Publisher Aims at Cellphones (reg required)

Publisher Random House is making a move onto mobile phones, buying a minority stake in educational mobile content provider Vocel. Two product lines are already in the works (Living Language, a series of foreign-language self-study programs, and Prima Games, which publishes video-game strategy guides) and we can expect more to follow. From the two examples here, Random House has given some thought to which publications best suit the mobile platform. A language program you can take with you will be ideal for some people, especially if it comes with voice training, and video-game strategy guides can also make use of the multi-media capabilities of mobiles in a way it can’t do with the printed word. I haven’t seen either of these products, so I hope Random House is doing something useful with the platform. I think mobile publishing will take off when writers and publishers consider the kinds of things people would want to read on their mobiles, and get used to the different format which will require a different style of publishing.

Comments have been disabled for this post