"When I worked in advertising, I learned to think for the customers, and as a writer, I have learned to think for the readers," Mr. He said in a telephone interview on Friday.

"In this age, with a flood of information, I thought it was cruel to force readers to wrestle with a 200,000-word book."

"Out of the Fortress" made its debut at 10 o'clock this morning.

The first words paraphrased a famous literary passage from another author, Zhang Ailing, a coded message between two lovers arranging their secret rendezvous: "Meet the one you met for thousands of years, in the borderless wilderness of the time, neither a step before nor a step behind. Be there right on time."

The idea of publishing his book by telephone evolved naturally, said Mr. He, a native of Inner Mongolia who now resides in the southern city of Guangzhou.

"My last book, 'Red Horse,' was published on Sina.com in installments, and I found it very comfortable to read it online," he said.

"I thought with the change of technology there could be new ways of reading, and then I thought of my cellphone, because I am a huge cellphone fan. It has become an indispensable electronic organ for me."

His mobile telephone will become an important source of income, too.

With the publication of "Out of the Fortress," Mr. He has become a media star, with more than 100 journalists interviewing him recently.

Mr. He said he had received an advance of 180,000 Chinese yuan, or more than $20,000, for the book from hurray.com.cn.

Another company in Taiwan has offered him an even larger sum for the publishing rights there.

Asked to describe the novel in 70 words or less, Mr. He failed woefully, speaking for several minutes before being informed he had exceeded his word limit.

"The word fortress is a metaphor for marriage in Chinese," Mr. He said, among many other things. "People on the inside want to get out. People on the outside want to get in, meaning having extramarital affairs.

"My book is about two people who have a passionate affair, which is not supported by morality or law, but is very understandable."

If Mr. He's explanation of his book's theme ran on a bit, his timing is impeccable, when e-mail has replaced old-fashioned letters only to be replaced in turn by text messages in much of the world.

With its phenomenal economic growth and huge ambitions, China is in the throes of change.

Many of the urban landscapes here were not even blueprints a decade ago, and the zeitgeist seems to be, "Why bother with itsy-bitsy evolutionary steps when you can build something new altogether?"