A cell phone novel is a novel written and typically read on a cell phone. This phenomenon started early in this decade when young Japanese women began texting and emailing stories while commuting to work.
Now these novels have been all the rage in Japan for several years, with a multi-million dollar market and billions of hits on mobile phone websites. Readers and writers are typically young teens (usually girls) who are eager to comment on the story and help the author by giving feedback and pointers of what they would like to see happen next.
This author and reader relationship is critical, with the author using feedback to change the story and add twists and unexpected turns to the plot, enveloping excited readers in the story so that they can barely wait for the next installment of the story. These stories are usually written and read on the commute to and from work or while standing in line. Typically they are digested in short chapters that arrive as regular updates from the author.
Amazingly, these novels can be anywhere from 150 to 500 pages in length and can be created as fast as they can be read! Some authors create as many as 5 books a year, using popular websites such as Maho i-Land (Magic Island). Some novels are so popular that sites have started charging the equivalent of $10 (US) to download and read the full novel. But most novels are still free and generate millions of views from their young audience.
Some frown upon this new genre of literature, expressing disappointment with the lack of good grammar and literary substance. But writers and readers don’t seem to care, with the former creating a steady supply of new stories based on consistent demand from the latter.
The craze has even become so popular that it is beginning to spread to Western countries including the United States, although writers and readers in the US tend to use computers as often as their phones to write and read the stories. One website called Textnovel allows readers to use cell phones or computers to write and read stories. The site is growing in popularity, with approximately 14,000 members already and thousands of novels already available. Some of the top novels on this site have been viewed over 26,000 times.
Winner of Textnovel’s 2008 contest, Shannon Delany landed a major publishing deal with St. Martin’s Press for her YA paranormal series, 13 to Life. It began as bite-size serial chapters at Textnovel.com and was the first novel there to use polls to influence the story’s details through a special blog. With a U.S. release of June 22, 13 to Life is available for pre-order online. You can pre-order your copy here now. Delany’s success shows cell phone novels are viable beyond the online world.
Although this type of live writing may not result in any Nobel prizes in literature, it seems to be generating interest among young people who otherwise might not write or read much. Perhaps someday kids in America will be writing and reading home-brewed novels from their cell phones just as much as Japanese teens do.
Alectric is the Textnovel pen name for a 16-year-old cell phone novelist from Southern California.
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