Wired News reports on the growing popularity of reading – and writing – books on mobile phones.
A mobile phone novel typically contains between 200 and 500 pages, with each page containing about 500 Japanese characters. The novels are read on a cell phone screen page by page, the way one would surf the web, and are downloadable for around $10 each. The first mobile phone novel was written six years ago by fiction writer Yoshi, 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.
“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.”
Link to the Wired News article