An interesting article via John Jozwiak on a new use for mobile devices in Japan (of course): reading novels. The natural questions emerge (isn’t the type too small? isn’t the screen hard to read?), but apparently at least 50,000 readers in Japan don’t think so: Bandai Networks apparently offers its ?????????????????? (bunko yomihoudai, or all you can eat paperback) service offering access to 150 books since 2003.
The article says it’s hard to understand unless you try it — something true with much of online and mobile applications that at first sound strange or cumbersome. With mobile at least, the benefits come not because it’s a perfect replacement for an existing delivery system, but because the mobile phone enables behavior existing forms does not. In the case of reading, the article mentions mothers who like the phone’s built-in backlight for reading next to sleeping babies at night, or the privacy of reading something (adult content, etc) that reading on a mobile phone provides – both in addition to the phone’s unparalleled portability.
The article explains how new media writers like writing for mobile phones, in part because it gives them immediate feedback on what people like as each installment is either frequently accessed or ignored depending on where the story is going.
To be sure, as more traditional forms are tried on the web and mobile devices, many will inevitably not work as well as the originals. But new behaviors will be enabled by some of the experiments, and those will create new opportunities for businesses.