Japanese cell phone novelist

Japan is a nation of readers. Many workers who commute via bullet trains, buses and subways spend the travel time reading and it is not all light reading. A new translation of Dostoevsky's classic The Brothers Karamazov, released in July, has surprised its publisher by selling more than 300,000 copies already. However, a 142 page hardback book about a high-school romance written by a 21 year old first novelist has caused the bigger fuss. It has sold 400,000 copies and was composed on a cell phone.

"I typed it all on my mobile phone," Rin explains matter-of-factly over the same device. "I started writing novels on my mobile when I was in junior high school and I got really quick with my thumbs, so after a while it didn't take so long. I never planned to be a novelist, if that's what you'd call me, so I'm still quite shocked at how successful it's turned out."

So successful that one volume of her book, which began its life in a series of instalments uploaded to an internet site and sent out to the phones of thousands of young subscribers, has sold more than 420,000 copies since it was converted into hardcopy format in January.

Rin is a nursery school teacher from Kokura, in Japan's south and is not the only one writing a best selling novel on the commute to and from work. Book sales last year showed that five of the top ten sellers, in Japan, were mobile phone novels. Furthermore, the top three were all written by first-time novelists on this cellular format. Koizora (Love Sky) by Mika has sold more than 1.2 million copies since being released in book format last October.

Read more in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Since Japan is usually ahead of the U.S. in terms of technology trends, cell phone novels may loom on the horizon for young American readers.