Time to brag about blogs and blooks

LONDON - To their champions, they are a form of virtual literature compiled with wit and vigour by the diarists of the 21st century. To their critics, they are electronic waffle, clogging up cyberspace with self-indulgent polemic.

But the status of the blog as a route to literary recognition seems assured after the results of an inaugural prize for "blooks", or books based on blogs, were announced.

About 60 million blogs have appeared on the internet, and the total is growing at about 75,000 a day as more and more users post their musings on subjects from onions to quantum physics.

The Blooker Prize, established to reward books born on the web, aims to highlight the potential of the blogging culture to create, if not poetic gems, then at least mainstream fiction and non-fiction.

The award was given to Julie Powell, a former secretary in New York, for her book, Julie and Julia, based on her blog which chronicled her campaign to cook all 524 recipes in a classic French cookbook in her small kitchen in a year.

Since publication, the blook has sold 100,000 copies and secured its author a publishing contract. It beat Belle de Jour, the best-selling chronicle of a London prostitute and the leading British contender on the shortlist of 14.

Powell, 32, who spent 30 minutes every morning writing her daily blog before going to work, said she was "delighted and humbled" to win the prize.

But she admitted that the idea that the blog culture was a potential gold mine for publishers had been overstated. "It has certainly provided me with an entree into mainstream publishing," Powell said. "But there is some gimmickiness in the idea that blogs are some untapped resource for literary greatness. It is certainly another tool for writers out there to break their way in. But being a blogger does not make you a great writer. There is a large tendency towards self-indulgent tirades."

With plans afoot to turn Julie and Julia into a film - thus making it the world's first "flook" - organisers of the prize claim it is evidence of the growing significance and commercial success of the blog medium.

Egg Bacon Chips & Beans, another British blook shortlisted for the prize, was published after the online version, a guide to 50 greasy spoon cafes, became a cult hit. The Belle de Jour blog was at one time receiving 15,000 hits a day.

Cyber changes

* Some blogs offer links to news sites or analysis on a range of subjects from typography and pop music to international politics and global warming.

* The 2004 United States election experienced the growing influence of political blogging.

* Blogs have also emerged as an important source of "citizen journalism", with contributions from troubled areas such as Iraq and Iran.

* After the tsunami of 2004, blogs emerged as an information exchange.

- INDEPENDENT