Networking: Picking the next Dickens

Charles Dickens serialized his novels -- "Oliver Twist, David Copperfield," amongst others -- in weekly newspapers and monthly magazines before they were published as books. Today, would-be novelists are publishing their fictional creations online on literary blogs dubbed "blooks" by the publishing industry, experts tell UPI's Networking. A new Dickens has yet to emerge, but, like so many things on the Internet these days, there is already an award for the best blooks, the so-called Blooker Prize, a pun on the name of the Booker Prize, the award for outstanding literary contributions in the United Kingdom, somewhat akin to the U.S. Pulitzer Prize.