November 5, 2004
Novels delivered to your phone
Roger for All About Mobile Life posts on how reading novels on mobile phones is popular in Japan.
"Nowadays the sight of people passing time on the train by sending e-mail with their mobile phones is an everyday occurrence in Japan. This technology has now led to the emergence of a new and unexpected phenomenon: people reading entire novels on their mobile phones. The growing population of readers consists mainly of young people in their late teens and early twenties, the first generation to have grown up with e-mail. One novel that achieved popularity through this new medium went on to be published in print and became a million-copy bestseller. The fact that the novel is now being made into a movie illustrates just how far this phenomenon has come.
Here is an interview with cellphone author Yoshi.
Related articles on cell phone novels:
-- China cell phone novel launched on Friday - The first installment of "Out of the Fortress", a story of forbidden love writtenby Chinese author Qian Fuchang, showed up on tens of thousands of mobile telephone screens on Friday, September 12, 2004, according to The New York Times via China Digital News.
-- Rushkoff to write SMS novel - "Unlike the ones I've seen so far, however, I want it to be native to the wireless space. If it's text and text/image messages that will serve as the medium of transmission, then they should be messages from the organic world of the book. An epistolary, if you will, in SMS. (also Copyright for cell phone novel has been sold and Beijing's first SMS novel to be made into film)
-- First bilingual short story book written in SMS-shorthand - Phil Marso, author and Independent Editor of Megacomik publishing, has recently launched the first bilingual SMS title called «Frayeurs SMS» («SMS Frights»), a collection of 6 short stories which appear in French on the left hand side of the book and in English on the right hand pages.
-- Coming to a cellphone near you: A novel - «Outside The Fortress Besieged», the story of an extramarital affair, written by Chinese author Qian Fuchang, is a novel meant to be read in 70-word chapters transmitted by text message.
-- Mobile fiction micropublishing - Japanes author Joshi, who has been sending installments of his best selling novel, «Deep Love», by text messaging has been very successful. News of the novel spread by word of mouth, and within three years the site had received a total of 20 million hits".
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