History
Messaging with pagers became popular with teenage girls in Japan in the 1990s, and the popularity of mobile communication devices eventually gave way to the development of literary genres based on these new media forms. The use of compact and highly contextual writing is a well-established part of Japanese literature, Japanese literary tradition, and cell phone novels have been compared to classic Japanese literature such as the 11th-century The Tale of Genji, ''Tale of Genji''. The first cell phone novel was "published" in Japan in 2003 by a Tokyo man in his mid-thirties who calls himself Yoshi. His first cell phone novel was called ''Deep Love: The Story of Ayu, Deep Love'', the story of a teenager engaged in "subsidized dating" (Enjo kosai, enjō kosai) in Tokyo and contracting AIDS. It became so popular that it was published as an actual book, with 2.6 million copies sold in Japan, then spun off into a manga, a television series, and a film. The cell phone novel became a hit mainly through word of mouth and gradually started to gain traction in Taiwan, China, and South Korea among young adults. In Japan, several sites offer large prizes to authors (up to $100,000 US) and purchase the publishing rights to the novels. Kiki, the pseudonymous author of ''I, Girlfriend'' won the Japan Keitai Novel Award in 2008. The movement also became popular in Europe, Africa and North America. In 2005, Random House purchased a share in Vocel, a San Diego-based company which mobile studyguides. In Europe it started in about 2007, promoted by people like Oliver Bendel and Wolfgang Hohlbein, and publishers such as Cosmoblonde or Blackbetty Mobilmedia. Teenagers in South Africa have been downloading an m-novel called ''Kontax'' – a novel specifically written for mobile phones. The pioneer cell phone novel in North America, a novel called ''Secondhand Memories'' by Takatsu – that can be viewed on Textnovel, the first English language cell phone novel site founded in the United States – has been viewed more than 60,000 times and published in print in 2015 as a paperback.Reason for popularity
Although Japan was the original birthplace of the cell phone novel, the phenomenon soon moved to other parts of East Asia, and many of the online writers are university students. These writers understand what narratives will attract young readers, incorporating emergent events or trendy elements from teen culture into their stories. Cell phone novels create a virtual world for teenagers via the mobile phone, or, more precisely, via text messages. As in virtual online video games, readers can put themselves into first person in the story. Cell phone novels create a personal space for each individual reader. The cell phone novel is changing reading habits; readers no longer need to physically go to a bookshop and purchase a book. They can go online using their cell phone, download a novel, and read it on their personal mobile phone anywhere, any time they wish. Similar to the e-book, its mobility and convenience saves time.See also
* Drabble * Constrained writing * Verse novel * Japanese mobile phone culture * SMS * Texting * Light novel * Visual novel * Chat fiction * Web fictionFurther reading
* * *References
External links