Interesting response by Hugh Howey, in the Comments section under a Guardian review of 'Wool':

Having watched it occur from the front row (and with great interest), I can tell you that I still don't know how it happened. I get this question a lot. If I had an answer, all of my books would be rocking the charts. They aren't. Here's a timeline, though, for any who are curious: The original novelette was published on Amazon in July of 2011. It was a story I came up with while roofing back in 2006. It was always going to be a full-length novel, but I could never find the time to devote to it (I had another series I was writing at the time, churning out 2-3 books a year). This story was dying to get out, however, so I finally wrote it as a short story, published it, and forgot about it. I went back to my novels. In October (3 months later), the Wool novelette sold more in a month than I'd sold of everything else that year. I can only attribute this to word of mouth, as I never promoted the work, didn't have a link to it on my website, had effectively forgotten about it and ignored it. Seeing these sales and reviews clamoring for more, I canceled my NaNoWriMo plans and started book 2 of the series. I wrote the rest in rapid succession and released them serially. Friends from a couple forums I was active on were early fans and helped spread the word, but by then, it was already beyond my control. By January, I was getting calls from literary agents. BBC America got in touch with designs on a TV show. I was still working at a bookstore for $10 an hour (with no plans on quitting my job). That became necessary, however, when the demands on my time grew. An agent got in touch in February whom I really liked. She began selling rights overseas (20 countries thus far) and partnered with a film co-agent. The Ridley Scott reading came via Steve Zaillian, who loved the book and recommended it to his friend and collaborator. We had a lot of interest from various studios (TV and film), but it was hard to pass up Zaillian and Scott. One of the best occurrences last year was going to auction in the UK. Random House had the best pitch, and it has been an absolute dream working with them. It couldn't have gone any better. And now here I am, a regular bloke who has been an avid reader his entire life, who worked in bookstores while writing in his every spare moment, trying to wrap his head around the idea of being a professional writer. I attribute a lot of this to dumb luck. Things just take off sometimes. You can use post hoc arguments to search for reasons, but it could've been anyone. I'm as baffled as the next guy. Why Angry Birds? Why Minecraft? The right distraction at the right time. I wish I had a better answer!

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Sorry, should have posted a link to the whole review/thread. Some interesting exchanges and more from Hugh himself:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jan/09/wool-by-hugh-cowey-review

this is interesting, Terry - basically he's saying that he did nothing to promote it and it just took off itself! Just shows that the random element of the whole thing is what we can't predict. Well, perhaps not random, but the mysterious 'x' factor (for want of a better phrase) that makes people jump on one bandwagon and not another.

Why Gangnam style?
Why Angry Orange?

Why on earth CATBEARDING?????? (google it if you haven't seen it yet!)

Why on earth CATBEARDING??????

I prefer dogbearding.

If you read some of Howey's further comments on that thread, I think it's a little more debatable that he did nothing to promote the book. Maybe not directly, but he already had quite a lot of stuff self-published so that could count as promotion of a sort.

I spoke to Cindie Geddes at Lucky Bat Books recently and she was of the view that there don't seem to be any hard and fast rules yet for what will succeed. One of their authors has sold a lot of copies of a non-fiction book with zero promotion; others haven't done too well with promotion; one picked up unexpectedly after doing nothing for many months.

(Incidentally, if you want to read a collection of really powerful stories, full of fantastic imagery, I highly recommend Cindie's collection, 'Control'.)

It's a lovely story anyway. Almost a fairytale in itself.

I think it's great that success does not have a formula. Everyone can keep their dreams intact.

one picked up unexpectedly after doing nothing for many months.

I think word-of-mouth is probably at work here, and possibly with much self-publishing success. I daresay one voluble fan is worth a dozen ill-judged stabs at self-promotion.

Have you read it, Terry? Looks really good.

I like what he said about this one being one he just had to write and it wouldn't shut up until he had written it. I think it's worth paying attention to those feelings - though why, I couldn't tell you!

I wrote a review of 'Wool' for New Scientist/Arc:

http://arcfinity.tumblr.com/post/41109920085/were-reading-wool-by-hugh-howey

I've also just done a review for them on Howey's follow-up, 'Shaft', but not sure if or when it will appear. I think 'Shaft' is a better-written book than 'Wool', possibly because he wrote it as a novel, rather than in instalments.

Shaft review now out:

http://arcfinity.tumblr.com/post/52937920411/were-reading-shift-by-hugh-howey