In which a great self-publishing discussion gets a little WOOLly

Over the weekend, self-published success story Hugh Howey removed a blog post on his website he deemed too mean, but that could have led to a great discussion. The post detailed an encounter with a person at the Hugo Awards who, apparently unfamiliar with his work, was fairly rude to Howey about his decision to self-publish (sorta, now) and denigrated him to a greener writer.

There is a fair amount roiling below the surface of this tale -- a summoning up of old insecurities that Howey may have felt, despite his runaway success; a glimpse of the awkwardness of all conferences, even outside the literary halls; a note of aggrievement, perhaps, that the author was not recognized, or was it a note of relief that he could pass through and get to know the general public? And beyond that a great sea of questions about the interaction of authors who are published within the Big Six (or "traditional" or "brick-and-mortar" publishers, or however you like to term them) and those who take an alternate route, by chance or on purpose.

But we won't be having that discussion over this post, because Howey titled his entry "The Bitch From Worldcon," spent most of it ripping on her appearance and "crazy" manner, and ended it with a... fantasy? in which it is implied he goes onstage later, to her chagrin, and invites her to perform favors on him. 'Cause, chicks, right? How dare they act contrarily?!

I'm still fuming but here are some way better analyses on what happened at Worldcon: A great blog post called Does A Nasty Artist Make For Terrible Art? has screenshots of the offending piece, which Howey eventually removed at the behest of his wife, but also an examination of how much our authors' personal failings bear on their art. Lamptime Is Over continues the actual discussion I wish we could have over this, writing (as a self-published author) that "self-publishing is never going to have the legitimacy people want until they stop acting like they’re being assailed from all sides." And Jenny Trout at Sweaters for Days positions it as a teachable moment for how to approach authors at conventions like Worldcon.

It is just a shame that Howey felt so cowed by this one person, who probably regrets something she said in that encounter but sure as heck won't be apologizing now, that he had to take the slimy gender-attack approach to taking her down. Resorting to "well, she was ugly and crazy" is just bad storytelling.

Let's all write dystopias and quit our jobs

Once a self-published serial writer on Amazon, Hugh Howey has engineered a rare print-only deal to bring his postapocalyptic drama WOOL to stores. About his early days, from the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Howey kept trying. He got a 30-hour-a-week job at a university bookstore that paid only $10 an hour but gave him some flexibility. He got up at two or three in the morning to write, and wrote through his lunch hour and after dinner. He designed his own cover art, enlisting his wife and sister to pose in photos. He would often jolt up in bed in the middle of the night to scribble down ideas.

"It was almost a compulsion for him," says Ms. Lyda. Ms. Lyda said she pleaded with him to leave his pen open on his nightstand, because the clicking noise of his pen kept waking her up.
"Wool" started as a short story that Mr. Howey dashed off in three weeks. He posted it on Amazon for 99 cents in July 2011. Within three months, the story had sold 1,000 copies. Mr. Howey was stunned.
"I told my wife, 'Baby, we're going to be able to pay a couple of bills off this short story,' " he said.
Readers begged for a sequel, and in November, Mr. Howey released another installment. He sold more than 3,000 copies that month. The next month, he released two more installments and sold nearly 10,000 copies total. In January, he released the final installment, for $2.99, and published all five as a single volume, for $5.99. Collectively, he sold 23,000 copies of all the editions that month. "Wool" shot up Amazon's science-fiction best-seller list. Mr. Howey quit his job.

Jonathan Karp of Simon & Schuster described it as an "unusual circumstance" to separate the print and e-book rights in the mid-six-figure deal, which is code for "Rats! How did he get all that leverage?!"