Half the top selling books are written on mobile phones in Japan
By Dusan Belic on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 5:34 AM PST In General
While we all know when it comes to mobile technology, Japan is THE most advanced market on the planet, we were shocked to learn that half of the top ten selling works of fiction in H1 2007 were composed on mobile phones.
Now you may be thinking we’re talking about 10 books in total, but apparently we’re all wrong. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the mobile phone novels (keitai shousetsu) phenomenon helped turning middle-of-the-road publishing houses into major concerns and making their authors a small fortune in the process. Apparently, there are some books like Koizora (Love Sky) and Moshimo Kimiga selling in 1.2 million and 420,000 copies respectively.
And while I still can’t envision myself reading a novel on a mobile phone, it actually may happen in the future with devices getting bigger and brighter screens. Someone said iPhone? 
[Via: TechCrunch]
You can get English novels from http://www.booksinmyphone.com they give away public domain and creative commons books packaged up to run on regular ‘dumb’ cell phones. If you have internet access you can install direct to the phone, otherwise download and install via a PC. I got used to the small screen very quickly. The portability of adding books to my phone was a real boon, nothing extra to carry or remember.