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December 03, 2007
Mobile Story Bestsellers
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, half of Japan's top-10 selling works of fiction in the first six months of the year were composed on the tiny handset of a mobile phone. They sold an average of 400,000 copies prompting president of Goma Books, Masayoshi Yoshino, "to establish this not simply as a fad, but as a new kind of culture". The stories traverse teen romance, sex, drugs and other adolescent terrain in a succession of clipped one-liners, emoticons and spaces (used to show that a character is thinking), all of which can be read easily on a mobile phone interface. Mobile phone novels - or keitai shousetsu - may soon reach the bestseller lists outside Japan and provide inspiration for new channels of expression.
Posted by Enrique at December 3, 2007 01:54 AM