From the story:

“Post-apocalyptic dystopias seem the order of the day, with an auction underway for Hugh Howey’s Kindle Select-published five-book series Wool, the premise of which sounds like one vision of the publishing industry’s future. Earth (and, we presume, its high streets and publishing houses) has been ravaged by an unspecified global tragedy that we presume is nuclear (or possibly a well-known Internet retailer?), though it isn’t stated. The remaining inhabitants – novelists? editors? – live in sunken shafts. Venturing out is forbidden, and those that are caught expressing such a wish are punished by being given protective clothing and sent to the surface to clean the lenses of the cameras that provide footage of the outside world to those in the shafts. To do this, they use the wool of the title.

Source: http://publishingperspectives.com/2012/04/lbf-2012-rights-update-from-dystopia-to-dyspepsia/