By Staff Writer – Boonsri Dickinson (@boonspoon)

Screw the pen and paper. All novelists really need is a cell phone and a steady thumb — and of course, a juicy plot.

At least that’s the deal in Japan. A 15-year-old teenager who goes by “Bunny,” wrote a three-volume book called “Wolf Boy x Natural Girl.” The mobile book was so popular, it was printed as a real book and sold more than 110,000 paperback copies. And the high school love story has made more than $611,000.

By using a keitai novel website, anyone can write novels on their cell phone, but are limited to 1,000 characters per page. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Keitai writers can choose to “publish” their online content immediately or keep it unlisted. Most writers upload the content as they finish so they get instant feedback from the readers, who access the stories on the website and click through the pages. Authors respond to readers by correcting errors and, in some cases, altering story lines.

Some literary critics look down on keitai novels because they are predictable and are written by people who have never written a book before. Regardless of the “quality,” there is certainly a demand for the mobile novels.

In fact, the content provider Maho i-Land Co. has sold one million books online and has 6 million users. The company only publishes its most popular online books into the real deal — and that platform seems to be working for them. Each novel that has been taken out of its mobile form and put into print has sold more than 100,000 copies.

Image: flickr/ JonJon2K8

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