The SFGate has a profile of podcasting novelist Scott Sigler that looks at how he’s used free podcasts to promoting his writing career:

Before Sigler revealed podcasting as a new frontier for book promotion, the San Francisco author was rebuffed hundreds of times by major publishers. Sigler’s science fiction-horror thrillers attracted little attention.

That changed in 2005, when he offered his first novel, “Earthcore,” as a free, downloadable 22-episode podcast on iTunes and his own Web site, www.scottsigler.com. A few hundred early listeners soon swelled to 5,000. By the time he posted “Ancestor” and “The Rookie,” his second and third books, which he also narrated, he had 30,000 digital disciples.

Sigler refers to these loyal listeners as junkies because they keep coming back for more. It was the junkies who helped him land a deal with Dragon Moon Press, a small Canadian fantasy and science fiction publisher that liked the idea of a newbie author with a sizable following. It was the junkies who helped Sigler’s “Ancestor” climb to No. 7 in overall sales on Amazon.com, which played a role in landing him a deal with the Crown Publishing Group.

On Tuesday, Sigler’s latest book, “Infected,” a tale of biological possession, was released by Crown. A free digital manuscript of the book was downloaded 45,000 times in just 100 hours since the Crown book was released, according to the publisher. And while Sigler still offers his novels as free podcasts, he is confident that the junkies will shell out $24.95 for a fix they might already have tried.

“How do I get them to buy a book they may have already listened to?” Sigler said. “I ask them to.”

Scott’s publisher at Crown, Tina Constable, suggests that podcasting and new media are essential tools for publishers.

“The wave of the future is how we harness the Internet to find these new readers, and we are devoting an enormous amount of energy and resources into this effort. The traditional model for publishing our books is quickly becoming obsolete and we recognize that creative Internet strategies are necessary if we want to remain competitive.”