Blogs-to-books have included Stuff White People Like by Christian Lander, Jessica Cutler's The Washingtonienne and Ana Marie Cox's Dog Days.

Out this week is It Sucked and Then I Cried, a memoir by Heather B. Armstrong, creator of dooce.com, a well-trafficked blog and website in which she writes about her depression and pregnancies.

Publisher Simon Spotlight Entertainment has high hopes for the book (75,000 first printing), which it believes stands alone.

"It's her voice and her very distinct point of view which makes a great book," publisher Jen Bergstrom says.

1. Instapundit
2. Don Surber
3. Science & Politics
4. Watcher of Weasesls
5. Michelle Malkin
6. National Journal's Blogometer
7. The Modulator
8. BloggersBlog.com
9. Boing Boing
10. Atrios
11. A Blog for All
12. Gothamist
13. mparent777
14. TFS Magnum
15. Alliance of Free Blogs
16. anglican.tk
17. Micropersuasion
18. Pajamas Media
19. BlogHer
20. The Jawa Report

Blogs are set to become mainstream media with more than 80 million people aged 16 to 44 writing one. The finding comes from Web 2.0: The Global Impact, a study by Universal McCann into the consumer adoption of web 2.0 and associated technology like social networks and podcasts.

The study, claimed to be the largest of its type, interviewed 16,000 frequent web users aged 16 to 44 in 15 markets. The study found 48 per cent of respondents had visited a blog; 26 per cent wrote one; and 20 per cent planned to start one. China is the world's biggest blogging market with 25 million people writing one; more than double the number in the US. This is well ahead of the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, which share five million.

Social networking continues to gain momentum with 69 per cent sharing photos online, while 74 per cent have reviewed a product or service. However, podcasts and RSS have failed to make an impact, with just 17.4 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively, having downloaded or subscribed to these services. Tom Smith, EMEA senior research executive at Universal McCann, said: "The changing internet is radically altering users' media habits the world over ... these are real challenges that brand owners and media companies must face up to now - not in 10 years' time."

Anderson: I think it's a fantastic aid, especially under circumstances like mine. It had three advantages for me, as I was writing a non-fiction, research-heavy book that was based on an article already published.

By feeding the conversation, it allowed me to keep the momentum of the article going during the 22-month dead time between the publication of the article and the book. I gave away some of my research results and ideas, but got back many times that in comments, other people's blog posts and emails.

Hundreds of people applied The Long Tail to their own industries and experience and revealed resonances I never would have thought of, from The Long Tail of beer to travel to warfare. I tossed out half-baked ideas and phrasing, and my smart readers helped me bake them. Those thousands of readers have great word-of-mouth influence, which I imagine will help market the book when it comes out.

"On a separate note, another passenger on this same flight was Jessica Simpson. Without going into too much detail, I will say this: if you are a fan of hers who complains that the media unfairly portrays her as more obnoxious than she really is, you need to come up with a new line of defense."

The business of being an author has changed considerably over the last ten years. No longer is it sufficient to write a brilliant manuscript and manage to get it published. Authors now need to be excellent promoters of their own work. And for the intrinsically shy, that can be problematic. But an Internet trend has the potential to revolutionize author marketing, even for those who despise public speaking: blogging.

"There really has been a need for a world-class search product to expose this dynamic content to a worldwide audience," said Jason Goldman, who came to Google in the Blogger deal and is now the company's product manager for blogging search.

Over the past two years, blogs have become an increasingly popular vehicle for sharing opinions and information, sometimes breaking news and more often prodding the mainstream media into reconsidering how it has handled some big stories. First word of Google's new searching tool was, in fact, disseminated by a blog.

A few people have been able to make a living largely off their blogs, or parlay them into book deals. Blogs also have been a source of embarrassment and angst, resulting in the firings of several workers, including a Google product manager, who angered their employers with revelations posted on their sites.

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"This sort of feels like 1995 when the Web was just starting to explode. Now it feels like the same thing is happening to blogging," said Bob Wyman, chief technical officer for PubSub, which offers a Web feed subscription service.

Morford, 38, has written his twice-weekly column since 2000 and recently began writing for the site's new Culture Blog.

"Mark's witty and irreverent column is one of the most popular and distinctive features of our Web site, and we're grateful that his fellow columnists have recognized his talents," said SFGate.com News Director Vlae Kershner.

The chief executive of News Corp. (NWS) cited a recent report commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation, a philanthropic foundation, showing 44 percent of 18-to-34-year-olds say they use Web sites at least once a day for news. News Corp. is the parent company of the Fox News Channel, which operates FOXNews.com.

Murdoch said newspapers must overhaul how they gather and deliver news to collect the readers and advertising revenue shifting to the Web. "The trends are against us. Unless we awaken to these changes which are quite different than those five or six years ago, we will, as an industry, be relegated to the status of also-rans." "We've been slow to react. We've sat by and watched," he said.