woolHow popular is self-published fiction becoming? Apparently popular enough to draw major Hollywood attention. Gossip site Deadline reports that the production company of Ridley (Prometheus, Bladerunner) and Tony (Top Gun) Scott is in the process of snagging the movie rights to the self-published dystopian SF novel Wool by Hugh Howey.

Wool seems to be a very popular novel; the Amazon Best Sellers Rank is currently #103 on the Kindle Store paid chart (though I expect it will be well back into the top 100 by sometime tomorrow based on publicity from this story), #1 in “High Tech” science fiction in general and Kindle, and #5 in “Adventure” science fiction in Kindle. It has 688 reviews so far, and an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars. And at $6 for a 550-page omnibus edition of the first five installments, it looks reasonably priced, too.

As far as I know, this is the first major Hollywood attention to come to a self-published Amazon e-book. Something tells me it won’t be the last.

(Found via Slashdot.)

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