The inspirational story of Andy Weir

A very good friend of mine, who is a writer too relayed Andy Weir's story to me and gave me his book for Christmas.  She heard it from him at a writer's conference recently and fell in love with the book herself, based on the first 3 lines.

A man had the writing bug wrote lots of short stories and put them on a site he made.
He got a following (of a few hundred I think) and they asked him to put his stories in a book as they all connected into one novel.  He did and put it on a pdf so people could read it for free.  He'd tried to get a previous novel published but didn't know how the system worked so it failed.  So he didn't try to get this one published.  His following grew, perhaps at this point it was over a thousand readers.  A few readers asked for Kindle copy as they had problems reading it online or on ebooks.  After looking at options, he went to Amazon who required him to charge a minimum  of 99 cents,  so he did and announced on his site that they could download the pdf for free or buy the kindle copy.   By then his following was over 5,000 readers.  Soon it was an all time best ebook seller for Amazon.

Things really began to change when someone with a publishing company bought his book for 99 cents and read it;  she loved it.  She asked if he had an agent, as one is required to get published.  He said he didn't so she gave him her favorite one to insure he did.  He was published and his book became a best seller.  The same week a publisher agreed to publish his book, a movie company bought the rights to make his book a movie.  It all happened so fast, he thought it was a hoax initially.  It's currently on the New York Times best seller list (and alas no longer 99 cents), a science fiction titled The Martian, and it will likely be made into a movie soon!

Dreams do come true.

melodiccolor wrote:A very good friend of mine, who is a writer too relayed Andy Weir's story to me and gave me his book for Christmas.  She heard it from him at a writer's conference recently and fell in love with the book herself, based on the first 3 lines.

A man had the writing bug wrote lots of short stories and put them on a site he made.
He got a following (of a few hundred I think) and they asked him to put his stories in a book as they all connected into one novel.  He did and put it on a pdf so people could read it for free.  He then tried to get it published but didn't know how that system worked so it got rejected.  In the meantime his following grew, perhaps at this point it was over a thousand readers.  A few readers asked for a hard copy as they had problems reading it online or on ebooks.  After looking at options, he went to Amazon who required him to charge a minimum  of 99 cents,  so he did and announced on his site that they could download the pdf for free or buy the hard copy.   By then his following was over 5,000 readers.

Things really began to change when someone with a publishing company bought his book for 99 cents and read it;  she loved it.  She asked if he had an agent, as one is required to get published.  He said he didn't so she gave him her favorite one to insure he did.  He was published and his book became a best seller.  At the same time it was published, a movie company bought the rights to make his book a movie.  It's currently on the best seller list (and alas no longer 99 cents), a science fiction titled The Martian, and it will likely be made into a movie soon!

Dreams do come true.

Interview with Andy Weir(audio or video):

http://twit.tv/show/triangulation/163

Thanks WD! I have finished the book and I really enjoyed it. It's as much about the human spirit as it is about figuring out how to survive and how to rescue him.

Did you read it yet? You already know if you watched this interview that you'll enjoy it; I know enough about your tastes too.

Btw, watch the interview Waterdragon7 posted and you tell me; does he look HSP to you?

melodiccolor wrote:Thanks WD! I have finished the book and I really enjoyed it. It's as much about the human spirit as it is about figuring out how to survive and how to rescue him.

Did you read it yet? You already know if you watched this interview that you'll enjoy it; I know enough about your tastes too.

I've just started it, MC...only the first two chapters, and skimmed chapter three. It was moved up in my "to read" stack after watching the video interview once more.