By Lauren Barack
September 7, 2010
Care to read Macbeth or King Lear on your cellphone? A new micro site aimed at teens lets readers download short book chapters of 200 to 400 words--all for free on their mobile phones.
Tagged Yoza, the online library is based on writing portals in Japan, where other so-called m-novels are "huge," says Steve Vosloo, project leader on the South Africa-headquartered Yoza and a 21st Century Learning fellow with the Shuttleworth Foundation, which provides funding for projects that drive social innovation in the field of education.
How does it work? Anyone who can write a great m-novel or book review is eligible to be published on Yoza. Contributors will receive a byline and a link to their blog or website. Although there's no monetary payment, writers do get exposure and the "experience of writing for a youth audience on cellphones," says the Yoza website.
Authors own the copyright to their original material and anything that gets produced will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license, which means others can freely copy and remix their stories and even sell them.
"Yoza is the new space for short cellphone stories, aka m-novels," reads its website. "They are hip, interactive and free. Read them, leave comments on the chapters and enter the writing competitions to win airtime. Each main story is a series: chapters are published daily. Think soapies on your phone."
Currently, there are four terrific new stories: "Kontax" (adventure), "Sisterz" (romance), "Confessions" (teen issues), and "Streetskillz" (soccer). There are also other great one-off stories, such as a bicycle ride through Lesotho, as well as Yoza Classics like Romeoand Juliet and Othello. Some 47 people had submitted stories to the site as of mid-August, says Vosloo.
Steve Vosloo
Aimed at teens specifically in South Africa, the site is accessible to anyone with a PC or mobile phone web browser. And with its first story, "Kontax," written at just 20-pages, Yoza offers fairly quick and easy reading, attracting more than 35,000 subscribers, plus more than 2,000 comments, says Vosloo.
E-books have exploded across the world--along with iPads, Kindles, and other devices that support them. However, reading over cell phones hasn't taken off as yet since small screens can make longer reads challenging. But for teens, some of whom aren't prolific readers or who likely find the costs of Kindles and iPads prohibitive, the ability to download and read short bites could encourage greater literacy, especially in countries where physical libraries aren't as accessible.
Nearly all the stories on the site are in English, and one has run in isiXhosa, one of the official languages of South Africa. While most comments are in English, Vosloo hopes as readership increases, more global voices will appear on the site, noting "We'd love to see lots more languages on Yoza (an Afrikaans m-novel is being written right now)."
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