The Independent writes about the popularity of cell phone (ketai) novels and manga in Japan, including a fashion tale called Catwalk Beat:

More than seven million people downloaded the mobile manga, and the fashions from Catwalk Beat have been produced for real and are available to buy online. And while this may eventually be published as a traditional comic book, it is more enjoyable on the mobile as the phone vibrates whenever there’s a tense moment.

(Via Anime Vice.)

At Robot 6, Park Cooper provides an interesting glimpse into the process of getting his new iPhone comic, Gun Street Girl, accepted for iTunes and adapted to the format. Plans are in the works to put the story up on the web in PDF form as well.

Yaoi Press just announced that it will put almost all of its manga on iTunes. Yaoi Press publishes non-Japanese yaoi (male-male romances) of various levels of explicitness. Here’s their description of the new service:

Young adult titles will be presented in their entirety. Mature readers titles will be modified as little as possible to adhere to ITune’s content policies.

A 120 page manga is turned into a 500+ page ap for the IPhone. Each page is one or two panels so there isn’t the need for excessive scrolling.

Launch titles include the young-adult manga Zesty.

Xavier Xerxes reports that Clickwheel has relaunched and revamped their interface, which is good because the last time I looked it contained zero information for anyone who wanted to read their comics.

UClick and Digital Manga Publishing have announced their latest manga app for the iPhone: Vampire Hunter D. The first volume is available now for 99 cents for each of its six chapters.