Both women are pioneers of the latest wave of so-called hip-hop lit, which also goes by several other names, including street and urban fiction. Regardless of the label, the books explore the same themes as hip-hop music - sex, drugs, crime, doing time - and use similar language. They take place in the ghetto, and most of their characters are black. Many include a moral lesson.

Rapper Sister Souljah is credited with having unleashed the trend with her 2000 novel The Coldest Winter Ever (Pocket Books). Decades earlier, Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim wrote tales of thugs, pimps and drug dealers. In a sign of the genre's newfound popularity, a movie based on Goines' 1974 novel Never Die Alone, about a drug kingpin's turf war, was released in US theatres in July.

Lately, ghetto storytelling has been garnering such strong sales that the mainstream publishers that once snubbed Woods and Stringer are signing distribution deals with independent hip-hop imprints and bringing out their own titles. In the same way that hip-hop music first took root in America's inner cities, then moved to its suburbs and to cities all over the world, publishers are banking on hip-hop lit to catch on with audiences beyond its core African-American readership.

The most high-profile example to date is Bling by Erica Kennedy, a former writer for the urban-music magazine Vibe who reportedly received a seven-figure advance for the novel, as well as movie rights. Miramax Books released it in June, with a first printing of 100,000 copies. If Bling is a test case to see if the genre can hook non-black readers, it's also an upscale version. The novel is set in the hip-hop music world, not in the inner city.

Bling shows the range of the readership for hip-hop books, according to Malaika Adero, a senior editor at Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, who has worked on several titles. 'Some of the readers who want to read a story about alienated young women ending up in the seedy world of stripping are the same readers who want to read about a young hip-hop star wearing her diamonds and bling bling, and realising all that glitters isn't gold,' Adero says.

Although those readers are still mainly black, their numbers are growing - and publishers are scrambling to meet the demand. Last year, Atria signed Stringer and her Triple Crown co-founder, Shannon Holmes, to two-book, six-figure deals. Stringer is considering an offer from Atria to distribute Triple Crown, which is named after her former drug gang.

As well, Stringer has turned agent, snagging major book contracts for two of her authors, including a three-book, six-figure deal for K'wan Foye with St Martin's Press. Stringer's second novel, Imagine This, released by Atria last month, has hit No189 in online bookseller Amazon.com's sales rankings and is already on the best-seller list of Karibu, a chain of five African-American bookstores in Maryland and Virginia.

Holmes' second novel, Bad Girlz, about female strippers, has sold 85,000 copies since Atria released it last October. Stringer says her books have even been selling well among a traditionally reluctant segment of the market, African-American males, and are being read in some after-school programmes.

'They had already sold a phenomenal and impressive number of their first novels, and they were exciting, good reads,' Adero says of Atria's decision to sign both authors. 'Shannon sold around 150,000 copies of his first novel, B-More Careful, and Vickie sold tens of thousands of Let That Be the Reason. '

It's a far cry from the days when Stringer was peddling books on the street, but her hustling background served her well. 'Anywhere I saw a person who I thought had 10 bucks in their pocket, I went up to them,' Stringer says. 'I used to approach people to sell drugs. After you've done that, there's nothing shy about you.' Word-of-mouth grew, and street vendors and bookstores in cities all over the country started calling Stringer to ask for copies. Aspiring authors began sending her manuscripts, and Triple Crown was born.

'We have an arsenal of books that we've written,' just waiting to be published, Stringer says of herself and Holmes. As for the books' potential to resonate with a wider audience, Stringer says in the past six months she has noticed more people of other races at book-signing events. 'It's about 80 per cent black, 20 per cent other races now,' she says. In another sign of broadening interest, she says she's in the process of optioning several Triple Crown titles for publication in Japan.

Adero says the books have widespread appeal. 'The protagonist [in Imagine This] was involved with a man who offered her a lifestyle that was very comfortable, and when the relationship fell apart, he removed all of that and left her in a desperate situation of having to fend for herself. Now, we all wouldn't make the decision to start an escort service and sell drugs, but we make other decisions. Women like me, my friends, professional women, can ask, 'What happens when our comfort level is dependant on our partners?' '

For Woods, the catalyst prompting her to hit the road to hawk her book was the loss of a paralegal job in Philadelphia. 'They fired me for photocopying my first novel,' she says.

From her perch on West 125th Street - just a few blocks from former President Bill Clinton's office - Woods eventually attracted the attention of mainstream distributors, which went on to sell some 500,000 copies to bookstores and other outlets across the country. In 2002, she founded Teri Woods Publishing, releasing books by two authors in prison. She says she has fielded several offers from major publishers to distribute her imprint, but so far has opted to stay independent. Her third novel, Dutch II: Angel's Revenge, should be out in November, she says. 'We always start with a print run of 50,000 copies' - because strong sales are now a safe assumption.

Other black authors are getting into the urban-lit game - even established ones such as Omar Tyree, whose middle-class coming-of-age story Flyy Girl (Simon & Schuster, 1997) has sold more than 500,000 copies, according to Tyree's editor, Geoff Kloske. After writing 12 novels designed to appeal to the same female readers drawn to E. Lynn Harris' and Eric Jerome Dickey's hugely successful relationship stories, Tyree is giving rougher urban content a shot, writing under the pseudonym The Urban Griot. Cold Blooded: A Hardcore Novel, released by Simon & Schuster last month, 'is about a college girl who falls for a womanising hit man,' Tyree says. 'You have hard-core language and violence. You also have moralistic content.'

Kloske and Tyree hope the book will attract a new male readership. 'The reality is I've run out of female stories,' Tyree says. 'If I can't write about the male things that are on my mind, my career is over.'

'We know we have the black female reader,' Kloske says. 'She shows up at Omar's readings. When you go to the readings, you find out there are some guys who have read some of Omar's books, but are a little embarrassed to admit it. They won't be embarrassed to admit reading an Urban Griot book.'

But beyond drawing black men into the circle, can the genre extend its reach around the world? 'This market is just emerging,' Kloske says. 'We need that one book that really puts it on the map.'