User blog comment:Jkl9817/OK, OK.../@comment-2186558-20110715164528/@comment-1874924-20110716054129

Perhaps we need to make a distinction between advertising and publicizing. The wiki rule against advertising refers to things like leaving "please read my story" comments on people's talk pages or as comments on other people's blogs. Even then, enforcement seems to be mainly on a complaint basis, so you're unlikely to get into trouble for bringing new stories to the attention of people whom you know well by online standards.

There are several accepted and widely practiced ways to publicize a story. These include making a blog post such as this one; asking an admin to add a plug for it to the Recently Started/Finished Stories listings on the Activity Feed; including a description and a link on your User page; and nominating it for Featured Story--even if it has no chance to win--if you actually think it's FS-worthy. (If you put up a bad story for FS, expect a flock of Oppose votes.)

Note also that having no commenters doesn't mean that a story has no readers.