A group of web comic geeks have defied all literary odds after their self-published collection of short stories became a number one bestseller.

Inspired by the online Dinosaur Comics, sci-fi anthology Machine Of Death raced to the top of Amazon.com's bestselling books yesterday, beating the likes of popular American author John Grisham.

The indie creation, a compilation of stories about a machine that tells you cryptically - but with 100 per cent accuracy - how you are going to die, received a groundswell of support, despite the fact that its manuscript will be available free online.

The publishers, Canadian writer Ryan North and comic guru David Malki - who also contributed to the book - released a thank you audio message on the Machine Of Death website.

They compared the book's success to an unknown football team winning Super Bowl.

"The football team that won the Super Bowl wasn't even in the league, it was just some guys that saw the stadium and they decided to stop," Malki said.

"And the people that were cheering for them were just people passing by who were just like 'this team looks awesome'," North said.

"Because they were so different from the big muscle-bound football players," Malki explained.

"They were like 'I've never seen a guy with a gimp leg play running back before, this is amazing'.

"And I guess to take the analogy even further, it's not even guys that drove past the stadium, it's like three guys that were on the curb by the stadium shouting at passersby for five years, and we snuck in the back and took home the Super Bowl trophy."

Malki says the creators of Machine Of Death are thrilled, especially given they made little effort to market the book.

"We didn't spend any money on marketing, we didn't do anything except just put some files on websites," he said.

"It's just incredible, people are awesome."

Machine Of Death also contains stories by Randall "xkcd" Munroe and Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, and illustrations by web comic gurus including Kate Beaton, Aaron Diaz, John Allison and Kris Straub.

The book has now dropped to number three on Amazon, but is still sitting ahead of Grisham.