[Leica] giving it away, or advertising it?

[reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (Brian Reid)]

I've never sold photographs to people who didn't contract with me to take 
them in the first place, so I can't answer this question from my experience.

A person whose portfolio I really admire is hesitant to put his work in the 
LUG gallery because he's worried that people might steal the images from 
there instead of buying a book someday. No, he doesn't yet have a book or a 
publisher, but I think he should get these gorgeous images out there.

What's your experience? Those of you who have published books of photographs 
or sold photographs based on people browsing the images online: does a 
gallery of smallish JPEG images have any effect, plus or minus, on book 
sales?

A separate question: how hard is it to find a publisher for a great 
collection of photographs, and how does one start looking? For myself, I'm 
going to use blurb.com, because my images aren't good enough to put in 
bookstores. But what are the other choices?