EL James famously wrote the first version of her Fifty Shades of Grey book as Twilight fan-fiction and published it online. Now an app called Kink is aiming to unearth a new wave of romance and adult-fiction authors – by getting them to write stories together on their smartphones.

Released for Apple’s iPhone, the app encourages people to choose a pen name, then invite other users to collaborate with them on short stories by taking turns to write new paragraphs of up to 280 characters.

People can also promote themselves and their stories within the app and chat to other users, with its developer seemingly pitching it partly as a literary dating app judging by the “seduce someone with your writing” tagline in its app store listing.

Like much of its potential content, Kink isn’t one size fits all. Up to four people can collaborate on stories of micro (four turns), standard (eight turns) or epic (16 turns) length.

They can also upload images within the stories if they buy a £2.29 in-app upgrade, and tag them to help readers find them within the app. Writers will also be able to work on stories alone if they prefer.

Kink is far from the first app aiming to get people writing from their smartphones. Wattpad is the most high-profile example – albeit not focused on erotica – with more than 35m registered users and 70m stories by September 2014.

If Kink does unearth some successors to EL James, they’ll need to read the terms and conditions of its app before trying to sell their work though.

“We will not own the copyright in any of the work you publish individually or in collaboration with other users of the App and you or you and the people you have written in collaboration with, will be credited as the owner(s) of the original work that is published through the App,” it explains.

Then comes the catch. “You grant the right for us and only us, to use, adapt, publish and sell any work you publish individually or in collaboration with others of the App.” Kink will pay authors a 20% royalty rate on any such sales.