You may be aware of a
little movie phenomenon called The Martian, in theaters as of October 2nd. The movie is actually based on the
best-selling book by the same name. Below is the incredible story of how Andy Weir became a best-selling
author with a top box office movie rights.
What is The Martian:
"When astronauts
blast off from the planet Mars, they leave behind Mark Watney (Matt Damon),
presumed dead after a fierce storm. With only a meager amount of supplies, the
stranded visitor must utilize his wits and spirit to find a way to survive on
the hostile planet. Meanwhile, back on Earth, members of NASA and a team of
international scientists work tirelessly to bring him home, while his crew
mates hatch their own plan for a daring rescue mission." (Wikipedia
description)
The movie and book
are very similar, however, this post will focus mainly about the book's rapid success.
Once you start reading it, you immediately understand that Andy put an extensive amount of research into the science behind the story. In fact, the entire plot is based on real
science available today. Essentially, it's a fake story about a real scenario
based on existing technology.
In order to keep it from sounding like a Wikipedia article, Andy modelled the main character after himself and included a ton of humor and wit into the story.
In order to keep it from sounding like a Wikipedia article, Andy modelled the main character after himself and included a ton of humor and wit into the story.
Summary of success:
Andy started by publishing
chapters of The Martian on his website and gave it away for free. His readers
asked that he put the book on Kindle and immediately sales took off. This got
the attention of an agent, then a publisher, and finally movie rights all within a week! Sounds like a pretty good week if you ask me.
Life before The Martian:
Growing up, Andy loved
to write fan fiction and read his dad’s sci-fi books. He also started computer programming
around 9. In college and all throughout his 20’s, he wrote his first book and a
few short stories. He then went full time into a programming job. From there, he
held a few different positions until one day he was laid off with a large severance.
At this point, he
decided to try writing again. He wrote another book and started a web comic.
His website grew pretty fast with readers for the web comic. He eventually went back to
programming once his savings got to his low predetermined amount. While
working, he continued to post stories online from time to time.
He slowly accumulated
readers over a several years and had about 50K readers for the web comic. At that point he wanted
to get into more narrative fiction through short stories and novels. One of his
early successes of writing, while still having a day job, was a short story
called The Egg. His readers really enjoyed and shared it which helped his
readership. Andy claims it's all luck because the story was so
short and didn’t take him long to write. His reasoning is “It doesn’t require a
big time commitment, [only about an hour and a half to read]. A lot of people take the entire content of the
text, the whole story, and post it to their blog.”
Andy then started on The Martian “by visualizing what it would be
like to be an astronaut and live on Mars. What mishaps their might be and see
if that could make a good story. Tons of research to be as realistic as
possible. Mark is started out as, you know, me in my mind. As the story
progressed I started developing a unique character for Mark.”
(InterviewingAuthors.com)
He posted e-versions of
the chapters to his website since readers requested it. When readers were
having issues downloading these onto their devices, they asked him to publish
on Kindle. The problem here is that Andy previously gave his content away for
free on his website, but with Kindle, he had to list it at the minimum price of
$.99.
Ironically, more people
bought it from Kindle than downloaded it for free from his site. This is most
likely due to the power of Amazon with its recommendation features. It quickly
moved up the rankings and essentially sold exponentially from there. The
craziest part is, Andy didn’t really do any marketing for the book, which is a
dream come true for most authors.
This is when the agent, publisher
and movie rights approached him. He received a book and movie contract all in
the same week; both in the low to mid six figures, according to The Washington
Post reports.
"In fact, it was
such a sudden launch into the big leagues that I literally had a difficult time
believing it," Weir said in an interview on his site. "I actually
worried it could all be an elaborate scam. So I guess that was my first
reaction: "Is this really happening?'" (BusinessInsider.com)
Andy Weir’s Advice:
Writing an international
bestseller usually has a ton of setbacks, and Andy’s story has plenty. For new
authors, he has some lessons learned after going through his process.
Like most new authors,
Andy had a day job and could only write in the evenings or the weekends. He
didn’t really have a schedule and with the amount of research, it took him 3 years to write The Martian. Now that he is a full
time writer, he writes during the time he would have been working at his previous job.
His goal is to write a certain number of words per day regardless of quality.
Once they are written, he can edit it later.
In fact, in the early
versions of his The Martian, he gained a lot of science-minded readers who
offered feedback. The part they helped him out the most was with the chemistry.
Andy is more into space and physics than chemistry, so they actually helped him
accurately revise his book.
Of course he gets writer’s
block every now and then, but what he does is bracket off the to-do for the
section and then continues moving forward. Additionally, when he stops for the
day, he tries to stop at a place that interests him. It’s easier to start up
again if you stop at an interesting point verses a dry point. Finally, if you have a
story or part of a story in mind, just write it down to get it going.
With the internet, it’s
really not necessary to go the traditional route of having an agent and
publisher. One person can do it all and if it’s a good book, people will buy
and refer. However, for his situation, having an agent helped him with the
business side of everything.
Life After The Martian:
Naturally, Andy was
propelled into money and fame with those major writing and movie contracts. He
is now working on writing other books for the publisher that signed with him.
Since the book's sudden
success, Andy has been invited to ComicCon, many NASA events, and tours. I look forward to his
next venture and using his inspiring story to continue writing my books.
If you are interested in supporting Andy Weir, you can do so on Amazon: The Martian.
Buy the Book:
Sources:
