Readwave is a well-presented site for writers-looking-for-readers and readers looking for something bite-sized to read. Anyone can post a piece of flash (800 words – longer pieces have to be broken up) and your stats are clocked up next to each entry. While I’m not sure that a ‘read’ always means what it says, you do at least know someone looked and that your treasured bit of prose isn’t all on its lonesome any more. Upload is a simple copy/paste process with boxes for title and short description, and a place to put tags.

There is a limited range of images available as headers which are rather nice but for variety and relevance, you might want to source your own. Copyright-free of course, or keeping it in-house, something you chased up on Photoshop.

Scribd is an option for longer pieces which are uploaded as documents . If you want an attractive image to accompany the piece, you must incorporate this in your document and experiment with positioning so that it looks good on-screen. Again, there are stats which tell you not only about ‘reads’ but also whether or not your piece has been embedded in someone’s site. Documents can be downloaded so it’s probably important to copyright your document before posting. Scribd hosts a much wider range of documents – everything from how-to manuals through scientific reports to previews of whole books – and you can set up collections.

So – every little helps when it comes to outlets, doesn’t it? Here’s my Readwave page and this is my little Scribd niche. Pop over and say hello, I’ll have the kettle on.