It’s the day of the Oscars and predictions are running rampant in terms of who will take home statues. While The Revenant is at the top of many lists, another nominated film, The Martian, is a contender that doesn’t have the same origin story as the other nominees. The success of Andy Weir’s science fiction novel is considered fly-by-night. The story goes that soon after Weir self-published his book, posting it for free on his website, its popularity took off, catching the notice of a Big 5 publisher while simultaneously attaining a movie deal resulting in the Oscar-nominated film adaptation.
What may not come up in conversation is that the attention for The Martian stems from the audiobook produced by Podium Publishing. Podium released the audiobook in March 2013, and 11 months later Crown Publishing Group would publish the print and ebook versions.
Co-founder of Podium Publishing, Greg Lawrence found Weir’s tome while scouring the internet. In general, Greg and co-founder James Tonn “search very purely” for print content to produce as a vibrant and engaging audiobook, and don’t consider themselves to have the restrictions of traditional book publishers in terms of worrying about trends or answering to a board. “Off the bat,” Greg said, “I knew [The Martian] was something special.”
At Podium Greg and James seek to help authors who don’t have a platform, like Weir at the time, by pairing them with the right narrator for an audiobook. Because of the dimensions of Weir’s book capturing the unique narrative voice and close first-person perspective of Mark Watney as he cracks jokes all the while avoiding death would make or break the audiobook. Greg emphasized that an “audiobook’s success is tied to the narrator.” Voice actor RC Bray came to mind immediately as a natural fit for The Martian. Podium Publishing also had the print rights to the book and a plan in place to distribute, but when Weir’s deal with a Big 5 publisher came into play they refrained from entering the print space and focused on what Podium does best: making great digital content.
The attention and success for The Martian across platforms hasn’t lost steam. The audiobook was voted a Best Audiobook in 2013 by Audible.com. In 2014, Weir’s book hit the New York Times Top 25 best-seller list two weeks after the hardcover release. When the movie trailer hit the internet last summer, it helped catapult the paperback and ebook versions to the top of the best-seller list. The audiobook for The Martian recently topped 100,000 ratings on Audible.com, a first for any audiobook, and went on to win a 2015 Audie award as well as be a Voice Arts Awards finalist. To date the audiobook is still ranked #1 in various Amazon categories including High Tech, Adventure, and Hard Science Fiction. And tonight we’ll see if the movie version also takes home one or all of the seven Academy Awards it’s nominated for.
“Audiobooks stand on their own as a medium,” says Greg. Looking at The Martian’s success as an audiobook alone shows that the results can be advantageous. An audiobook is not necessarily an automatic contractual obligation once a writer gets a print publishing deal. They can be “swept in as an after-thought.” The production cost and return may not incite the same interest or profits for an audiobook that needs to be done well. Additionally, Greg and James explained, sublicensing this format can hurt an author because the numbers they’re getting may be computed haphazardly to the point that an author gets a bad percentage of a percentage of a percentage from outsourcing how an audiobook is produced with little say in the direction. An option is for authors to consider doing their audiobook and print title separately.
Greg Lawrence and James Tonn created Podium Publishing in 2012 with the intent of “put[ting] creatives on the podium.” Their aim is to eliminate the middle man in this regard, working directly with the authors to create a dynamic digital product—meaning quality stands out over quantity. They don’t accept author submissions, but are actively seeking titles and getting referrals. The majority of their list is made up of genre (science fiction and epic fantasy) titles along with a few in the self-help category. Digital downloads/sales for audiobooks and ebooks have increased over the past two years. You can preview some of their titles for free via this link. Film directors tend to listen to audiobooks to gain a sense of cinematic quality adding more heft to the importance of one done well with solid production value and the right narrator catering to the immediacy of hearing a book like The Martian come to life.
Podium has also had six other audiobooks of theirs optioned for film/TV. By working the independent route with authors the business model Greg and James have established is “the fairest of them all” meaning doing it fairly equals a true partnership in business and connecting consumers more directly with indie authors in certain genres than others. The Martian’s success represents the core of Podium Publishing’s business model in utilizing a great product to make more variations of it, having a strong promotional plan, and relying on the interest of consumers to find what you’ve created.
While the story of The Martian’s success is ongoing, the audiobook is taking stage as a medium that helped spread the word and popularity of Weir’s work to a larger audience, including those watching the Oscars tonight.
