Reaching Readers via Cell Phones

A little less than a year ago, a new piece of software was launched in England that has traditional publishing houses chasing young readers with renewed interest. Technology Review reports that ICUE software lets users read novels on their cell phone without the irritation of constantly scrolling through blocks of text displayed on the small screen. Instead, the text is flashed on the screen one word (or short phrase) at a time. The simple java application is based on the tachistoscope, a rapid image recognition device. Invented by the United States Air Force, it was first used to train pilots to recognize enemy planes from a distance. The device was later used to teach speed-reading techniques.

ICUE has entered into licensing deals for cell-phone e-books with major publishers like HarperCollins, Pan Macmillan, Pearson, Simon and Schuster, and Egmont, all of which have extensive young-adult or educational catalogs. While Tappuni says the company plans to launch ICUE in the United States, it will only do so once it has cracked the more technologically sophisticated UK market. “The UK is 18 months to two years ahead of the US cellular market,” ICUE Managing Director Jane Tappuni says. “Only 35 percent of Americans have sent a text message, as compared to almost 100 percent in the UK.”

“I’m fed up with having to let superb backlist titles go out of print when sales dwindle to a paltry few hundred because the majority of retailers don’t keep them on range,” says Cally Poplak, director of Egmont Press. “I’m fed up with having to turn down sensational teen fiction because it’s such a struggle to secure reasonable sales. This frustration has encouraged me to think about our industry in a different way.” And no doubt, in time, it will get those here thinking along similar lines, especially if, as Project Gutenburg cofounder Michael Hart predicts, the much-ballyhooed Sony Reader ends up flopping because, like other dedicated hardware readers, “it’s totally the wrong business plan for the Internet age.”

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