"Blooks" Are In Bloom
Many aspiring writers are starting out as bloggers, and publishers are taking note. But do good blogs make good books?
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Colby Buzzell, 28, didn't expect to end up writing a book. In 2004, he was on a yearlong tour of duty as a machine gunner in Iraq. The skateboarder and hard-rock fan from San Francisco would make a daily dash into the Army tent that housed an Internet café to share snippets of his life: listening to Metallica on his iPod, fellow soldiers surfing the Net for porn, the stress of the latest mission.
After eight weeks, Buzzell's online diary was discovered by his military superiors and the blogging endeavor came to an abrupt end. By then it was too late. Media outlets were quoting from the blog, and offers from publishers were trickling in.