Cellphone novels — stories that are serialized and delivered in short installments to phone screens — have become big business in Japan. Publishers of these digital novels have found that they sell like mad to teenagers and twentysomething readers. Akai Ito (The Red Thread), a two-volume set by Mei, is leading the back, with more than one million copies sold this year. It has come out in print form and retails for about $9. This article claims that 3 million copies of cellphone novels have been sold in 2007 (or at least that's what I assume the English means).

Most of the cellphone novels so far seem to be romantic tales aimed at teenage girls.