In the age of the cacophonous Web, when authors hawk their goods like medieval fish vendors, how does a midlist author of commercial fiction attract attention? For some, the answer is simple: use the cacophonous tools themselves.

Penguin Putnam, publisher of thriller writer Michael Prescott (Comes the Dark), will next month make Prescott's Stealing Faces available as a Rocket eBook original, five months before it comes out as a mass market original from Signet.

The book will be sold as a downloadable file on Barnesandnoble.com, with which Rocket eBook manufacturer NuvoMedia has a partnership. At $6.99, the price will be comparable to the cost of the print edition. While the number of Rocket eBook owners is small (NuvoMedia tells PW that it is "in the thousands"), Berkley thinks the mere fact that this is the first Rocket eBook original will give it some buzz.

"We basically saw this as a great way to publicize the book," said Berkley publicist Lisa Miscione. As for the print edition, she said, "we're still doing print galleys and approaching it the same way we would have otherwise."

Douglas Clegg, an author with the lesser-known Leisure Press, has opted for a less profitable tack: From this coming May through September, he will send four- to eight-page monthly installments of his original horror novella Naomi to anyone who requests it on his site (www.onelist.com/subscribe/DouglasClegg). No charge, no commitments.

"This will give the book a lot longer shelf-life than most paperbacks, which only stay on the shelves for four or six weeks anyway," said Clegg. "And I don't like writing a book and then not seeing it reach the public for a year and a half."

Clegg has no plans to sell the rights to Naomi anytime soon, online or off, though he d sn't rule out the possibility. And he hasn't completely forsaken print; his The Halloween Man was published by Leisure in late 1998, and he'll have more conventionally published books to come. Meanwhile, the publicity around his online serial has brought him onto the radar of horror newsgroups, a worthwhile feat in its own right. He also might use the information obtained from subscribers to market his future titles.

"It's something that needs to happen, and needs to happen a little more often," said Clegg about his online publication. "There's an audience out there that a lot of publishers don't yet know how to reach."