An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but it took an organic apple for Dr. Wizard to score a book deal.

Saint Louis University doctoral student Joe Webb is Dr. Wizard, an online college advice guru who has gained popularity in recent weeks.

“On the first day of the semester, I walked into class and gave an impromptu lecture on organic apples,” said Webb, who maintains a blog titled “Dr. Wizard’s Advice for College Students.”

Webb started the blog that very day, and the site now receives 500 to 1,500 hits a day.

Webb won a book deal at the St. Louis Big Read Festival in October. The book will collect Webb’s blog posts into one printed volume.

The blog’s name “took all of eight seconds to think of,” Webb said. It is a combination of “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” and a slang word used by Michael Sera’s character in the movie Juno.

“He’s a featured blogger,” said Les Kollegian, creative director of College Magazine. “He’s topical, and we love his writing style.”

College Magazine, an online and print publication, features Dr. Wizard’s blog on its website.

“The [blog posts] are little things I wish I knew in college,” said Webb. “I made so many mistakes and took so long to get though undergraduate.”

Some of these little things include why to talk in class, ways to build a relationship with your professor and how to write an A paper without killing yourself.

Webb updates the blog three times a week with a new post, devoting about six hours of work to each blog post, he says. Webb researches statistics and thinks about stories from his life that are relevant. Each post incorporates pop culture and follows the language of “‘Entourage’ and the White Stripes.”

Senior Carl Lane said that his favorite post is “Cocaine = Not the Best Idea” because it juxtaposes the “classical idea of Faustus with everyday dorm life”.

“[His blog] is the most refreshing thing to read,” said Lane.

“He is a member of our generation and understands things in our terms.”

Lane was in Webb’s Introduction to Literature class last semester, and the class was the “only English class he enjoyed.”

“I’ve gone to his class about five times,” junior Elise Monaco said. “He has lots of general knowledge, which relates to general students.”

Both Lane and Monaco follow the blog regularly.

“It’s a perspective from someone who isn’t a [typical] student,” said Kollegian.

Other blogs on the College Magazine website are written by undergraduate students.

Even with the book deal, Webb said that he intends to continue Dr. Wizard and hopes to eventually turn the website into an “epicenter for different projects” such as a rock musical and a television series.

“My favorite part is that I know people are reading it and that people are excited about it,” Webb said.