The Taipei World Trade Center is holding a comic book exhibition, where numerous fans are lining up to grab their dream products before they are sold out. Although comic books are the exhibition's main attraction, a new genre called "light novel" is getting more and more attention. Now let's find out what makes this new form of novel so appealing.

Although the cover of these two books both look like comic books and contain the same storyline, one of them is actually a novella that extendeds from the comic book.

While the main characters in the comic book have only 2-3 lines of dialogue, the novella take up 2-3 pages which elaborate on the character's facial expressions, emotional transitions, and subsequent intentions.

The climactic parts of the story are even supplemented with graphic illustrations appearing every few pages.

The visual effect is not only stimulating, it offers readers a chance to explore their own imaginations.

This year's comic exhibition has included numerous novellas which were a Japanese trend 5-6 years ago.

And because of the technological advances, people can now download these stories to read on their cell phones.

Readers can even create their own fan fiction and upload them online to share with others.

It is estimated that the number of novellas published in Taiwan has grown 20-30 percent from last year.

Some predict that as electronic reading devices become more common and multi-functional, novellas will get to ride on another wave of popularity and motivate even more readers to get involved.