Masayoshi Yoshino, president of Goma Books, said in his opening remarks, "We never imagined it would take off like this, and are just astounded. This all started the year before last, when we consulted with Mahô i-land about a publication to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of our company. More than three million cell phone novels have been published so far this year. I want to establish this not simply as a fad, but as a new kind of culture."

A mobile phone novel typically contains between 200 and 500 pages, with each page containing about 500 Japanese characters. The novels are read on a cell phone screen page by page, the way one would surf the web, and are downloadable for around $10 each. The first mobile phone novel was written six years ago by fiction writer Yoshi, but the trend picked up in the last couple years when high-school girls with no previous publishing experience started posting stories they wrote on community portals for others to download and read on their cell phones.