Japan’s phoney novelists

It ws a drk &strmy nite.

In Japan, some people, mostly young ones, are writing novels on their cell phones and posting them on Web sites for others to read.

Writers of some of the best-read stories are rewarded … by having their novels published in the traditional way — on paper.

One teenage author, (pen name “Bunny”) wrote a three-volume novel on her phone that has gone on to sell more than 110,000 paperback copies, grossing more than $611,000, the Los Angeles Times reported recently. The new literary genre is called keitai — cellphone — novels. (Surely, Twitter haiku already exists?)

Bunny (taken from Disney’s “Bambi” — Thumper’s friend Miss Bunny) wrote her novel, “Wolf Boy x Natural Girl” in her bedroom in between homework assignments.

Japan’s literary elite, naturally, and entertainingly, disdain the genre’s commercial success. They sound silly picking on 15-year-old Bunny, who doesn’t have any literary pretensions.

“Keitai novels should be likened to the literary genre of light novels,” Kenro Hayamizu, author of a book analyzing the cell phone novel phenomenon told the Los Angeles Times. “These are like Harlequin romances for young girls.”

Yes, and since many of them are written by young girls, and read by young girls, that makes perfect sense.

“Most keitai novel authors are amateurs who’ve never written before and the stories follow a similar pattern,” said Chiaki Ishihara, a literature professor at Waseda University.

Yes, 15-year-olds tend to be amateurs, as do unpublished authors. But many “genre” books follow a similar pattern. Why not pick on the Japanese versions of James Patterson or Danielle Steele and leave the teen writers alone?

The keitai genre started out with “grittier” stories, the L.A. Times reported. But readers began to show a preference for “breezier” tales from the cellphone novelists.

This phenomena, while apparently not happening in the U.S. yet, is refreshing:

  • Teenagers writing, rather than just texting each other, for fun. (The profit came later.)

    The prize for the most-read online story? Getting your novel published in print. Even in this age of electronica, where the teens are tapping out stories on their phones, the real reward is seeing those words bound on paper. No writer is yet dreaming of their first novel appearing only in an electronic book. (“Here, it’s in here! Would you like me to sign it?”)

    (And how are readers to judge a book without a cover?)

  • Teens writing romance novels on their cell phones is a preferable trend to say, sexting.

    Japanese pop culture only stands to gain if Hello Bunny challenges Hello Kitty.

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