Hand Phone Novels (2009)

Recently, I was approached to consider the idea of writing a book for the hand phone. The idea being that it would be a ‘novel’ broken up into convenient segments, for sending as multiple SMS messages. The reality was that the proposer never did set a meeting date with me, and never got back to me, after receiving the information below. And this was after his being so enthusiastic in the beginning. That distinct lack of communication is a whole other story. Way back in 2000 a young Japanese author, writing under the pen name of Yoshi, wrote and distributed the first, acknowledged, m-novel using a hand phone, in Japan. Her most acclaimed work was ‘Deep Love’, which went on to become a bestselling book, comic, TV series and a film. Thus began the phenomenon of writing and reading ‘novels’ on hand phones, rapidly becoming known in Japan as keitai shousetsu. This, seemingly, has grown out of the Japanese keitai (hand phone) culture, or Keitai bunka. Four years later (2004), acknowledged Chinese author Qian Fuzhang, wrote ‘Out of the Fortress Besieged’, a novel aimed at the hand phone, in China, sending 70 characters at a time, with an overall total of 4,200 characters for the ‘novel’. Instalments of this ‘book’ were available through SMS, WAP and IVR formats. There was even talk of this being made into a film of 30 to 40 segments, exclusively for hand phones. That same year, In India, Ro Gue created an SMS novel called ‘Cloak Room’, in ‘text speak’, with no spaces in the hand phone message. Readers were able to interact with the storyline, and guide characters out of trouble. However, it was aborted after 16 ‘episodes’. There was a general expectation that ‘Cloak Room’ would continue in 2005, it did not. The following year (2005) China held a contest for writers of a ‘mini-novel’ for hand phones. This was organised by the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House. It received 2,000 entries through SMS, with each story no longer than 350 words. The next year P. R. Harikumar wrote ‘Neelakkannukal’ (Blue Eyes), in Malayallam, for a specialised segment of the Indian market, in six chapters, for the hand phone. He had also converted some works of classical Indian literature, including the Ramayana, for the small screen, hand phone, format . Mr Harikumar is quoted as saying “ Basically my aim is to convert the mobile phone into a cultural tool with our traditional content from its ordinary position of a mere calling machine.” Again the project was doomed to a less than successful life. In the same year, one Japanese writer, using the pen name Towa, from Osaka, won the world’s first mobile phone novel award, with her story kurianesu, indicating vast differences between Japanese and Indian cultures, when it comes to the mobile phone. In 2007 Japanese Satomi Nakamura, alias Chaco, wrote ‘novels’ using her hand phone, and found fame with her best seller ‘What the Angle Gave Me’. This story sold 1 million copies in 2007. Japanese hand phone ‘novels’ frequently contain between 200 – 500 pages and roughly 500 characters per page, and are read on the hand phone screen, one page at a time. Web portals, such as Magic Island (manhou no Island) developed to host such stories, and now sell ‘novel’ pages at a nominal sum, for readers to download onto their phones. Magic Island has in excess of 5.7 million uses. From that, in Japan, a free ‘novel library’ was created, In addition to that, the best selling ‘novel’ in Japan, in 2007, was koizora , a hand phone novel, purportedly read by over 25 million readers. There are, incidentally, more than 100 million cell phones in Japan. Also in 2007, Booksinmyphone, an Australian hand phone book company, launched, giving free access to countless individuals wishing to read digitised, ‘ordinary, books on their hand phones. The following year, (2008) Jakucho Setouchi (86) a Buddhist nun, wrote a novel called Tomorrow’s Rainbow for hand phones. And, in South Africa ,Novel Idea, a literary competition for South African hand phone ‘novel’ readers, began, with each author writing a serialised story in 28 episodes, no longer than 900 characters. Sam Wilson won with his story Prestige Animals. In 2009, Caffeine Nights Publishing has begun to provide novels for Austrian mobile content ( small screen)provider Blackbetty MobilMedia GmbH, to publish on hand phones in collaboration with Vodaphone. The first is ‘novel’ is Hellstalkers - The Cerebus Protocol, by Joe Nassise and Jon F Merz, written in English. This is their first thriller series, written exclusively for the hand phone market, launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Blackbetty also sells classic works formatted for hand phone screens, in English and German. This year (2009), there have been plans for Kotobarabia of Egypt to market e-books on hand phones, using Arabic text. While back in Japan Digi-Book Japan has engaged in distributing 100 popular hand phone novels to China. Shanda Interactive Entertainment will manage the distribution from the Chinese side, there is an expectation that this might be a two-way process, with Chinese hand phone novels eventually being distributed in Japan. One major project, and one which caught the attention of the person who approached me, was Kontax, which is a mystery ‘M-novel’ commissioned by the Shuttleworth Foundation, launched under the m4Lit (mobile phones for literacy) project, South Africa. The project was designed to encourage young people to read, and write more, using mobile phones, in English or the local language -isiXhosa. The initial story, written by Novel Idea competition winner Sam Wilson (2008), was told in 21 chapters; over 21 days via WAP enabled phones. Although many have dallied with the concept of using the hand phone for distributing ‘books’, or ‘novels’ to be read on the small screen, few have been successful. Culture seems to play a large part in the success or otherwise of this endeavour. While the Japanese, who incidentally are also mad keen on manga (comics), have taken to the concept of stories over the hand phone, it has had little success elsewhere, apart for the one major project in South Africa. Perhaps the small screen of the average hand phone is not ideal for text reading, certainly not great swathes of text in the form of a ‘novel’, whereas comics may have better success.