RALEIGH, N.C., July 27 /PRNewswire/ -- The Lulu Blooker Prize, the world's first literary prize for books based on blogs or websites ("blooks"), has announced an international line-up of judges for its 2007 prize, plus a five- fold increase in its top prize.

The five judges -- up from three last year -- include the world's most famous "blauthor" (blook author), an Internet pioneer, a top British newspaper columnist, an Indian "sidewalk philosopher" and a well-known pundit -- political author, media personality and blogger Arianna Huffington. See http://www.lulublookerprize.com/.

* Paul Jones, chair of the judges and a noted speaker, heads up the digital library iBiblio.org at the University of North Carolina. (http://www.ibiblio.org/pjones/wordpress/) * Arianna Huffington, the Washington and LA-based syndicated columnist, author, radio host, blogger, edits http://www.thehuffingtonpost.com/, one of the world's top 10 blogs. * Julie Powell, a Texan-born New Yorker, became the world's most famous "blauthor" (blook author) earlier this year when her blook "Julie and Julie" received global attention on winning the 2006 Blooker Prize. (http://juliepowell.blogspot.com/) * Rohit Gupta, a Bombay-based "sidewalk philosopher," is also a blogger, journalist and author. (http://algomantra.blogspot.com/) * Nick Cohen, the London-based author and blogger, also writes for The Observer and The New Statesman. (http://www.nickcohen.com/)

Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/), the self-publishing web site that sponsors the prize, is also upping the total prize money from $4,000 last year to $15,000, placing the Blooker on a par with some major literary prizes.

Paul Jones, chair of the judges, says of the upstart literary genre: "Blooks reflect the joint passions of both the writer and the readers, sometimes to the point of obsession and beyond. They take us back to a golden age of writing and publishing in serial form, when the readers interacted with the writer as a cheering section, as a rowdy group of editors and critics, as fact-checkers, as support systems and as conversationalists -- even, in a way, as therapists to the author."

Books that began as blogs have emerged as publishers mine the Internet for the best examples of blogs, a self-publishing genre that recent studies cite as the largest new media form. The growing attention paid to blooks also reflects growing mainstream recognition of what is being called "trickle-up writing" or "bliterature" -- writing that starts online. Technorati.com, the web's leading search engine for blogs, now tracks 50 million blogs, although some estimates put the total number even higher.

The 2006 Blooker prize was won by Julia Powell's "Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen," a blook that began life as an online chronicle of her bid to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's classic, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." The resulting blook, published in 2005 by Little, Brown, has sold over 100,000 copies and is currently being developed into a film, or "flook", by Nora Ephron, the "queen of romcom" ("When Harry Met Sally," "You've Got Mail," "Sleepless in Seattle").

"Baghdad Burning," based on the blog of an anonymous Iraqi woman, was nominated earlier this year for the prestigious Samuel Johnson literary prize.

The Lulu Blooker Prize is open to any blook published anywhere by anyone, provided it was published in English and falls into one of three categories: fiction, nonfiction, or web-comics. (http://www.lulublookerprize.com/)

Lulu.com (http://www.lulu.com/), a web site that lets anyone publish a book (or blook) at no up-front cost, launched the Blooker in October 2005 to mark the 450th anniversary of Gutenberg's invention of moveable type in 1455.

CONTACT: Stephen Fraser of Lulu.com, +1-919-447-3235, or pr@lulu.com

Web site: http://www.lulublookerprize.com/
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