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.
1/4/2007 12:09:11 PM
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