fiction, short stories, and serials. I had mailing list, and just over the course of 10 years, I slowly accumulated about 3,000 readers. It took me three years to write ‘The Martian.’ It was nights and weekends. Right around the time I started the book, I also wrote a short story called ‘The Egg,’ which was very popular online. It’s like a thousand-word short story that just takes like five minutes to read, and people really liked it. That brought a lot of people to the site, too. That’s where my initial audience came from.
Jim Kukral: It’s really interesting to point this out to people. There was a base built. There was a platform built. So many authors think that it’s just going to happen completely organically. I guess that’s my question to you is, without that base of people who verified your work and pushed for you to put it on Kindle, do you think that this would have happened?
Andy Weir: No, I don’t think it would have happened at all. I owe everything to my initial readers. For starters, this is may be less interesting to you from the business perspective, but for starters, just knowing that there were a couple of thousand people waiting for the next chapter motivated me to continue working on it. That was a big deal for me. The biggest challenge for me as a writer is motivating myself to get off my butt, or rather get on my butt, and actually write.
From the popularity standpoint, having a core readership of like 3,000 people is enough to start the snowball, the critical mass. They recommended it to their friends and so on. Also, a big part of it, I’m sure, when I first posted it to Kindle, pretty much all of them, all of my regular readers, went and bought a copy even if they had already read. Because, for years, they’d been saying, email me saying, “Oh, can I donate to your site or something like that?” I always said, “No, I’m a computer programmer. I make plenty of money. I don’t need donations. If you really want to donate, then just go donate to cancer research, something like that.”
But now, they’re like, “Aha! An avenue to give Andy money.” They all went and bought a copy. The initial sales were surprisingly strong for a self-published first work. That helped get them up into the, “Oh, you might also like” list and so on. So, yes, absolutely, having that core group of readers was critical.
Jim Kukral: Let’s break it down from the point that it was put on to Kindle. It’s starting to grow organically because of the ‘Also…’ box and people are just spreading the word. When you have great content, people just spread the word, obviously. But it was self-published at that point. At what point was the tipping point? Is the book still self-published? Are you with a publisher? At what did someone contact you about publishing the book?
source: http://rainmaker.fm/audio/authorpreneur/andy-weir/