If there’s one great difference between publishing on your own and going with a major publisher, it’s the management of expectations. Writers of all stripes dream of making it big and gaining a vast audience, but this fantasy feels so much more tangible when a work is launched from traditional shores. Self-publishing feels more like pushing a rickety raft from a deserted isle. You do it because you have to. Because you have no other options or you’re just not willing to wait around and hope someone sees you running around like a loon on the beach.

The first Wool story, at a mere sixty pages, couldn’t even qualify as a raft. It was more like a message I curled up and shoved into a bottle. In July of last year, I published this short story and thought little of it as it bobbed off into the vast sea of various online e-book stores. What could possibly become of such a thing, written and published on one’s own?

A lot, it turns out. Someone, somewhere, stumbled onto the story and they must’ve told a few others. Those people in turn told a few more. By October, a call stirred for me to write more, which I was happy to oblige. Sales continued to go crazy; the reviews continued to pour in. Within a year of publishing that short story, it grew into a USA Today  bestselling novel, was picked up by Ridley Scott in Hollywood and Random House in the UK. It has been mentioned in Variety, Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian, and has turned a hapless bookstore employee into a bewildered, full-time author.

And now, after years of stuffing my works into bottles, I’m partnering with Random House, a colossus of the publishing world. For the first time, I get to work with a major publisher in my (somewhat) native tongue. This is like that raft-building castaway being put behind the wheel of the QE2 and told to take her for a spin. It sounds like a bad decision, sure, but I’m not complaining. I’m just excited to see where this takes my story, a story that started as a message adrift, clanking against so many bobbing others, and somehow washed up on a distant shore, was found by someone, and led to all this.

Wool is now available to pick-up or download. Read a sample chapter or find out more about the most anticipated book this year; http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/hugh-howey/wool-9781780891248.aspx?utm_source=scifi&utm_medium=featurebanner&utm_campaign=wool