Chin Music Press has a partial translation of a Japanese article about publishers making text available via cell phone.
Popular writer Asa Nonami … contributed “Anata,” an original piece. For 210 yen a month, readers have unlimited access to stories. Series are updated every week from Monday through Friday. Subscribers currently number 30,000, 70% of whom are women in their late teens to 30s.
“The great thing about cellphone literature is that one can get a quick reading fix, even while standing,” said 36-year-old freelance writer Kayoko Fujino. She now has a separate cellphone just to read from. “Reading Mika Naito’s series on the train coming home from work is now an important daily routine,” she said.
Selling texts online is not a new idea but the broad market appeal and scale of success this publisher has shown is news to me. With the current state of cell phone handsets available in states this doesn’t seem like an angle for us to pursue right now but it’s sure to be a growing market when phone screens can hold larger high resolution text.
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