What will the bookshelf of the future look like? Perhaps like this photograph of an entire bookshelf of cellphone novels in printed form at a Japanese bookstore.
Here’s more from the Kirai blog: “Novels written with cellphones have a very conversational style, they have short sentences, and sometimes they have too many abbreviations. Their style is a consequence of the characteristics of the medium used to write them and read them. Using a cellphone to write a 100,000 or 200,000 word novel is not an easy task, and being able to read it until the end in a small cellphone screen can be pretty painful.”
While cellphone novels haven’t caught on in the United States, they are major books for Japanese publishers. Last year we reported that ten of Japan’s print bestsellers in 2007 were based on cell phone novels–successfully selling about 400,000 copies apiece. One survey estimated that 86 percent of Japanese high school students read cellphone novels.