In 2000, Danielle Ackley-McPhail put her novel "Yesterday's Dreams" on the Internet, never expecting that Vivisphere Publishing would find it and make her an offer to publish it. Adam Stone became a minor celebrity in the Livejournal community with his writing. Who would have thought that an editor from HarperCollins might have made him an offer to put his work (edited) into print?

Books need audiences and the Internet can prove to a future publisher that your work has one. We'll discuss the various avenues for getting the word out about your novel.

Get people from the print world hunting for you on-line. Danielle Ackley-McPhail put short stories out into low-run anthologies for years before Vivisphere decided to look her up and found a novel on her website.

Tap into an existing fan base of your own creation. Brian Clevinger created the famous 8-Bit Theater comic daily for years before he decided to submit his novel NuKlear Age to a publisher. It climbed significantly up Amazon's charts solely due to word of mouth.

Help people with larger on-online presence than you. If the author of a popular web comic or blog links to you in gratitude, you have scored a major coup.

Get reliable feedback. Email from readers is the best! Hit counters are passable but flaky -- don't rely on them solely as indicators of readership.

Concerns:

Putting up your novel has disadvantages if your fan base is major market and has already read it. Kristie Helms (www.dishitupbaby.com) took her popular blog to literary form as the novel Dish It Up Baby. While her blog had won on-line awards, many of her readers were less thrilled with purchasing a book which turned out to be mostly the same as what they had read on-line. Since her blog remained on-line after her book's release, people could still read the material for free and sales dropped quickly. Make sure your work can be taken down, and when you write your HTML code, add instructions so that on-line robots and spiders don't archive it.

Make your website presentable: huge black letters on an orange background are not attractive. A good website example: http://www.roystontester.com.

When to submit: your work doesn't have to be finished if you can show you have an audience. Adam Stone's wasn't. However, it had to be in good shape.

Alicia Goranson is an evil temptress who regularly inflicts rich fudge and other goodies on her friends and family. She is also a Boston novelist who likes to hide activism in her entertainment. She has presented her writing at Cornell University and performed at national events including LitQuake in San Francisco. Her first novel, Supervillainz, was published by Suspect Thoughts Press in 2006, won the 2004 Project QueerLit award, and became a finalist for the 2006 Lambda Literary Award. Don't take her word for it - see what others are saying at alicia-goranson.com.