The new, new thing in Japan: write a novel on a mobile phone

You think BlackBerry users are weird because because they don't mind hammering out email messages with their thumbs? Well, in Japan a new generation of authors are writing entire novels on their mobile phones. This article relates that "half of Japan's top-10 selling works of fiction in the first six months of the year were composed ... on the tiny handset of a mobile phone."

The writing style is characterized by "clipped one-liners, emoticons and spaces (used to show that a character is thinking), all of which can be read easily on a mobile phone interface."

One such novel is Moshimo Kimiga, written by a nursery school teacher on her mobile phone and originally distributed in installments to mobile phone readers. Now that it is available in hard cover, it has sold 420,000 copies since January.

I still can't decide if this is a wonderful example of making an art previously practiced by a relative few available to the many, or if it's just depressingly weird. You tell me!