A Novel Method of Publishing Novels: Prerna Gupta and Parag Chordia of Telepathic Publish Books by Text Messages

The first cell phone novel appeared in Japan in 2003. Is texting a novel in snippets the next step?

On December 2, 2016 an article by Gene Marks in The Washington Post drew my attention to a novel method of publishing novels—the smart phone app appropriately called HOOKED developed Prerna Gupta and Parag Chordia of Telepathic, which calls itself "A Narrative Technology Company." The app sends a series of snippets of a book as texts to users, and then pauses. If the reader of the texts then wants to read the complete work they can subscribe to the texting service by the week, month or year. As Marks wrote:

"There are about 200 writers who create stories specifically for the app, and the criteria is specific. They must be addictive and cut to the chase – not too much character development, complex imagery and flowery language. 'While I don’t think it was a great piece of literature,' Ha wrote. 'I have to admit that the mystery grabbed me – I kept hitting the ‘Next’ button until I reached the end.' "