For all those on the same path as me toward (eventual) publication, the book editors at Harper Collins recently went live with a new site called Authonomy. It' a mixture of social-networking and user voting on new and unpublished works to bring them to the attention of Harper Collins.
It's free to signup and looks very interesting for all us 'unpubs'. I've read over the licensing agreement and it looks like you retain all copyright to your work, so it's more than likely safe to publish, submit and upload your work to other sources.
Here's my blog post about it:
http://typewriterhead.blogspot.com/2...direction.html
Direct link to the site:
http://www.authonomy.com/