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Marlinark,
Smashwords does have a marketing guide for authors. The bottom line however is similar whether you are selling books or fishing lures. Putting yourself 'on the net' may make you available to the world, but it doesn't do any good if no one visits your web site.
Even, if you put your book on smashwords, the traffic can be somewhat limited. For example, Smashwords claims to have 127 million words published. Using this metric, less than 0.3% of them are advertised on the front page.
Your best hope is that people will love your book and spread the news on their own through word of mouth. However, even for this to work you must get enough initial traffic for word of mouth to spread.
If this is your first book, you might start by seeking advice before you go completely public. Look for sites, including here on Mobileread that try to support new authors and ask for advice and criticism. Then you need to promote your book any way that you can. If its non-fiction, find forums where they talk about your subject and ask them for advice on your book. Go to Vista print where they let you print free business cards. Print up your web site address and a brief description of your book and hand them out to coworkers, colleagues, and friends.
Contact your local newspaper and offer to be a resource if they ever do a story on self-publishing on the internet.
Put up your own web site and consider how it ranks for important search terms on google related to your book. Offer reviews on similar books on your web site as a way to provide value to the public. This will also help improve your search engine rankings. For example, lets say that your book is similar in its genre/audience/plot to Harry Potter. You might create a web page that talks about Other Books you might be interested in if you are a Harry Potter fan. On this page you can talk about good and bad books in the genre, and then put in a plug for your own book. The trick here is to give value to the audience. Don't just make it an advertisement of your book, but make it a thoughtful discussion of other alternatives. You need to do this because you want people to find and link to your page (it'll need to rank well in search engines) so it needs to offer value, not just an advertisement.
It's all about marketing.
Good luck,
MLH
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