Just a year ago, screenwriter and aspiring novelist Mark Sarvas had a lot of explaining to do. When he talked up his fledgling book blog at a publishing conference, marketers had just one question for him: Huh?

But this year, Mr. Sarvas returned to the same conference and found that publicists weren't mystified by blogs anymore. Instead, they wanted to know what they could do for him. "We are not the strange, unfamiliar beast we may have been before," says Sarvas, creator of a blog called The Elegant Variation.

Although no one's exactly sure how influential they are, bloggers like Sarvas have become the new darlings of the publishing industry. They're getting free review copies, landing interviews with prestigious authors, and trying to boost obscure writers - especially writers in the literary fiction world where John Irving is a bigger name than John Grisham.

Still, plenty of sophisticated readers don't know a blog from a podcast. "For people who aren't Internet-savvy, [a blog] sounds like something they'll never understand," sighs Robert Gray, a Vermont bookseller and the creator of a blog called Fresh Eyes.

Blogs (short for "web logs") are online journals that can be updated as often as the blogger likes. What you'll find on a book blog runs the gamut from novel reviews and personal essays to musings and links to news stories. Website visitors typically get to add their own comments, too, creating an ongoing conversation.

If this sounds dry to you, the fact is that book blogs can be vibrant and sharply opinionated, full of odes to favorite authors and jibes at everything from "cheesy" bestsellers to the shrinking book review sections of major newspapers.

Book blogs aren't without their quirks, however. Like readers and reviewers, they can be snobbish or parochial. And they're hardly egalitarian: Most are run by one person with dictatorial powers over what gets reviewed and by whom.

Add to this mix the Internet's inescapable cranks, who might respond to an innocent post about the blueness of the sky with a rant about the stupidity of anybody who doesn't know it's azure.

In the world of book blogs, the anonymity of such "postings" allows for vitriol that can "be somewhat hurtful to an author," says Reagan Arthur, a senior editor at Little, Brown.

"There are a few crazies," admits Jessa Crispin, the Chicago-based creator of a high-profile blog with a risqué name ("book" plus a vulgar term for a woman of loose morals). "I have gotten the odd marriage proposal - four or five," she adds.

On the whole, though, Ms. Crispin said her blog's patrons are a likeable, if geeky, bunch of bookworms. Like her, they're attracted by serious conversations about books. She started the site on a whim while holding down a boring job and spending late nights debating literature with her sister and a friend.

Page: 1 | 2