clipped from www.readwriteweb.com

Amazingly, though many of these novels are released in serialized form for free via a mobile web site called "Maho no i-rando" (Magic Island), which provides tools for people to write their own mobile phone novels, Japanese youths are still buying them in record numbers when they're published in traditional paper bound form. The reason, speculates one editor at Goma Books, which publishes a number of keitai shousetsu, is that many readers send suggestions and critiques to authors by email while the story is unfolding and end up feeling as if they had a hand in helping craft the novel. For readers, purchasing a hard copy provides a physical keepsake of the work they were so emotionally invested in.