Blogger turned book writer Julie Powell took the first-ever Blooker Prize, a riff off the esteemed Booker Prize, for Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. As the BBC report notes, “There are believed to be more than 60 million blogs in existence.” And know what? A bunch of them make great books.

That’s good news. I remember a few years ago, partner-in-SMITH Tim Barkow was asking around to various fancy agents about publishing a book about blogs—perhaps a compilation of the best blogs of some sort or another?, he humbly suggested. No one bit. And a few years later, we tip our opening-day baseball cap to the Blookers.

Other winners:

Overall and non-fiction: Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell
Fiction: Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest
Comic book: Totally Boned: A Joe and Monkey Collection by Zach Miller

BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow, whose inclusion among the Blooker judges is the least surprising thing I’ve heard all day, sums up the best of blogging like so: “Those who dismiss blogging as ‘mere’ confessional writing and complaining about one’s day job fail to appreciate just how engrossing those genres can be when handled by a talented writer like Julie Powell.”

“The story of how blogging, writing in public, changed Powell’s life is both memorable and inspirational.”