A mobile library on your phone

London Audio books are set to be revolutionised by a tiny card that can store up to five lengthy novels on a phone, reports the Times Online.

"The card can be slotted into a mobile phone, dispensing with the need to carry up to six CDs for an audio version of a book. The technology, originally developed to store music, will be released this year by Nokia.

One title that will be available is the bestselling Looking Good Dead, by the British thriller writer Peter James. He said: “I think this will revolutionise storytelling . . . with this, you can wander off into the park, lie down and listen to a book.”

[via Smart Mobs]

Big Books Hit Japan's Tiny Phones

Wired has a story on the mobile phone novel culture in Japan.

Chaco is a twenty-something novelist from Osaka. In the last 14 months, she wrote five novels, including her best seller, What the Angel Gave Me, which has sold more than 1 million copies to date. "I can type faster on my phone than on a standard keyboard," she says. Chaco's decision to stay anonymous is pretty common among mobile phone novelists, who are often sharing personal and provocative stories for the first time.

The first mobile phone novel was written six years ago, but the trend picked up in the last couple years when high-school girls with no previous publishing experience started posting stories they wrote on community portals for others to download and read on their cell phones.

Magic iLand is one such site. It began as a community portal where users could create personalized homepages from their cell phones. In March, the company launched The Magic Library Plus, a free novel library where readers can download text and link to blogs by select authors. Since its inception, the library has added at least 10 new titles per month.

"A mobile phone novel boom is definitely in place," said Magic iLand spokesman Toshiaki Itou. "And these are people who hardly ever read novels before, never mind written one."

Next summer, the company will debut software that allows mobile phone novelists to integrate sounds and images into their story lines. Adding visuals and vibrations to romance novels' steamy sex scenes could bring the genre an even wider audience.

Related:

-- Some text messages read like page turners
-- Japanese mobile readers help book business
-- Next hot trend for cell phones: Reading?
-- Links to other cell phone novels.

Virgin Mobile launches Ghost Town, SMS book

Virgin Mobile USA has announced a short story named Ghost Town that will be delivered exclusively through text messages, according to Mobile Tracker.

"Two messages will be sent per day over a five week period. The first messages will be sent out on August 14th. The promotion is aimed at raising awareness of teen homelessness.

Readers will also have the opportunity to determine how the story ends, choosing between two options via text message poll."

Other recent mobile campaigns related to helping the homeless

-- RE*Generation Movement to raise awareness for homeless and abused kids

-- Hit the streets to help homeless people

Say it with a letter, women urge lovers

Men are being urged to cast aside their mobile phones and revive the dying art of writing love letters as part of a UK government campaign backed by the romantic novelist Jilly Cooper, reports The Guardian.

A new survey reveals that of the 2,000 women in the UK surveyed, 77% wanted to receive a handwritten love letter rather than a love text or email. One in five (19%) women say they have never received a love letter from a loved one or an admirer. And almost half (44%) of those surveyed said it had been more than a decade since they last received one.

The Get On campaign offers free courses to help adults brush up on their reading and writing skills. It is part of the government's Skills for Life strategy, which aims to help 2.25 million learners gain a qualification by 2010.

Audiophones for Books

BOKiLUR is Swedish for book on phone. And the company offers exactly that: audiobooks for cellphones. Springwise reports.

"To get started, customers download and install a piece of Java-based software, that's compatible with over 40 phones (both 3G and GPRS). They can then use the software's interface to browse available titles, and listen to two minutes of each book for free, before deciding to download.

Payment is processed through the user's normal phone bill. Available titles include popular fiction, literature, children's books, business titles and language courses."

Some text messages read like page turners

Cell phone novels continue to be popular in Japan. The IHT reports.

"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]

Harlequin's Mobile Novels

Harlequin novels are coming to cell phones this Fall, reports Moco News.

"Harlequin has signed up with Vocel, a mobile content tech company which recently got a strategic investment from Random House, to develop content for the mobile phones…

Harlequin will develop various applications, including daily-serialized novels by bestselling authors, romance-writing seminars and interactive pursuits such as helping to choose male cover models for upcoming novels or even using their camera phones to submit pictures of their own boyfriends as possible cover models."

Keitai Tanka, mobile phone poems

In Japan, tanka — the 31-syllable poems, like extended haiku, that have been a staple of Japanese literature for 1,300 years, is going mobile. The Times Online reports.

21-year-old Chie Kato is writing tanka. And all over the country, young people like her are doing the same.

"With three books of poetry to her name, Ms Kato is at the vanguard of what have become known as keitai tanka — “mobile phone poems” — that are written and distributed on mobiles.

There is now a weekly keitai tanka programme on national radio, a keitai tanka magazine edited by Ms Kato, and numerous websites.

Tanka students spend years mastering the use of stylised epithets called “pillow words” and use erudite literary allusions from classical literature. “Sometimes a poem can take me three or four months to refine,” says Setsuko Utsunomiya, 60, a poet from Oita. “I can't help feeling that mobile tanka are a completely different thing.”

“Compared with traditional tanka, these are not literary pieces,” Mr Inose says. “It's like the difference between a beautifully composed photograph of a landscape, and the kind of snapshot which young people take with a mobile phone camera.”

ANCIENT v MODERN

On this day in spring
When the lambent air suffuses
Soft tranquility,
Why should the cherry blossoms flutter
With unsettled hearts to earth?

— Tomonori, 9th century

KDDI Launches au Mobile Ez-Book Portal

Online bookstores are nothing new but KDDI has wrapped up a mobile reading solution that transforms cell phones into personal book-mobiles.

Starting April 21st, EZ Book Land for au WIN CDMA 1X cell phones brings bestsellers, business titles, movie novelizations, manga (comics), and anime right onto handsets -- 7000 titles from ten sites. [via Wireless Watch Japan]

Related articles on cell phones book reading.

CellScript.com offers cell phone novels to US mobile subscribers

Following yesterday's post on the popularity of reading novels on cell phones in Japan, one of my readers sent me a link to CellScript.com, a US service which allows mobile users to download stories to their cellphone for $ 1.99, in the form of Text Messages.

Works for mobile subscribers to AT&T, Cingular, Nextel, Southern LINC, Sprint, Verizon.

Next hot trend for cell phones: Reading?

Tens of thousands of Japanese cell-phone owners are poring over full-length novels on their tiny screens, report the Associated Press .

"In the latest versions, cell-phone novels are downloaded in short installments and run on handsets as Java-based applications. You're free to browse as though you're in a bookstore, whether you're at home, in your office or on a commuter train. A whole library can be tucked away in your cell phone — a gadget you carry around anyway.

The Tokyo-based wireless service provider offers 150 books on its site, called "Bunko Yomihodai," which means "All You Can Read Paperbacks." It began the service in 2003 and saw interest grow last year. There are now about 50,000 subscribers.

"It's hard to understand unless you try it out," Kajita said, adding that the handset's backlight allows people to read with the lights off — a convenience that delights parents who like to read near sleeping infants.

Users can search by author, title and genre, and readers can write reviews, send fan mail to authors and request what they want to read, all from their phones.

A recent marketing study by Bandai found that more than half the readers are female, and many are reading cell-phone books in their homes.

Surprisingly, people are using cell-phone books to catch up on classics they never finished reading. And people are perusing sex manuals and other books they're too embarrassed to be caught reading or buying. More common is keeping an electronic dictionary in your phone in case a need arises".

Cell-phone novels remain a niche market compared with ringtones, music downloads and video games, said Yoshiteru Yamaguchi, executive director at Japan's top mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo. But no longer is reading books on a phone considered unbelievable, he said."

Click here for articles on cell phone novels.

Booktopia to offer mobile e-books made from film scenarios

Booktopia, a Korean e-book service provider announced Tuesday it would offer mobile e-books made from film scenarios.

The scenario m-books are made from 29 Korean hit movies such as "Public Enemy".

These m-books are expected to stretch movie lovers' imagination by covering scenes omitted in the real movies, the service provider explained, reports Seong-ju Lee for Telecoms Korea.

Lounge Lizard Collection- Mobile E-book Guides

Radicaltek-mobile.co.uk/ has released new Mobipocket e-books covering nightlife, gambling and Adult entertainment in 42 cities worldwide.

Mobile e-book readers can download guides for bars, strip clubs, world-class
casinos, racecourses, dog tracks, motor speedways, and other entertainment
and services.

Novel idea coming soon to cell phones

The Chicago Tribune looks into the increasing power of cell phones and how they are fast shaping innovative forms of compact culture: such as cell phone-size literature. Most of the examples are familiar to readers of this column, but this part is new:

"In Europe, even some old-guard publishers have jumped into the mobile format. The Munich-based Langenscheidt Publishing Group is a traditional, family-run company that would seem an unlikely player in this market. It has been publishing dictionaries, travel guides and map books since 1856 and is run by the fourth generation of the Langenscheidt family.

This month Langenscheidt started offering a phone-size flirting dictionary that is its way of promoting international understanding. For about $5, the service offers 600 or so phrases in the chosen language, and practical advice including phonetic pronunciations of polite brushoffs.

The benefit, said Ina Kaese, who manages Langenscheidt's mobile services, is that if you are a traveler in a foreign city in a busy bar, your telephone can be your instant guide to romance."

Click here for articles on cell phone novels

Brazilian soap operas go mobile

It's Brazil's turn to offer cell phone litterature.
Smart Mobs reports that Celuler is prepared to deliver texts of national and international authors. It is also planning to deliver brazilian soap operas, a very popular genre here. The user will receive small chapters, writen by great authors of Brazil.

Click here for related articles on cell phone novels around the world.

Books to your mobile via WINKsite

Mobile media technology developer WINKsite has launched the Creative Commons Library for mobile users. [via Smart Mobs].

The Creative Commons Library is the first in a series of works to be published on the WINKsite Mobile Publishing & Community Platform. WINKsite extends the power of publishing and distributing mobile books to the masses. The tools used are offered FREE of charge to individuals and non-profit organizations for non-commercial use.

Over the coming months the number of collections will grow to include thousands of titles available under Creative Commons license, in the public domain, and from leading publishers.

First Releases:
-- Creative Commons Library: http://winksite.com/books/cc
-- Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig: http://winksite.com/lessig/freeculture
-- The Literary Works of Cory Doctorow: http://winksite.com/doctorow/books
-- Monster Island by David Wellington: http://winksite.com/monster/island
-- Monster Nation by David Wellington: http://winksite.com/monster/nation
-- Media Are Alive by Mike Popovic: hhttp://winksite.com/popovic/stories

Related links and stories on litterature on mobile phones

An SMS Romance in 1008 Chinese Characters

Following the release of Chinese cell phone novel "Out of the Fortress" in September, a mobile literature channel has now launched. The first story is a romance called 'Distance' which will be delivered by SMS, reports Mike Grenville for 160characters.org.

"Headquartered in Shanghai, Linktone Ltd has called the new channel m-Novel”.

The first story is a romantic story titled, “Distance”, written by Xuan Huang, a prominent new-generation novelist from Taiwan.

"Distance" is a winding love story of a young couple that becomes acquainted because of a mis-sent SMS message. As Chinese characters are double-byte, the story only has 70 Chinese characters in each SMS message. The whole story is 1,008 Chinese characters told in 15 chapters with one chapter sent each day.

The company has prepared a series of further stories for the “m-Novel” channel including another serial from Xuan Huang – “Cold Love in Taipei”.

Chief executive officer of Linktone Raymond Yang claimed that “The initial market response has been very encouraging.”

Related Related articles on cell phone novels:

-- India's first SMS novel - Following Japan and China, India has launched it's first SMS novel in English, called Cloak Room

-- Novels delivered to your phone - Nowadays the sight of people passing time on the train by sending e-mail with their mobile phones is an everyday occurrence in Japan

-- 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".