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Kneecapping Barack Obama at every opportunity. | ||
(**Andrew and I decided to do the interview via ICQ and someone named "Treat" added me right as we were supposed to begin the interview**)
John Hawkins: This is Andrew right?
Andrew Marlatt: Yes, the Treat thing is a long story.
John Hawkins: That's a likely story mr. Haxor!
Andrew Marlatt: Now that's something I'm no expert at.
John Hawkins: That's just what I'd say...if I were a hacker trying to fool me into thinking that I wasn't a hacker because I was really a hacker who...ah never mind...So how's "Economy of Errors" (**Andrew's New Book**) selling?
Andrew Marlatt: Honestly, I try not to ask, just in case they tell me something I don't want to know.
John Hawkins: Really? I thought it was selling like naked pics of Britney Spears on Amazon the last time you looked?
Andrew Marlatt: That number goes up and down quite a bit. The first couple of days it was pretty strong, but it comes and goes now. The one thing I do know from talking to my editor is the independent bookstores, which are supposedly indicative of the general milieu, like it a lot and having been putting it in the front of their stores.
John Hawkins: Well you're obviously getting some nice recommendations as well..I noticed Wendy Northcutt from the Darwin Awards liked it. After I interviewed her, her book went straight to #1.
Andrew Marlatt: Why do you think I'm doing this now?
John Hawkins: I thought you were just slumming to see what the unsuccessful side of the humor website biz is like =)
Andrew Marlatt: Ha. Well, define success. I've had people email me and say that it was wrong to do this for a living. Somehow they thought it ran counter to the "spirit of the internet", or something like that. Usually their email addresses end in thewell.com.
John Hawkins: Those people are morons =) Running a website for a living would be life's sweetest reward =)
Andrew Marlatt: You think that, do you?
John Hawkins: I bet it's just like being a rock star...except with no glamor, or money, or girls. I daydream about it at work every day =) So back to this "interview thing"...how long have you been running SatireWire full time?
Andrew Marlatt: I launched the site in Dec. of 99, but back then it was the FNwire. I thought that was hilarious. You know, FN, like f***ing. But nobody got it. I'd do interviews and they introduce it like, "Our next guest is Andrew Marlatt of The F.N. Wire." It frustrated the hell out of me.
John Hawkins: Oh well no wonder...f***ing ='s farking right? They probably confused you with Fark. (That's my gratuitous Fark plug that will hopefully convince Drew to link us.)
Andrew Marlatt: Drew rules, if that helps...
John Hawkins: And France surrenders...but you were doing interviews back in 1999? Were you that big back then?
Andrew Marlatt: Not on day one. Day two, maybe.
John Hawkins: You must of caught on faster than the "Hampster Dance"...
Andrew Marlatt: I'm doing that right now. But to answer your question, at first it was part time.
John Hawkins: As long as I can't hear that music I can live with that =) So if it was part time were actually making money right from the start or were you just eating a lot of pork and beans?
Andrew Marlatt: Well, when I started I was writing for mags, mostly covering biz and tech, and primarily for Internet World, covering dotcom biz models. I also wrote a few pieces for Wired and New York Mag and some others. So I'd saved up $ to give the satire thing a shot. It didn't make any money, as my wife can tell you. It was rather a surprise to her when I decided to go for it full time. I think I did that in April of 2000, and I told her about it in, oh, June 2000
John Hawkins: Did you like pretend to go to work in the mornings or was it one of those "I'm not going to start a fight by asking why you're still asleep at 10 AM instead of going to work things?"
Andrew Marlatt: Ha. Well, no, I have an office outside the house, downtown in the town I live in. And I'm pretty much a workaholic, I guess. I don't sleep much. And there really was a reason I thought I could do it full time...
John Hawkins: You have an office as well? You're like the only webmaster I've ever met with an office that wasn't bankrolled by a corporation that's hemorrhaging money....and why did you think you could do it full time?
Andrew Marlatt: Yes, I actually have an office, but remember I had been a freelance writer for something like eight years. I can't work at home. Tried it once. And it doesn't take much money to run a site, as you know. Just to live. That is to say, living takes money. But the reason I thought I could do it was because about four months into it, I got contacted by a literary agent, an actual one, (I checked him out). And then I got contacted by another one and I thought, well hell, this is where I need to be. Then my wife said, "That's great! How much do they pay?" I said, "Nothing! Not until I get a book deal. Isn't that great?" So it took some trust on her part to let me go with it.
John Hawkins: So what type of traffic were you getting when you went full time?
Andrew Marlatt: Traffic... I don't remember too well. I think I was only getting maybe 10k pages a day on a good day, or something. But the Net was smaller then. It only had like 40 million people.
John Hawkins: Were you still writing any freelance material at this point or were you totally relying on ***Shiver*** banner advertising to pay your bills?
Andrew Marlatt: Freelance was paying the bills until I quit that by the summer of 2000. I was really running the site off of saved money. Plus, my wife works. I couldn't have done it without her.
John Hawkins: Don't say that about your wife! You've got a popular book out and you'll be trading up for a wannabe movie starlet soon. That whole "I couldn't have done it without her" thing will cost you big bucks in divorce court. Now how did you get from 0-10k pages a day? Most people never get that high even with quality sites. Was there anything that helped you draw attention to your site?
Andrew Marlatt: Attention... you mean other than the pr0n metatags?
John Hawkins: That can't be it...I've got all 47 words from a Christy Canyon movie in my meta tags and it's not helping at all...
Andrew Marlatt: Hint: she's, like, old, if you catch my drift.
John Hawkins: So younger porn stars are the key to success on the internet? I should of known it had something to do with porn...everything on the net comes down to porn or spam at some point...
Andrew Marlatt: That would be sporn.
John Hawkins: I'm letting you get me way off track with all this porno, sporn, and divorce talk! Back to the interview...so you went full time..then what happened? Did business pick up?
Andrew Marlatt: What happened then? I don't remember business picking up, per se. It was very hit and miss (just like my stories, actually). One story would get very popular. I remember this interview with Jeeves was the first like that.
Andrew Marlatt: But then I'd write a couple of iffy things, or something that was so narrow in scope that even the /.ers didn't understand, and traffic would fall. But the whole time I was trying to think of a book idea. My agent thought I needed one in order to do a book. Kinda weird. So I'd spend some time writing for the site (and frankly learning html etc., as I didn't really know it going in), and crafting a book idea. My first one I dropped..
John Hawkins: If you're not talking about Linux or some technical gibberish that no normal person would care about, the /.ers aren't interested in it anyway. What was the first idea?
Andrew Marlatt: Ah, but /.ers love science, and so do I, so we have much in common. The first idea, I think, was some kind of first-person satirical novel written by a dotcom CEO of some company with a really stupid business model. But then the real guys beat me to that. Finally, I decided I should take advantage of what I was doing, which was writing biz and tech satire stories (that's what the site was for the first 2/3 of its life)
John Hawkins: You know I did find it a bit odd that the book seems to focus on business related stuff when the page seems to focus more on political and current events humor.
Andrew Marlatt: Well, when I started the site, I was immersed in all that was online, so that's what I wrote about. However, it's not my first love, so to speak. When I finished the book in Sept. 2001, I decided I wouldn't just write about biz/tech anymore, but would write whatever the hell I wanted. I was a Political Science major in college, international studies, really, so I like writing about international events in particular. That's not going to win me a lot of readers in Peoria, but I'm very popular in the Netherlands.
John Hawkins: That's because most of us Americans don't even realize the Netherlands is still a country...
Andrew Marlatt: I was talking about Netherlands, Illinois.
John Hawkins: Let me get away from this discussion of foreign countries we aren't bombing before all of our American readers tune out..so how much traffic does SatireWire do these days?
Andrew Marlatt: You realize that asking how much traffic you get is like asking a woman how old she is. On average, I'll get 3.5-4m page views in a month
John Hawkins: Yeah but you just have to find out if she's of age before you start buying her beer sometimes. That is of course a fantastic amount of traffic and a lot of potential buyers for your book. Do you think the internet crossover is driving the sales of your book up a lot?
Andrew Marlatt: I think I have a great advantage over a first-time author without a site. I've got a built-in following. Of course, SatireWire, unlike the book, is free, so it's hard to tell if they'll actually spend any money. But in theory I shouldn't have an excuse for it not to sell well... so forget everything I just said. The Internet shouldn't help at all.
John Hawkins: So if the book really takes off and you're swimming in cash are you dumping SatireWire and moving to a Caribbean Island or are you going to keep writing?
Andrew Marlatt: If you know the pub biz, you know that you're not swimming in cash with the first book. But no, I'm going to keep writing. Great thing about writing, you never want to retire.
John Hawkins: Well I know you have a big online chat session with the Washington Post tomorrow (mention Brass Knuckles and I won't make up a bunch of stuff that you said and edit it in) so I won't keep you much longer. Where can people go to buy the book online?
Andrew Marlatt: Other than the pr0n sites?
John Hawkins: Definitely other than the pr0n sites, no one goes there to read...
Andrew Marlatt: You can go to Amazon, or Powells.com, or support your local bookstore by going to BookSense.com or Bn.com (Barnes&Noble), etc. etc.
John Hawkins: Is there anything else you'd like to say or promote before we call it a night?
Andrew Marlatt: I'm a lousy promoter, actually, as witnessed by the fact that I'm not out in San Francisco tonight for the Webby Awards, where I should be glad-handing and all that. Instead I'll be staying up to watch the World Cup (I'm one of the 17 native-born Americans who do that).
John Hawkins: They actually meet somewhere for the Webby awards? I thought that was all handled in a chat room or something. If they don't give you the humor site award it has to be fixed. F***ed Company is a great site but it's not really humor and two of the other sites were ridiculous. One of them was like a bunch of Legos or something...that joke got old before they even finished coding it.
Andrew Marlatt: I liked that Lego idea though. I have two little boys, so I know the Lego life. One thing I did want to mention about the book, if I may?...
John Hawkins: Sure...go ahead
Andrew Marlatt: Well, it took about forever (that's just over a year, Internet time), and while I did most all of the artwork myself, and the writing, I would be less then faithful if I did not relate that one story in the book was written by none other than...Brian Briggs of bbspot.com. It's the one called "Beatles Reunited in Photoshop." I love that story. Humor site guys have to stick together, you know.
John Hawkins: Did any of the guys from Something Awful or the Onion chip in too?
Andrew Marlatt: Ha. Funny, I didn't think to ask. The Onion has bigger books to write. And I'd like to go on record as saying they're absolutely brilliant.
John Hawkins: Believe it or not, I think of the Onion, SatireWire, and Something Awful as the three big humor sites on the net that set the pace for everyone else...
Andrew Marlatt: That's very kind (although The Onion and SA might not think so). I don't know SA's setup, but if you get to do this full time, you have an advantage. There are, as you know, a ton of humor sites, and no, they're not all outstanding, but there's a lot of people who probably could do this full time if they didn't have to, say, eat.
John Hawkins: Awww...don't sell yourself short man, if going full time were enough to make your successful at writing humor a lot of people would be willing to eat Ramen noodles for a month or three to get the job done...
Andrew Marlatt: I'm not selling myself short, I'm just saying I have an advantage. But if you go to Fark, for instance, some of the headlines Farkers come up with are funnier than... well... sh*t, SatireWire, frankly. And they're just doing it during lunch, or whatever. It's depressing, actually.
John Hawkins: Is there anything else you'd like to add before we finish up?
Andrew Marlatt: No, nothing else I guess. Maybe "Buy the bloody book!" I think that sums it up for me.
John Hawkins: Heh, well thanks for your time Andrew.
Andrew Marlatt: No problem. Thanks for having me
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