The online publishing site went live today without a lot of hoopla but already 40 submissions have come in, said Greg Voynow, senior vice president and general manager of the division.

For authors who can't get an editor or agent in New York's clubby world of offline publishing, this is a chance to expand those possibilities.

"By placing priority on merit rather than connections, we will be able to give the best writers the attention they deserve," said Voynow.

The subsidiary of AOL Time Warner's trade publishing division has a team of 27 (made up of editors and marketing folks) who will be looking for new works from unknown authors.

One journey from unknown to published author could start on the site's iWrite.com section, a community area where writers put their work in front of other writers for peer review. The rule is that writers have to review at least three excerpts from other authors' works.

If the excerpt receives high ratings, it would then land in front of an iPublish.com editor. From there, the editor starts the work of deciding whether the manuscript would make it as a print-on-demand eBook. If the print-on-demand works show promise, then the lucky author could enjoy a national print run as well as the marketing might of the AOL Time Warner media empire.

Voynow said the iPublish.com division is putting all its resources behind its titles: marketing, promotion and distribution with other eBook retailers.

iPublish.com is looking for fiction and non-fiction of any length in genres such as romance, mystery, science fiction, and business, said Claire Zion, editorial director of the group.

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Royalty fees would start at 25 percent for each eBook sold online and would increase if the sales reach certain thresholds, the company said.

Part of the strategy on the self-publishing launch is to test market the channel as well, said Voynow.

"We're looking at digital content as a way to grow authors overall and (eventually) publishing them in as many formats as we can as a way to amortize the investment and build the (iPublish.com) brand," he said.

"There's a limit to what a sales force can handle when selling and marketing a print book, said Voynow. An "eBook version of a book could be a parallel process" of marketing a new work.

The iPublish.com full launch follows a digital publishing marketing juggernaut the company launched last September when it started a monthly release of new eBooks. So far, 250 works have been offered through the site, including works by best-selling authors such as Walter Mosley, James Patterson, David Baldacci, Sandra Brown and Anita Shreve.

Voynow said the difference between this launch and other e-publishing plays is the "other plays are looking at their online publishing ventures as purely a distribution channel. We're looking at it as an end-to-end publishing venue and a way to discover new talent and help shape it."

The division consists of three channels: iRead, where published works are showcased and then distributed to other online outlets; the iWrite channel, the publishing engine where reader-members can submit new works, and the iLearn channel, a forum for Time Warner's best-selling authors and in-house experts to share their knowledge with the site's users.