Novel Writing on Mobile Phones Gets Fussy in Japan

Just a few days ago, I wrote a post about the first computer novel to be released in January by Russian Publishing House Astrel SPb. Little did I know that in Japan, half of the top ten best-selling works of fiction in the first six months of 2007 were composed on mobile phones and have sold an average of 400, 000 copies. Yeah, I mean written, not READ like you can on your Amazon's Kindle.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, mobile phone novels (or keitai shousetsu) have become a publishing phenomenon in Japan, “turning middle-of-the-road publishing houses into major concerns and making their authors a small fortune in the process.”

One of such novels, Koizora (Love Sky) by Mika about a high-school girl who is bullied, gang-raped, becomes pregnant and has a miscarriage has sold more than 1.2 million copies since being released in book format last October. In fact, it will soon be made into a movie.

For all we know, these mobile phone novels may be bestsellers in the Eastern front, but would they get attention in the Western terrain and eventually make the NY Times best sellers list?