Hugh Howey, Indie Author Success Story

In the May/June issue of Writer's Digest, there is a most inspirational story about indie author Hugh Howey, who recently scored a triumph in getting a print-only deal from a book publisher, which allows him to continue to sell the book in e-book form himself.

The book in question, Wool, started out life as a short story Howey put out as an e-book. Readers demanded sequels, and in time the story turned into a novel and was selling over 20,000 e-book copies a month.

The first installment of Wool is available as a free e-book on Amazon.com. The omnibus edition of the whole thing is not that expensive, so I downloaded a copy for my Kindle.

The story is a sci-fi set in a grim future where humans live in a silo--- a large, contained habitat--- because the outside world is toxic. (If this was meant as an enviromentalist-extremist sermon, Howey wisely keeps that to himself.) The main characters of the story begin to suspect that they are not being told the truth about their world, but to know that can mark one for death by being put out in the toxic environment to clean the sensors.

The novel is not unflawed--- what novel is? My main suggestion for improvement is that the author should have cut down the word count in each scene to get rid of all the superfluous words and make the whole thing tighter. But the story is sufficiently compelling to overcome the problem of wordiness which is so often fatal to a work of fiction. 

I enjoy the novel so far. As for the Writer's Digest article, I found it very useful, and inspired my current effort to write short stories. I mean, if Howey can turn short stories into successful e-books, leading to successful novels and a major contract, why not me?