Every time I’ve happened across a conversation about Amazon Connects, I’ve pointed out that according to its Terms and Conditions, authors who use its “plog” feature (essentially an Amazon-hosted blog) don’t own the rights to their posts.

My comments have seldom elicited a response of any kind. Decided absence of outrage. I’ve concluded that, for the most part, writers figure it’s not a big deal.

And certainly, the majority of blog posts are best consigned to oblivion within 24 hours of hitting “publish.” Or even sooner. They are too topical, sloppy, or just plain forgettable to be worth re-using later.

And yet. And yet. One never knows. So now there’s Blurb, a software product written up in the New York Times (registration required).

The software, which is expected to be available free later this month at www.blurb.com, features a “Slurper” tool that automatically downloads and reformats the contents of a Web log into a book that bloggers and their admirers can purchase online.

The odds that the average blogger will sell more than one copy (to his/her mother) are gratifyingly slim, of course. But for some writers, I suspect that blogs will emerge as the equivalent to collections of letters — ancillary bodies of work that will be of interest to a subset of readers. And other writers, particularly non-fiction writers who blog on topics related to their books, may end up drawing on blog posts for future book material.

And of course, there is blogfic.

So yeah, owning the rights to your blog posts is important. In my opinion. Important enough that if you do “plog,” you should confine your plog posts to news — not use them to do any real writing.