A blogger has won Japan’s top literary award, the Akutagawa Prize. Her name is Mieko Kawakami and she started her blog to try to promote her music, but soon found herself writing about more personal matters. She wrote her first novel entirely online; her third book won the prize.

But here is the interesting part; the article referenced above notes that there are more blogs in Japanese than in any other language. Further:

Kawakami is unusual in the extent of her success. But Steve Weber, an American who has written about marketing books online, said Japanese writers are far ahead of Americans in making their work available on the Internet. Many have had successful books published after producing novels intended to be read on mobile phones, for example.

In the U.S., publishers are just starting to understand the market power that writers with hit blogs can wield, Weber said.

“Popular bloggers are definitely being targeted by smart publishers because the publishers realize that the authors have already done the hard work of book marketing,” he said in an e-mail from Falls Church, Va. “They’ve attracted the audience.”

I fell in love with the Internet as soon as I found it. It never occurred to me that it would take so long for it to catch on with traditional industries. I’m glad to see that there is more room for bloggers and that older media outlets are starting to understand the benefits of the online world. And I think it’s cool that there is a kind of example in Japan to follow.