Concerning the Series Format on Medium
Do you remember the Cell Phone Novel craze of the early 2010s?
Being both an Android user and a Desktop user has kept me from barred from both writing and accessing the small note cards on Medium. While I am used to waiting for apps to come to Android phones (I’m looking at you, Co-Star), I think about the misfortune that Series are not eligible for the Partner Program.
Does anyone remember the site textnovel.com?
For those who haven’t heard of textnovel.com before, it was similar to Medium in that anyone could publish, but it was focused more on the fiction genre. It was started around 2008, quickly gaining popularity for being the site where Secondhand Memories was being published. The writer, Takatsu, was hailed as pioneering the cell-phone novel movement in the Western world.
Cell phone novels were immensely popular in Japan, with some of the most popular stories like Koizora and Deep Love being published physically and even getting adapted into movies. Each chapter contains between 70 and 100 words, allowing for a different way of approaching each chapter.
The mobile-based format of Series lends itself to this format of writing. I plan on using Series to write some cell phone novels.
To be frank, I am writing this article hoping for a resurgence of cell phone novels in the West, or at least North America. With the popularity of Medium, Series could easily be a new form of monetizable content for writers by incorporating — or advertising — to those who feel nostalgia for the days of the cell phone novel.
