Jacob Lewis — the founder of Figment.com — discusses teens, cell phone novels, and why he started a mobile publishing platform
Friends Without Benefits: Cell Phone Novel Publisher Figment On Building Social Networks
By Jacob Lewis This is the story of how one Internet startup decided not to be a social network. It begins with the phenomenon of Japanese cell phone novels, where teens, by the millions, are reading, writing, and sharing fiction on their cell phones. Their stories are tangled tales of love triangles — the kids who write these stories often …
Teenage Thumb Tribes: Why Cell Phone Novels are Part of Publishing’s Future
This article appeared in our print edition for BookExpo America 2010. You can read the original here. By Jacob Lewis When I was seventeen, after reading Portnoy’s Complaint, I send an adoring note to Philip Roth. It was a revelatory book for me, and I wanted to tell him how drawn I was to it. He never responded. I met …