Writer Wen Huajian recently published his new novel – but it's quite different from his previous ones and probably any other Chinese novels out there: this one is made up of chapters written on his microblog, 140 characters a time.

Weibo Shiqi De Aiqing (Love in the Age of Microblogging), a story about a romance between a middle-aged writer and a famous actress, is recognized as the first microblog novel in China.

Wen was inspired by people he met on his microblog 15 months ago. He set the main storyline but allowed readers to interact and suggest details as the story evolved post-by-post on his Sina microblog.

His narrative finished at around 500 posts in January and attracted more than 126,000 readers.

"My idea was simple. I saw so many people turning to a short-form blog as they were looking for something easy to digest," Wen explained in a press conference earlier this week. "So I decided to write something different, something bite-sized."

In Wen's understanding, microblog novels should include people who blog themselves, the things they talk about and their slang and idioms, such as emoticons.The most important thing, he said, was that every post of 140 words must end with a cliffhanger or an open-ended question.

Microblog novels are evolving into a phenomenon in other countries, especially Japan, which constantly hosts contests for the world's latest literature form.

Even so, before Wen's book got published, few people saw the market potential in the genre as being particularly lucrative, as microblogs are free to access.

"It is a brand new style of literature.Besides that, there are still many people who prefer paper books. With delicate writing and page design, it is a different experience from reading on the screen," said Tian Xuefeng, head of Shenyang Publishing House, Wen's publisher. "It does have risks to invest in [this], but which book does not?"

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