A long time ago, a young man was asked to read at a club from his journals about his day-to-day life. They were hilarious and started drawing crowds. They eventually caught the eye and ear of Ira Glass, producer of NPR's This American Life, who asked the young man to be a guest on his show. This eventually led to a book deal for the young man. His name is David Sedaris.

(Note: This is a much-abbreviated, detail-deprived version of the story, but fairly accurate based on interviews and reports.)

Talk about living the dream life of a writer. You just jot down your thoughts in a journal and all of a sudden people are shelling out $25 for your book (not to over-simplify the work Sedaris puts into his writing or anything)? What young writer doesn't want that to happen for themselves?

Cut to 2002, when a young woman decides to share her own personal journal, only this time it's a virtual one. And she decides that her day-to-day life is going to have something happen, something big. Julie Powell starts the Julie/Julie Project as a 29-year-old "government drone" - secretary by day, amateur chef by night. She blogs about her attempts to create all 524 recipes in Julia Child's classic tome, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in one year. It immediately becomes an internet hit, attracting a large audience and media exposure (CBS, Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, etc.), and culminates in an "obscene" (her description) amount of money to turn it into a book.

Quite the life, right? As many bloggers would love the same fate (which, ironically, supports the literary industry's feelings that blogging isn't worthwhile writing in and of itself, something bloggers have been fighting since day one), very few have made it happen (Dog Days - by the original Wonkette, Ana Marie Cox - is another example).

So what does a blogger do when they get a book deal? Do they just transcribe their blog entries on to pages, thereby charging people for work they can just get for free online? Do they write about their blog, without copying any of the blog's text? Do they do what Cox did, which is write about the same subject as their blog (politics, in her case), to appeal to the same readers, but create a whole new piece of work to compel people to pay for it?