"Several factors make bloggers' books attractive to agents and editors."

NYT Books: "Several factors make bloggers' books attractive to agents
and editors."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/15/books/15blog.html?amp;ei=5090&en=6a428f0391c35fb6&partner=rssuserland&ex=1260853200&pagewanted=print&position
[excerpt]

December 15, 2004
A New Forum (Blogging) Inspires the Old (Books)
By JOSHUA KURLANTZICK

Like many aspiring authors, Marrit Ingman had a tough time convincing
publishers that her big book idea - a wry, downbeat memoir of
postpartum depression - could sell.

"I had to convince the publisher that an audience for the topic
really did exist," said Ms. Ingman, a Texas-based freelance
journalist. "The big publishers kept telling us that mothers only
wanted prescriptive or 'positive' books about being a parent."

But Ms. Ingman had her own persuader: her Web log. She'd been writing
it for two years and had attracted a following of mothers.

"I turned to readers of my blog," she said. "I asked them to comment
on whether a book like mine would be relevant to them. Readers wrote
back expressing why they wanted to read about the experience of
maternal anger. I stuck their comments into my proposal as pulled
quotes."

Her readers were convincing. She and her agent, Jim Hornfischer, sold
her memoir, "Inconsolable," to Seal Press in August, she said. "The
blog showed publishers she was committed to the subject matter and
already had an audience," Mr. Hornfischer said.

Bloggers have their own Web sites, on which they write frequently
updated posts, almost like online diaries. The postings are about
current events, culture, technology or their own lives. Many of their
postings contain links to relevant sites.

During the last year many Web logs, or blogs, have focused on the war
in Iraq and the presidential campaign, and as these blogs gained a
wider audience some publishers started paying attention to them.
Sometimes publishers are interested in publishing elements of the
blogs in book form; mostly they simply enjoy the blogger's writing
and want to publish a novel or nonfiction book by the blogger,
usually on a topic unrelated to the blog.

One of the first to make the transition was Baghdad blogger known as
Salam Pax, who wrote an online war diary from Iraq. Last year Grove
Press published a collection of his work, "Salam Pax: The Clandestine
Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi."

In June a former Senate aide, Jessica Cutler, whose blog documenting
her sexual exploits with politicos dominated Capitol gossip in the
spring, sold a Washington-focused novel to Hyperion for an advance
well into six figures, said Kelly Notaras of Hyperion.

Meanwhile, a British call girl with the pseudonym Belle de Jour, who
had created a sensation with a blog about her experiences, has signed
a six-figure deal with Warner Books to publish a memoir, said Amy
Einhorn, executive editor at Warner Books who bought the book.

Ms. Einhorn said that after she heard about the blog, "I downloaded
the whole site, read it that night and then bought the book."