More than zero people have asked me this in the past two weeks, which is hilarious, because my attitude towards business and marketing practice is "Why are you asking me about somebody else's job? Let me write my damn code."

The core answer is what I posted in the "Why me?" post a few days ago. And I'll warn you (again) that it's not a recipe. There is no recipe; it's what you've done with your life and who you know.

But I guess everybody who succeeds here has to answer this one. Or maybe you folks just want to hear me say it in more detail. So I will post the screed that I sent to the Boston Indies mailing list last week. (That's a Boston-area game-developer mailing list.)

Besides, the highly technical blog post I started writing this evening isn't finished yet.

How did I do it?

First, spend fifteen years working hard on projects with no reward but community good-will.

I say that without either pride or resentment. It's objectively true. This is happening because I have a big list of freeware games that many people loved, and a big list of open-source projects that many people valued. Note that my project is explicitly about doing more on both fronts.

Subjective factors that I can't measure, but which I'm sure helped:

Say up front what you want to do, why you want money, and how that money will be converted into something awesome. (A list of features is not exciting, of itself. Describe an experience.)

Have a great video. (I wrote a script, Jmac and I whaled over it, Jmac threw away a bunch of stuff and added a bunch of stuff, and then we filmed it. Twice.) (The music isn't bad either.)

Think about your audience and who wants what. (I have contributors who want an iPhone game, contributors who want an IF game, contributors who want to support my open-source projects, and contributors who want to support me. These are not all the same people! Rewarding all of these groups appropriately is non-trivial, and there has been some yap about the way I did it.)

A game demo. (I only realized I needed one a couple of weeks ago! Duh. The demo up there represents two weekends of work; I hope that's a good omen for my production rate in 2011.)

Don't be afraid to plug yourself and your CV. I know you're all saying "how could you fail to promote yourself?!" but I had to be chivvied into it. (Thanks, jscott.)

Contrariwise, be a non-asshole. Actively be a non-asshole. Say thank you to everybody, early and often.

How did I promote it?

First, I re-read that Dejobaan post-mortem, particularly its section on writing press releases. I love you guys ahem. That was very helpful.

Then I sent email to people. Not even very many, in fact. The big one was a guy at GameSetWatch, because I've interacted with him before, and he's interacted with other IF authors (Emily Short has a column on the site.) I sent email to the guy who reviewed GET LAMP for Ars Technica. I sent email to random people who have asked me about commercial IF in the past. (Turns out one of them was Schuyler Towne, who made $87k on Kickstarter to sell lockpicks! Total serendipity: he's interested in IF.)

So, lesson: have contacts who are appropriate to your subject. Helpful! I know. (Although I also sent email to that address which gulps down all videogame press releases -- inbox@gamespress.com. And I got a news site post out of that.)

Obviously, a couple of days later, the big story was about how big the story got. I was hoping for that but it's not something you can ordain. I will ride the snowball for as long as it lasts.

And how do you feel about this, Mr Plotkin?

On October 31, I was another schlob hoping to make some money. Now you people are asking me for my advice on Kickstarter. I have not gotten smarter in the past few days! Why are you looking at me?? Do I have something on my face???

Yeah, it's been kind of nuts.

Thank you, all of you who have contributed. I will do my damnedest to create something worthy of your generosity.