It looks like the next generation e-book reader will be part of your phone.
Rise of the mobile novel sets alarm bells ringing in Japanese literary circles is the title of Richard Lloyd Parry’s piece in the London Times.
“For the first time, Japan’s fiction bestseller list is dominated by books published, read and, in several cases, written on mobile telephones.”
I repeat:
published
read
and sometimes written on CELL PHONES!
How does it work:
You pay about $2.50 a month for a subscription to download novels from the publishers website to your cell phone.
“The stories are divided into gobbets which can be read in about three minutes, the typical distance between two stops on the Japanese subway.”
When you pair this with Paul Biba’s recent post over at TeleRead where he shares his 27 year old daughters reaction to the Sony Reader and the Kindle you can really see the writing on the wall.
Biba’s daughter says “She would never use a Sony Reader or a Kindle, or an independent ebook reader of any kind! Further, she stated, unequivocally, that no person in her age group would use one either.”
Why? No one wants to haul around another piece of technology, “They are already carrying a phone and a laptop…and that’s enough.”
Oh and by the way, Biba’s daughter works for Wired Magazine!
It is about convergence not separation.
If they haven’t already, the alarm bells should start ringing louder in our technology and publishing circles any day now.