Andy Weir began writing The Martian as a series of blog posts. It ended up becoming a best-seller. Here's the story of how he did it: "I'll just post [The Martian] to, like, basically a blog post, and I'll make it a serialized story, kinda like the old days of… Sherlock Holmes[, which] was serialized storytelling in the Strand magazine." "People said, like, well, I love your book, but I hate your website, which is fair." "I put it on Amazon via Kindle Direct Publishing. And so I charged the minimum, which at the time was 99¢. So I'm like, okay, everybody. You can read it on my website. You can download the e-reader version from my website, or you can pay Amazon a buck to put it on your Kindle for you. And people paid the buck." "People said like, ah, now here's an opportunity for me to give money. I'm gonna buy the book even though I've already read it." "So Amazon's automated system went well, this is selling well, which popped it into the list of, like, top sellers, which got other people's attention, which… so it snowballed from there."