Mainstream media is getting savvy to the way podcasts are being effectively used to promote authors and their work.

A Washington Post article looks at how Scott Sigler, J.C. Hutchins and Cory Doctorow are using podcasting an Internet media to get noticed:

Horror writer Scott Sigler, one of the pioneers in this area, began regularly posting readings of his first book in March 2005. “EarthCore,” broken up into 45-minute chunks that he posted on a weekly basis, won an audience of 10,000 listeners. His second book, “Ancestor,” did even better, scoring 30,000 subscribers. A small Canadian publisher signed on to release his third book in a small paperback run.

This month, Sigler’s fourth book debuted in a hardcover release for the first time, from Crown Publishing Group, an imprint of Random House. Crown has printed an initial run of 100,000 copies of “Infected,” Sigler’s bloody tale about a parasite that turns its human hosts violently insane. That’s a high figure for the book industry, where mostly unknown authors usually get an initial print run of only a few thousand.

Sigler’s latest novel is racing up the best-seller list at Amazon.

“It proves that there are smarter ways to getting published than just sending a manuscript over the transom to a publisher,” said Cory Doctorow, a sci-fi author who is also well known as an editor of the popular blog BoingBoing.

As people’s attention moves away from broadcast media to on-demand media, authors and publishers will have to follow.