SMS novel makes its debut
27/8/2004 10:02
Jane Chen / Shanghai Daily news
Starting this
September, subscribers to Shanghai Unicom Co Ltd will be able to receive a novel
to their cellular phones via the short messaging service (SMS), today's Oriental
Morning Post reported.
The novel, titled "Out of the Town", will be sent out
to the phones in a total 60 messages. Each message, with 70 characters, costs
0.2 yuan (2.4 US cents).
Phone users will read one message each day after
ordering the service. In other words, it will take two months to read through
the novel.
Since this is the country's first SMS novel, it's written in a
style that's most suitable to read passages one by one, according to the author
Qianchangfu.
He said the story is not very dramatic, but written in a very
specific way. Comparing marriage with a birdcage, he said the story is about
extra-marital relationships .
"The couple both want to fly out of the cage
independently, and each experiences a passionate and illegitimate love," he
said.
Upbeat about China's booming SMS market, Hurray Century Telecom Co Ltd
paid 180,000 yuan (US$) in early August to buy the copyright of the
novel.
Beside text messages, the novel will have editions catering for users
of Wireless Applications Protocol (WAP) and Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
services, according to Du Hua with Hurray Century Telecom.
Du is optimistic
about China's SMS novel business, referring to the market in Japan.
In Japan,
there are more than 2 million phone users reading SMS novels and tens of
thousands of websites running the business, he added.
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