Bestselling author talks of his career

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - John Green is getting noticed. Between his 1.2 million followers on Twitter, his loyal fans who show up for his book signings, and his New York Times bestselling books, he's a rock star in the world of authors.

It's no wonder, his latest best selling novel, The Fault In Our Stars, is being developed into a movie.

"One of the benefits of having a book sell pretty well," says Green, "they suddenly get extremely motivated out there in Hollywood, so hopefully that will continue to develop quickly, but it will at least be another year."

When he's not writing books for young adults, he and his brother, Hank do a video blog. The Vlog has gotten 230 million hits on Youtube.

Green also has a record label, DFTBA, Don't Forget To Be Awesome. He has a business that produces posters with quotes from his books. He also produces T-shirts.

"We run a bunch of different businesses through our internet presence," Green says. "Some of them are not for profits, like our community is one of the largest KIVA banks, which means we use microfinance to lend money to entrepreneurs in the developing world, 1.3 million dollars."

"We also have for profit business where we sell t-shirts, posters and music all kinds of stuff representing people who built their audiences on line or on Youtube, and that's really fun. It's a lot of work and kind of crazy to have a bunch of businesses at once, it's something that my brother is really passionate about and I'm just sort of along for the ride."

Green's followers are called nerdfighters, people who fight for nerd culture and braininess. Young adults love him. That's why Google asked him to teach AP History on the Internet.

"My brother teaches AP Biology and I teach AP World History and we do work with educators and curriculum development people, cause frankly that's not my area of expertise at all,"Green says.

Green's expertise is still his writing, some of it done while he travels, but much of it done at local Starbucks and the downtown branch of the library.

"I have to say, the months I spent working at the library here, are probably more productive than the months I spent in Amsterdam. That downtown public library that we have here in Indianapolis is just an amazing resource."

Green is the National Winner of the Indiana Author's Award. It is funded in part by the Library Foundation and the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Foundation.