In EarthCore, the Rocktopi are a group of multi-tentacled alien monsters living in the Utah mountains; they just want to be left alone. When unexpected visitors on a mining expedition disturb the creatures, they discover monsters so nasty they make Welles’ TheWar of the Worlds aliens look like innocent house spiders.

EarthCore, which was podcast over six months, recalls the golden years of radio with a serialized distribution over the Internet for the iPod generation. It quickly found more than 10,000 subscribers.

“Serialized storytelling has worked for 70 years, and it works for a reason,” Sigler said in a phone interview from his San Francisco home. “I would not say we are reinventing the wheel; we are doing something people have done for awhile, and we are just doing it in a different format.”

A podcast novel is an audio version of a book posted on the Internet for download before it is released in print. It can be downloaded and listened to on an iPod or played in an MP3 format on a computer. Sigler is one of the new medium’s pioneers; type “podcast novel” in Google, and his Web site is the first listing among more than a million.

EarthCore was the first of four works — Ancestor, Infection, and the currently running The Rookie — Sigler “published” in podcast form, and he is preparing now to release Ancestor in the more traditional book form.

Discussions of his work, which includes three podcast novels, pop up on blogs all over the Internet.

“Scott is miles ahead of the curve,” said his agent, Byrd Leavell of the Waxman Literary Agency in New York. “Scott has earned everything he has built, taking advantage of his charisma to tell a story that people want to listen to. He ... is creating his own momentum with his fan base.”

Addictive

A new breed of listeners developed during the release of EarthCore, which spanned 23 episodes. They were only released every week or so — or whenever Sigler’s fans raised their cyber voices enough to get his attention — and ended up exerting a tight grip.

“During EarthCore, right about episode seven, people were starting to really get into it,” Sigler said. “The readers started to call the book ‘EarthCrack.’ ”

Message boards were flooded by listeners who wrote that they could not wait for their next hit of “EarthCrack,” leading Sigler to dub them “junkies” waiting for the next installment of his podcast.

That comment has since become his tagline, and a way for him to communicate and refer to the audience as a whole when he reads about his work on blogs and chat rooms.

The podcasts, which Sigler warns include adult language and violence that make them unsuitable for younger listeners, allow him to make an instant personal connection with his audience.

“I reply to every e-mail sent in,” he said. “I usually reply to the blog posts, and if people are talking about me on the blogs on the Internet, I am usually replying to those posts.”

Sigler hopes many of these same people are motivated to buy the print version of Ancestor, which will be his first attempt at a large-scale launch of a book based on one of his podcasts.

He’s with a small publisher, Dragon Moon Press, and knows that marketing Ancestor, which will include a few new plot lines and twists compared to the podcast version, will be tough.

“I don’t have this massive marketing machine behind me. I don’t have somebody who can pick up the phone and call the New York Times ... and say we need to get this next book reviewed. I am not a proven seller of print books,” he said.

Now he’s looking to close the gap between himself and well-known names like Stephen King and Michael Crichton.

“On the Internet, a lot of people know who I am and know my work,” he said. “I am a minor celebrity there, but in the print world, I’m absolutely nobody. I haven’t sold a lot of books yet, and until I do, I don’t expect these people to pay any attention to me.”

‘An entrepreneur’

Sigler joined PodShow.com in December, 2005. The site carries thousands of user-generated media shows, using the Internet to deliver specialized content to niche audiences. Staff there recognized he was doing something different.

“He was one of the few people that saw the business ramifications of doing his own podcasts,” said Richard Brewer-Hay, senior director of talent relations at PodShow.com. “He was ahead of the curve. He got turned down by the publisher and couldn’t get a book deal, but he knew there was an audience out there that would like what he had to say.”

So Sigler began to use the simple technology of podcasting, and his audience grew from there. “He went back to the same publisher with the numbers, and then that’s how he got the deal for [the book version of] Ancestor,” Brewer-Hay said. “He is not just sitting down every week and reading from a book, he is an entrepreneur.”

His second podcast, Ancestor, drew more than 30,000 listeners, and more than 700,000 episodes were downloaded. By selling advertising on his podcasts in cooperation with PodShow.com, he said he makes more money than most authors get for an average book advance, which is about $5,000 for an author like Sigler.

There is no point to putting his book on Web sites like Audible.com or the audio book section of iTunes — people would be asked to fork out a minimum of $20 for his books.

“When it is all just ones and zeros, it is just digital information. There is nothing that is being physically made, no overhead, nothing,” he said.

The price he considers fair for his audio books is $4.99. That way “people could take a gamble on it, and if they don’t like it, they are only out five bucks.”

Eventually, everything Sigler does will be available in CD format. Right now, everything is put out on the podcast and supported by ads.

Small-town influence

Sigler performs and produces every podcast himself. He creates all of his characters — ranging from a female German DNA scientist to a tough Kreterakian alien football coach — and records their voices in a small walk-in closet in his San Francisco apartment.

It’s a long way from his hometown of Cheboygan, Mich., a small town near the Upper Peninsula where Sigler grew up a fan of science fiction and horror movies.

The small-town life left plenty of time for young Sigler to use his imagination to support his love for science fiction. In fact, he wrote his first science-fiction monster story while in third grade.

While growing up, he said his main influence was his family, especially his parents. His father, Irv Sigler, grew up watching old monster movies, including The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, Frankenstein, and other classics, and saw to it that his love for things that go bump in the night was passed on to his son.

Meanwhile, his mother encouraged him to read, and later fed his addiction to science fiction novels. It wasn’t unusual for Sigler to stop by the bookstore, pick up five science fiction books, and have them read in a week.

“My mom, being a teacher, offered me whatever book I wanted. She would get it for me,” Sigler said. “I was able to pick things up faster and learn quicker.”

His love of writing continued into his teenage years. After graduating with a journalism degree from Olivet College in Olivet, Mich., Sigler moved to the southern end of the state to begin his journalism career in small towns that would later inspire his work.

His first science fiction/horror novel, Infection, was set in Adrian. His main character is a man named Perry Dawsey, a hometown football star for the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Unfortunately, alien spores land on Dawsey’s body and find the hulk of a man a prime location for growing. Everything quickly goes downhill from there and turns ugly, as one might expect from Sigler.

Sigler’s current podcast, The Rookie, is a blend of sports, sci-fi, and suspense that is 21 episodes into publication.

The next scheduled podcast, Nocturnal, shifts Sigler back toward the classic monster tales that listeners came to enjoy with EarthCore, Ancestor, and Infection.

Nocturnal is based in San Francisco and includes a race of creatures that eat humans.

“This contains a little evolution, species theory, keystone predator theory, while taking a look at what I consider some holes in the theory of evolution … with some crazy theories of my own,” Sigler said.

In this cyber world of faster, better, and more immediate, Sigler believes that it is his personal connection with his audience that helps him stand out.

“If you keep hearing the same person’s voice, you get used to that and pick up their personality, their inflection,” he said. “It becomes more than just an author making a story; it is someone you have some level of perceived connection with.”

It’s too early to determine whether his ideas will last, he said.

“I don’t think we will see the impact of what I am doing for another three to five years — not until I have books out in every store in the country,” he said. “Then we will see if this story is for real or not.”