Fgraham1’s Blog

The article tells us about a young Japanese woman called Okiyama’s and her first keitai shosetsu or “cell-phone novel,” K, was written on her 3G Sharp handset and finished with a speed that would have left Barbara Cartland eating her literary dust. In book form, it is 235 pages long. “I had never written a story,” she admits. As early as 2000, keitai shosetsu were appearing on the website Maho i-Rando, which offered MySpace-style homepages, to which readers posted diary entries via their cell phones. “We gave them a tool that allowed them to publish novels, short stories and poems, chapter by chapter, just like a real book.” That represents a lot of phone time. “Cell phones occupy pockets of spare time in people’s daily lives — especially for exchanging nonurgent e-mails, playing games, visiting fortune-telling sites. Keitai shosetsu fit in that tradition.”
In major book wholesaler Tohan’s 2007 best-seller list, five out of the top 10 books in the fiction category are keitai shosetsu, including the top three. The new genre is provoking fierce indignation among Japan’s literati, many of whom think that keitai shosetsu should stay on cell-phone screens. A popular cell-phone novelist sells several hundred thousand, and recruitment for new talent is intense. “Keitai shosetsu are usually about love stories — often romantic relationships experienced by the target audience,” says Mari Kuramachi, an editor at Starts. “Why don’t you write a novel and move me?” read one angry schoolgirl’s recent online post, in response to a vehement keitai shosetsu detractor.

Question 1: Do you access the internet from your cell phone more often than your PC?