Keitai, or mobile phone, novels have become very popular in Japan. I found this info via the O’Reilly Radar but the original post can be found at the economist.com web site.  It indicates that Keitai novels is a blossoming industry in its infancy in Japan accounting for 82 million in sales a year.  A Keitai novel is a short novel  that is downloaded and read on your mobile phone.  Published in shorter formats much like the Chap books Stephen King attempted a number of years ago.  The new format is perfect for the mobile phone market and may just save the publishing industry who has been suffering from increasing decline in book sales.  A similar trend seen with the highly popular new music format, or ring tone, which has been a welcome windfall for the music industry.

This is a complementary product to the recent rise in short format fiction as published by one of my favorite sites 365 Tomorrows which publishes a short format speculative fiction story each day in 500 words or less.