The past ten to fifteen years have seen a transformation in the publishing industry. Book publishers have become less likely to gamble on books by unknown authors or on topics they just aren't sure readers will purchase. Instead, they have looked for popular and well-established blogs to turn into books. Publishers see a blogger's dedicated fan base as a ready-made audience for a book by that writer.

Recently some industry professionals have suggested that blog-to-book success stories may soon become a thing of the past. I've heard talk that perhaps publishers will look for other ways—traditional ways—to connect with authors and develop new concepts for books. However, I can think numerous blog-to-book deals made since the so-called height of the trend, authors whose recent successes prove the blog-to-book trend is far from over.

One recent blog-to-book success story is The 52 Seductions. The blog chronicled the project Betty Herbert undertook with her husband to seduce each other once a week for a year. The blog's success was meteoric, growing to thousands of readers within months. Betty was even approached by a screenwriter who wanted to option her blog into a potential screenplay. Headline Publishing heard the buzz about The 52 Seductions and signed Betty to a book deal, releasing her book in January 2012. The book is also being published in Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Serbian, Portuguese, Polish, and Hebrew.

Other recent blog-to-book success stories include:

· Confessions of a Scary Mommy, based on Jill Smokler's blog Scary Mommy,

· 101 Uses for My Ex-Wife's Wedding Dress, based on Kevin Cotter's blog My Ex-Wife's Wedding Dress, and

· You Are Not So Smart, based on David McRaney's blog by the same name.

Some bloggers, like Joe Butcher, can even get a blog-to-book deal without writing a single paragraph of real copy. You won't find one full blog post at his blog, called Text From Dog. Under his nom de plume, October Jones, he created a Tumblr account filled with zany images featuring fictional text messages from his pet bulldog Cooper. Text From Dog became an instant hit in the blogopshere, quickly gaining 100,000 Tumblr fans and 40,000 followers on Twitter. Months later, Headline Publishing won the rights to Text from Dog's first original book, which will be in stores this October.

Obviously, Text From Dog isn't trying to win the Man Booker Prize. It's a gift book or a coffee table book or a party favor. Joe Butcher's loyal fans will like the souvenir of a printed book, and there's no question people will buy it as a Christmas gift for the dog lovers they know.

Publishers see any successful blog as a successfully test-marketed book idea--as close to a sure bet as they can find. That's what this blog-to-book deal is--and what all blog-to-book deals are. Blog-to-book projects are the most secure venture capital deal publishers can embark upon. That's why I think the blog-to-book 'trend' isn't going away and may soon become a normal occurrence in the publishing industry.

Many popular blogs have gained mass followings and have garnered publishing deals for their authors. However, those bloggers may not have planned to write a book when they started writing their blogs. Once they got book deals, these bloggers had to go through their blog archives and repurpose their posts to make them fit within a printed book's format or the content plan for their manuscript.

For an easier and more convenient way to go from blog to book, try blogging your book from scratch. You can learn how to do this in my book, http://www.writersdigestshop.com/how-to-blog-a-book">How to Blog a Book: Write, Publish and Promote Your Work One Post at a Time (Writer's Digest Books). It explains how to write your book post by post on a blog and attract both readers and publishers. For more advice about writing and publishing, visit my Web site at NinaAmir.com.