The NOVEL IDEA concept was successfully launched at the Cape Town Book Fair, with lots of people signing on to a refreshing approach to reading a book. It's part of the larger MOBfest initiative, which inspires innovative content creation on the mobile platform. Novel Idea is grown-up literary content for people who'd like to read something a bit more exciting than their “love horoscope” on their phones. These brand-new stories have been commissioned specifically for the cellphone platform. Each author has written a story in 28 episodes. Each cliffhanger episode is 900 or less characters long: short and taut. Novel Idea members will receive (nearly) free episodes of

 

their selected stories daily. The writers participating in Novel Idea are all published authors whose short mobile stories range from a blind-date thriller to an animal smuggler adventure story.

It's easy to register - and you want to register by the 7 July when the stories start being published, simply SMS the word NOVEL to 33879 and you’re in for a whole lot of fiction on your phone.

Readers will also get to vote for their top writer and create South Africa's first award winning “mobilist”.

The authors participating in this first round of Novel Idea are:
Diane Awerbuck (award-winning author of Gardening at Night),
Lauren Beukes (author of hot new futuristic novel Moxyland),
Richard de Nooy (Six Fang Marks and a Tetanus Shot),
Robyn Goss (And So Say All of Us...),
Sarah Lotz (Pompidou Posse),
Henrietta Rose-Innes (The Rock Alphabet),
Stephan Simm (aka “Miss Kwa Kwa”),
Zukiswa Wanner (The Madams),
Sam Wilson (Urbo).

More information is also available on the Novel Idea WAP site , the Novel Idea website , the Novel Idea blog and the Novel Idea Facebook group .