New in Japan: Cell Phone Picture Books

Following the huge popularity in Japan of cell phone novels published on mobile phones, a printing company is launching its first cell phone picture book.

According to Tokyomango, "the picture book will be read page by page, like a kamishibai—no scrolling, just clicking from page to page. It will include both popular children's titles and original content.

The company hopes to have 50 titles and 10,000 downloads by September."

Mobile phone novels ring up big sales, but critics fear for Japanese literature

Last month in Japan, the year-end bestseller tally showed that mobile phone novels, republished in book form, have not only infiltrated the mainstream but have come to dominate it. The New York Times reports.

"Of last year's 10 best-selling novels, five were originally mobile phone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels. What is more, the top three spots were occupied by first-time mobile phone novelists, touching off debates in the news media and blogosphere.

Whatever their literary talents, phone novelists are racking up the kind of sales that most more experienced, traditional novelists can only dream of."

... Mobile phone writers are not paid for their work, no matter how many millions of times their novels might be read online. The pay-off, if any, comes when the novels are reproduced and sold as traditional books. Readers have free access to the web- sites that carry the novels, or pay at most $1 to $2 a month.

Rin, 21, whose mobile phone love story was turned into a 142-page hardcover book last year, said ordinary novels left members of her generation cold.

"They don't read works by professional writers because their sentences are too difficult to understand, their expressions are intentionally wordy, and the stories are not familiar to them," she said."

The latest thing for print - text

Andy McNab, the former Special Air Service Regiment man turned bestselling author, plans to hunt for new readers of his next book via mobile phones. The Guardian reports.

Posters advertising Crossfire, his latest novel out next month, will invite mobile phone users to request by text the first chapter, to be downloaded in audio or text version to their phones. They can also use the PayPal system to order the print version of the whole book.

McNab's pursuit of a new readers follows a trial this year when the paperback version of his book Recoil was available to order on mobiles."

"Naito's 2004 novel "Love Link" recorded 1.5 million paid accesses over a six- month period in which it was serially distributed. Another of her novels, "Love" posted free on a mobile Web site, received 14 million accesses over six months.

... On the book site run by Shinchosha, readers pay ¥200, or $1.75, for unlimited access to all electronic novels. At any time, about 40 titles are available, including many that are no longer subject to copyright, like works by Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Shakespeare.

Several factors are stimulating mobile readership of comics and novels.

Readers of comics favor multimedia functions of the phone, like sliding pictures up, down and sideways, and setting the phone to vibrate to accompany certain actions, like shooting a machine gun or diving into water."

Related Links:

-- Japanese mobile readers help book business

-- Links to other cell phone novels

Japanese mobile readers help book business

To offset to the drudge of their daily ride to work, Japanese commuters are reading on cell phones. Short stories, comic books and manga are all readily available, reports the BBC.

... "Bandai Networks is one of the largest publishing outfits in this brave new world.

They have their own steadily growing mobile site, with 20,000 users subscribing to a catalogue of 400 plus titles.

.... And perhaps more importantly, it is reversing the younger generation's apathy towards reading.

Science Fiction author Chiaki Kawamata says: "A high school student wrote to me to tell me that he read 1,000 books in a single summer. There's absolutely no way he could have done that with regular books and without having the novels on his phone instead."

This renewed interest in the written word is also spinning off into regular bookshops. It seems that this could be one medium which, though still somewhat rare, may, in the final analysis, prove to be pretty well done."

The first swiss phone novel

Switzerland has it's first cell phone novel.

The online murder mystery «Nervengift» by Sabina Altermatt can be followed on mobile phones at nervengift.kaywa.ch/mobile.

The cell phone novel stems from a Tages Anzeiger initiative, which is publishing the novel in weekly installments on a newly opened blog at nervengift.kaywa.ch. [via All About Mobile Life]

Related links to cell phone novels:

-- Harlequin's Mobile Novels

-- CellScript.com offers cell phone novels to US mobile subscribers

-- Next hot trend for cell phones: Reading?

-- An SMS Romance in 1008 Chinese Characters

-- India's first SMS novel

-- Novels delivered to your phone

-- China cell phone novel launched on Friday

-- Rushkoff to write SMS novel

-- First bilingual short story book written in SMS-shorthand

-- Coming to a cellphone near you: A novel

-- Mobile fiction micropublishing

Literary classics become txt msgs

Some of English literature's greatest masterpieces have been condensed into a few lines of text message to help students revise for exams, reports the BBC.

"The service condenses classic works such as Bleak House and Pride and Prejudice into a handy aide-memoire. A university professor claims it "amply demonstrates text's ability to fillet out the important elements in a plot".

The scheme has been developed by student mobile service dot.mobile."

Related stories:

-- Students compare Keats to SMS text

-- Texting is used as a tool for learning Shakespeare,

Students compare Keats to SMS text

In their final English exam yesterday Year 12 students were asked to compare an SMS message, "how r u pls 4giv me I luv u xoxoxo O:-)", with a famous Keats love letter, "You fear, sometimes, I do not love you so much as you wish". [via The Weekend Australian]

" And the 46,000 Victorian students who sat the three-hour VCE exam were also asked to analyse a Dilbert cartoon on the modern dilemma of email and write a letter to the editor of Woolworths magazine Australian Good Taste.

... Monash English lecturer Baden Eunson described the paper as part of the "multi-literacy" approach. "These are actually very interesting issues about communication and technology but the reality is that the students don't have the ability to express themselves with maximum fluency."

China mobile airwaves hum with ghost-writing

In China, legions of modern-day ghost-poets are working for the nation's two mobile phone companies, reports Reuters.

"... Big bucks are the main driver behind a flood of sweet nothings and holiday greetings being floated into the airwaves by China Mobile and China Unicom.

Both are unleashing syrupy greetings and other messages to their subscribers in hopes they will like what they see and forward the greetings, paying 0.10 yuan (1.2 cents) or more for the privilege of sending a short text message or SMS.

Whether original or recycled greetings, the yuan add up, with SMS messaging bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars, or as much as 10 percent of the companies' revenues, according to some estimates.

Never mind that such messages would be considered spam in most markets, or that some recipients might feel deceived once they learn the sender may not have composed the verses just for them.

... "It's a good strategy, as long as it's not so annoying," Nomura International analyst Kelvin Ho said. "Obviously if people find them interesting, they'll send them along, forward them. As long as it's funny and appropriate."

A typical greeting reads:

"A kettle of old wine is soft and fragrant, mellow and rich;

"A verse of old song brims with feeling and longing;

"A harvest moon is long in the sky and broad on the ground;

"A word of good wishes can travel with you anywhere.

"And an SMS message can send you off with a flourish."

Cell phone shaped paperback rings up tales of the cell phone age

This is not a new cell phone model, but a book, shaped like a cell phone.

“In a Cell Phone Minute,” by Judy Reiser, is a collection of anecdotes culled from experiences of an increasing multitude of people who use mobile phones. It even offers readers a high-tech warning. >I>“Do not read a book while driving a vehicle.” [via cantonrep]

With commentary on practical joker antics, odd customer service queries, and intriguing romantic connections, “In a Cell Phone Minute” “captures the experiences of cell phone users and abusers everywhere,” said the book's publisher, Andrews McMeel Publishing.

Anyone wanting to contribute to future books can contact the author at jreiser@katalinmedia.com.

Book samples to your mobile phone

In Australia, Harper Collins Publishershave partnered with Legion Interactive to offer to offer customers book chapter samples directly to their mobile phone, reports Adverblog.

"The service is called MobileReader and it was created to fulfill the needs of booklovers who don't have the time to gather information on the upcoming books.

The first excerpts will be from bestsellers authors Dean Koontz and Paulo Coelho and from the Australian author Janine Allis. Mobile can sign up online, on the MobileReader website."

This publishing house giant is obviously very mobile-centric, in August HarperCollins Children's Books UK,set up the Meg Cabot Mobile Club to create an interactive relationship with young fans of the author of the same name.

China. Mobile Phone Mini Story Contest

The story of the mini novel in China began centuries ago but the literary form has been given a new lease of life thanks to the mobile phone. Michelle Zhang for The Shangai Daily reports on a competition where writers use SMS to pen their plots.

Organized by the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, the first mobile phone mini story contest was launched in early July and ends today.

In the two months the contest has been running, it has received nearly 2,000 works from all over the country through SMS. People of all ages — from young students to retired workers — have showed an unexpected enthusiasm for the event.

Commenting on the contest, well-known writer Yu Hua says: "To hold the competition is like bringing 'karaoke' to literature. Before the invention of karaoke, there were only few people who could or would sing in public. Thanks to karaoke, anyone and everyone can sing in public whenever they feel like it. Now, thanks to the mobile phone, the same is true with writing."

Schiller poems go mobile

To celebrate the 200 years since Frederich Schiller's death (this is Schiller year in Germany), you can download a mobile java application including 20 of his poems.

Some of the most famous built in are "An die Freude" (know very well by Beethoven's Symphony No. 9), "Der Handschuh", and "Der Ring".

Though it is classic language, it's fairly easy to understand.

Depending on your mobile's screen size, reading long poems still may be a challange. (Thanks Alexander!)

More in Freiepresse.

Childrens' book publisher reaches readers via mobile

Mobile marketing applications have been extended to childrens' book promotion, in a US deal between HarperCollins Children's Books and Flytxtm, reports Revolutionmagazine.

HarperCollins has set up the Meg Cabot Mobile Club to create an interactive relationship with young fans of the author of the same name.

The club will offer fans and new readers sweepstakes, text-based trivia campaigns, screensavers and voice ringtones from the author. It is available on all major US mobile networks and fans can join by texting their date of birth and postcode to MEG11 (63411)."

Calls for txt messages of nursery songs/games

Send in your favourite nursery rhyme or childhood song by text message!

Would you like to be part of an exhibition that explores the connections we make on an intimate, but global scale?

160 Characters is an exhibition of children's nursery rhymes and songs from around the globe. This exhibition will present fragments of childhood memories from many different cultures.

To become part of the exhibition simply visit onesixty.net, complete the online form and send your rhyme or song via text message to the mobile number on the website.

The messages will be collated and presented as part of a multimedia installation and eventually on the internet.

Twenty texts will be selected for presentation in individual retro slide viewers as part of the installation.

This work explores the technological connections between us, via the use of shared memories of childhood nursery games and songs.

[via Rhizome]

SMS poetry

mobuzzTV today is all about Haiku (a Japanese lyric verse form having three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, traditionally invoking an aspect of nature or the seasons) with a link towards OneSixty, a magazing about poems that can be delivered as text messages.

QUIET IS THE NEW LOUD by Cior O'Neil

quiet is the new loud
deafening in empty rooms

Related post the SMS poetry magazine.

160

160 is an archive of 160 SMS messages that Katie Lips has treasured in the past 18 months. These messages, of up to 160 characters each have been from her boyfriend, sister, parents, and friends, from phone companies and people offering SMS porn.

The messages are unedited, a snapshot of what people have been sending me, telling me, asking me.

160 is exhibited as part of the S19.Afflatus Project, Art for Mobile Devices, www.s19.com/.

[via Rhizome]