It is a rainy day, and the fire is lit against the chill that comes with damp fall days like these, and you are curled up in a comfy chair reading Ernest Hemingway’s ”A Farewell to Arms.” Catherine has died in birthing their child, who was stillborn, and Frederic is walking from the hospital to the hotel. It is raining.
Certainly a timeless picture: chair, fire, reader, book, timeless ending to a tragic love story.
It is not. Everything is there but the book. You are reading from a cell phone.
It would certainly seem odd to Catherine and Frederic, World War I lovers, and to Hemingway, who wrote on a clanky reporter’s typewriter.
But it’s quite the new thing with Simon & Schuster, which is putting 500 books, including those of Hemingway, in a format downloadable on cell phones, in what's become a race to deliver great and lesser-published works to readers wherever they might be.
It’s also happening in Europe, and it’s less about literature than technology: coming up with the best delivery system.
“Everyone has been concentrating on the Kindle and Sony’s eReader, but the majority of readers in this country have a device on them that can already read novels – the mobile phone,” says Darren Lews, author and founder of a small publishing house called Caffeine Nights, which recently announced it would make two books available on cell phones. Lews believes he is the first British publisher to make this move.
Certainly, the cell phone has some relatively big disadvantages when compared to eBook readers, like Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s eReader, which have been designed specifically for reading books.
Chief among these drawbacks is the cell’s small screen. Lews, however, points out that screens are getting larger following the success of Apple’s iPhone.
Cells do have one advantage, however: availability. Most everyone has one, so they're spared to the cost of a new, dedicated reading device. That can be considerable. Amazon’s Kindle costs $359.
Simon & Schuster already has its catalogue in digital form for reading on computers, eBook devices or PDAs. So making them available for the cell phone is but the logical next step.
Aside from Hemingway, this list includes Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret,” “Nancy Drew” and the “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” series, among others.
And there's good reason to believe people will buy the cell phone editions.
In Japan, writing books specifically for the cell phone is already a booming market. It began back in 2001 with the cell phone novel “Deep Love.” Another cell phone novel, “Koizora” by an author called Mika, sold about 2 million copies before being republished as a traditional printed title and turned into a movie.
In fact, by last year five out 10 of the year’s bestselling books in Japan had originally been written as cell phone novels.
The stories lines are delivered much as the books of Charles Dickens were to English newspaper readers in the nineteenth century: one chapter at a time. Readers receive these short installments on their phones.
The cell phone books initially tended to be romances. They were commonly written by young women and teens, and these demographics also tended to make up the bulk of the readership.
But the range of genres has expanded recently, as have the ages of the writers and readers. A recent top-seller, “Tomorrow’s Rainbow,” a romance about a high school girl who's devastated by the divorce of her parents, was written by an 86-year-old Buddhist nun, Jakucho Setouchi, a writer previously known for her translations of classical texts.
And if Hemingway broke new ground by bringing a journalistic style to fiction writing, cell phone writers are taking it further with short sentences and very short chapters, which seem better suited to the medium.
***
Meanwhile, elsewhere in popcult, the new movie “High School Musical 3: Senior Year” was No. 1 at the box office over the weekend, bringing in $42.0 million. “Saw V” opened at No. 2 with $30.5 million in ticket sales.
In DVD rentals for the week ended Oct. 12, according to IMDb.com, “The Happening” fell from No. 1 to No. 2, replaced on top by new release “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”
On iTunes this morning “Womanizer” by Britney Spears fell out of the No. 1 spot after two weeks on top, replaced by “If I Were a Boy” by Beyonce.
And in books, Michael Connelly’s “The Brass Verdict” debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times’ hardcover fiction best-sellers list for the week ended Oct. 18 and at No. 8 on USA Today’s book chart for the week ended Oct. 19.
|
TOP MOVIES
Weekend Box Office Estimates
Weekend of Oct. 24-26, 2008
|
|
Rank
|
MOVIE
|
Engagements
|
Box office (millions)
|
|
1
|
High School Musical 3: Senior Year (
Buena Vista)
|
3,623
|
$42.00
|
|
2
|
Saw V (Lionsgate)
|
3,060
|
$30.50
|
|
3
|
Max Payne (Fox)
|
3,381
|
$7.60
|
|
4
|
Beverly Hills
Chihuahua (
Buena Vista)
|
3,190
|
$6.92
|
|
5
|
Pride and Glory (Warner Bros.)
|
2,585
|
$6.33
|
|
6
|
The Secret Life of Bees (Fox Searchlight)
|
1,630
|
$5.94
|
|
7
|
W. (Linosgate)
|
2,050
|
$5.33
|
|
8
|
Eagle Eye (
Paramount)
|
2,558
|
$5.14
|
|
9
|
Body of Lies (Warner Bros.)
|
2,150
|
$4.07
|
|
10
|
Quarantine (Sony)
|
2,228
|
$2.55s
|
|
Source: Yahoo Movies
|
|
IMDb TOP DVD RENTALS
Week ending October 19, 2008
|
|
Rank
|
TITLE
|
Last week
|
|
1
|
Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
|
-
|
|
2
|
The Happening
|
1
|
|
3
|
Iron Man
|
3
|
|
4
|
You Don’t Mess with the Zohan
|
2
|
|
5
|
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
|
4
|
|
6
|
War, Inc.
|
-
|
|
7
|
Sex and the City
|
5
|
|
8
|
Leatherheads
|
6
|
|
9
|
Made of Honor
|
7
|
|
10
|
Baby Mama
|
8
|
|
Source: IMDB
|
|
ITUNES TOP 10 SONG DOWNLOADS
for week ended Monday, Oct. 27, 2008
|
|
Rank
|
TITLE
|
|
1
|
If I Were a Boy, Beyonce
|
|
2
|
Womanizer, Britney Spears
|
|
3
|
Live Your Life, T.I. feat. Rihanna
|
|
4
|
Hot N Cold, Katy Perry
|
|
5
|
So What, Pink
|
|
6
|
Let It Rock, Kevin Rudolf
|
|
7
|
I’m Yours, Jason Mraz
|
|
8
|
Whatever You Like, T.I.
|
|
9
|
Love Lockdown, Kanye West
|
|
10
|
Disturbia, Rihanna
|
|
Source: iTunes
|
|
NEW YORK
TIMES BESTSELLING BOOKS
Week ending October 18, 2008
|
|
Fiction (hardback)
|
|
Rank
|
TITLE
|
Last week
|
Weeks on chart
|
|
1
|
The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly
|
-
|
1
|
|
2
|
The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks
|
1
|
3
|
|
3
|
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
|
2
|
19
|
|
4
|
A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire
|
-
|
1
|
|
5
|
A Most Wanted Man
by John le Carré
|
4
|
2
|
|
Nonfiction (hardback)
|
|
1
|
The Snowball by Alice Schroeder
|
1
|
3
|
|
2
|
A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity by Bill O’Reilly
|
4
|
4
|
|
3
|
Dewy by Vicki Myron with Bret Wittner
|
3
|
5
|
|
4
|
Here’s the Story by Maureen McCormick
|
-
|
1
|
|
5
|
Multiple Blessings by Jon Gosselin
|
-
|
1
|
|
Fiction (paperback)
|
|
1
|
The Shack by William P. Young
|
1
|
22
|
|
2
|
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
|
2
|
18
|
|
3
|
World Without End by Ken Follett
|
3
|
2
|
|
4
|
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
|
5
|
7
|
|
5
|
Nights in Rodanthe by Nicholas Sparks
|
-
|
11
|
|
Nonfiction (paperback)
|
|
1
|
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
|
1
|
90
|
|
2
|
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
|
2
|
91
|
|
3
|
The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
|
3
|
43
|
|
4
|
Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama
|
4
|
118
|
|
5
|
The Duchess by Amanda Foreman
|
-
|
8
|
|
Source: New York Times
|
|
USA
TODAY BESTSELLING BOOKS
Week ending October 19, 2008
|
|
Rank
|
TITLE
|
Last week
|
|
1
|
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
|
-
|
|
2
|
New Moon by Stephanie Meyer
|
4
|
|
3
|
The Shack by William P. Young
|
5
|
|
4
|
Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer
|
6
|
|
5
|
Brisingr by Christopher Paolini
|
2
|
|
6
|
Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer
|
7
|
|
7
|
The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks
|
1
|
|
8
|
The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly
|
-
|
|
9
|
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
|
15
|
|
10
|
Double Cross by James Patterson
|
8
|
|
Source:
USA Today
|
