The NY Times has a story this morning about free, downloadable podcasts of unpublished books, grounded in the example of Scott Sigler‘s Earthcore and its followups. “A lot of no-name authors like me are getting massive grass-roots exposure,” Sigler tells Andrew Adam Newman, “and some of us are going to percolate to the top and get on the best-seller list.” Sigler’s agent also observes that publishers love it when authors come with pre-established audiences.
Mind you, while this is all news to the proverbial dentists from Scarsdale reading the Times, it’s actually been going on for a while now. After all, Sigler’s first novel was published back in 2005, right around the time that veteran science-fiction author James Patrick Kelly began the podcast of his novella Burn, which was nominated for a Hugo award and is currently on the shortlist for sci-fi’s other major prize, the Nebula. Then again, Burn had a secure home with the small SF imprint Tachyon…