Textnovel is a community of authors and readers using the Internet, cellphones, emails and text messaging to experience a new way to create, read and share fiction and other stories. Here are some unique things members can do on textnovel: * Create and add to your story on the website, by email or by text. Write your story from your cellphone! * Read the story on your cellphone! Get notifications as new chapters are added by your friends or favorite authors, either by email or text message or both. * Make your story private or public. Use a pen name or your own name. * Invite co-authors to contribute to and help you write your story. * Get noticed -- textnovel gives you the power to invite others from your address book to view and rate or review your story, moving you up in the rankings and increasing your chance of winning or getting published. * Create or read a story, novel or comic in serial form (add a chapter at a time). * Win big! Textnovel offers cash prizes to winners and publishing opportunities.

 

Cellphone novels are a big phenomenon in Japan and the phenomenon is spreading to other parts of the world. In 2007, 5 of the top 10 best sellers in Japan were cellphone novels. Basically this is a new fiction style that is characterized by shorter sentences, the use of word contractions and symbols and moticons (such as those used in text messaging) and less detail (meaning that the reader must infer more or read between the lines more). Many of these works of fiction are actually written on cellphones as text messages that are sent to a website, where interested readers can subscribe to be notified of new updates or download entire novels for a fee. Typically readers will read the novels on their cellphones or computers as well. The use of electronic tools to create and read the stories and get regular updates is part of what gives these novels their unique social characteristics and is giving rise to a rebirth in interest in literature, at least in this new form and in countries where this has become a big hit. Here are some interesting articles about cellphone novels or about reading novels on your cell phone:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/world/asia/20japan.html
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2005/03/66950
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2007/01/72329
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120830725738118045.html 

 

Textnovel subscribers can receive text messages or emails to notify them of updates to their favorite stories. You should be able to follow the link in the text message or email to read the story on your cellphone browser. Textnovel subscribers can also receive the entire text of new chapters in the body of an email, and as long as you can get email on your phone, this means you can read the chapter on your phone. You can choose to get the whole chapter by email in My Admin, by selecting "Receive Complete Text Udpdate" then save. Note that although textnovel stories can be easily read by most cellphone browsers, we are working on some updates that should make the stories compatible with all browsers.

 

No. We are hoping that we can help some of our members get published and that we can help some of them become famous and wealthy (and get some of the associated moola ourselves too!). In the future we may offer some electronic versions of popular cellphone novels so that readers can download them to their cellphones. We do offer some story and user profile enhancements (upgrading your story to Premium or your profile to Featured Author) in exchange for small donations, which we use to build and market the site.

 

A private story is a story you create that can only be viewed by you and by anyone you invite to view it. You might wish to do this if you are working on an early draft and need feedback from friends - you can always make the story public later. You might want to keep it private permanently. It's up to you. Just remember, only public stories are eligible for the textnovel contest.

 

A pen name is the same thing as a username. But it is the traditional term that authors use when creating a name for themselves that hides their true identity. On textnovel, it is the only name that shows up next to your story. Other members of the site can search for you only by your pen name (not by your real name). This means that if you want your friends to find your stories, you have to either send them an invitation or tell them the story name or your pen name so they can find it by using the site's search features.