If Web sites were film actors, Wendy Northcutt's Darwin Awards would be up for an Oscar.

Several hundred thousand viewers click through Northcutt's site each month to read the darkly humorous stories posted there, stories about fellow human beings removing themselves from the gene pool through inventively idiotic means; like the fisherman who dropped live electric cables into the water, zapping a number of fish, then waded in to retrieve them while the power was still on.

Web popularity brought Northcutt a little attention, but only enough hard cash to pay the server bills. Then, Northcutt gleaned together the best stories from her site and wrote the 'Darwin Awards,' the book, published by Dutton.

The Web site let viewers giggle over others' sublimely ridiculous misfortunes, but the book inspired them to open their wallets.

Macabre humor, apparently, sells like hotcakes on a winter morning. There are something like 250,000 copies of the 'Darwin Awards' in the United States, where it boasted 24 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list.

'To see my hobby turn into this sort of cult icon is so cool,' said Northcutt, Berkeley-trained molecular biologist.

Northcutt is an unusually successful Web author, but her literary impulse not unique. She is part of a growing club: Web creators turning to print for fun, profit and wider exposure.

Call it a sort of Digital Age evolution. While lumbering Internet business dinosaurs like Amazon take losses and even die out during the New Economy's sifting process, a number of content-based sites scurry about, picking up Web traffic and building buzz. As they succeed, many of these creators and freelancers seek to leap into another medium altogether, writing books.

'The Smoking Gun,' a book based on the popular Web site, is due in bookstores in September. Other Webbies turned inkslingers include hot-shots like Suck, McSweeney's, Salon (their three books, including 'Salon.com's Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors') and lesser lights like Working For The Man.

Working For the Man is devoted to what creator Jeffrey Yamaguchi calls the 'horrors and absurdities' of working life, from apathetic bosses to drug-dealing coworkers. Full of anecdotes from behind the cubicle wall, Dilbert-style, Yamaguchi's site was actually the second incarnation of Working For the Man. First came the photocopied 'zine.

The ultimate goal, though, was a book, Yamaguchi said. 'The book was something I always had in my mind.'

BOOKS: RETRO BUT ETERNALLY HIP

What kindles the steam behind this literary impulse? Perhaps it was there to begin with: Yamaguchi, for one, says he always wanted to write the book but diverted into cyberspace because it was more affordable. And that makes sense, because Web sites are essentially bill boards, but customers pay for books.

For Danny Green, co-editor of The Smoking Gun (which also started as a hobby site before turning pro earlier this year when purchased by Court Television), writing the book is a way to gain exposure for the Web site, which publishes quirky and amusing court documents.

Salon editors also believe that generating awareness for their site 'requires that we reach people beyond solely the Internet,' according to Patrick Hurley, VP of Business Operations.

Books have permanence, too, perhaps because they are not caught up in the technological frenzy of the age, which lends them a kind of timelessness. Like Latin in the Middle Ages, the medium radiates a sense of continuity and weight.

The New Economy's successful leaders understand this permanence, too. Consider the penultimate computer lord, Bill Gates. After his Microsoft conquered the known world, Gates had a few ideas about business, technology and society. He had at his disposal any medium or technology for a soap box; he chose paper and ink, producing the book 'The Road Ahead.'

Joey Anuff is editor of the long-running journal Suck. The Suck book, which came out in 1997, was the result of opportunity as much as design, he said. Suck.com was in the Wired house, which included Wired Books.

'Personally, the reason I put in whatever [time and effort] I did; it was a total distraction,' Anuff said. '[It] was not that I prefer to be in print than on the Web. But, hey, in 50 years I'm still going to have copies of that Suck book to give my grandchildren. Our [Web] archives might be long gone.'

And it's not just books, according to Anuff. 'I've noticed this from the very beginning, since '94. Everybody working on a Web site loves to get the promotional crap [out there]. ... It's kind of neat when your product is entirely digital to manage even to squeeze out something as simple as a T-shirt.'

After a book has made its run it can be lent an immortality on the Web, posted on a site. 'It never has to go away,' Yamaguchi said, whose 1,000 copies of 'Working For the Man' have mostly been sold. The self-published work retailed for $8.95 and brought in about $7,000. It's pretty modest, but it's a slim volume with no marketing to speak of and little popular exposure.

The Internet's connectivity offers value even to best-selling authors, too, said Northcutt of her 'Darwin Awards.' While books possess a charm and convenience that computers never can, the Web allows authors to build a virtual community unattainable through print.

'I've found that people totally discount the value of the Web,' Northcutt said. 'They're like 'Oh my God, you're a published author? That's so cool! And yet, every month more people come to my Web site than ever bought the book.'

For writers and freelancers, the Internet's value can be more than the ephemeral sense of community that enthralls Northcutt (she confesses to a mild 'addiction' to chat rooms). The Darwin Awards site, which enjoys about 350,000 viewers each month, almost certainly have driven the sales of the book.

An aspiring author, in other words, has a very real financial incentive to create a red-hot Web site. It may just be that Web buzz equals print sales.

CAN IT WORK FOR OTHER ONLINE WRITERS?

Anuff cautions would-be content site creators from dreaming of dollar signs based solely on a future book sale. Although a printed work can help generate revenue, content-based sites, whether they're literary Internet journals, or news sites or whatever, cannot usually support themselves solely through book deals, he said. 'No way.'

'You'll be able to find stories of somebody who did it, but it's unlikely that it's going to work out for most people who try,' Anuff said. 'Right now at Automatic Media [which owns Suck, as well as Feed and Plastic], we are working on book deals. ... That's a fact, but I would be shitting my pants if that were the cornerstone of some kind of revenue model.'

Then there are the best-sellers launched from the Internet. Northcutt's is one example; another, more intentional one was Seth Godin's 'Unleashing the Ideavirus.' Godin, former vice president of direct marketing for Yahoo, used his background and previous book: 'Permission Marketing' to leverage interest in 'Ideavirus.' He wrote an essay for Fast Company, then gave away the book's content via his Web site.

Then, when interest was high, he sold a self-published hard-cover print version for $40. The result was half a million readers and an Amazon.com best-seller, based on the twin pillars of Godin's marketing expertise and the Web buzz.

But Godin, like novelist Stephen King, has established a name and presence. It may be that whatever experiment he performs will succeed in some form. The fact that Northcutt wildly succeeded, however, bodes well for Web-based freelancers and authors. The one thing she and Godin agree on is that Web publicity helps sell the written word.

'There was some fear that if you put some stuff on the Internet first, then who wants to buy the book? I've totally proved that wrong,' Northcutt said. 'It turns out, the book sells great. ... So you don't have to fear cutting into your audience by putting it on the Web. In fact, you're going to build an audience, and that can only be good.'

And while Anuff remains skeptical that book deals can support a Web organization with staff, he called the idea of using a print spin-off to help pay the bills 'completely valid.' Liberating content from a digital platform, he said, can be fantastic, as long as the creator realizes 'it really is only one part of a balanced diet.'

Yet without Northcutt's online efforts, who would have sprung for a little yellow book full of gallows humor called the 'Darwin Awards'?

Having won wide popularity with her Web site and best-seller status with her book, Northcutt remains busy, writing a sequel.