By Natasha Elkington

TORONTO (Reuters Life!) - An Italian writer decided to put his cell phone to good use during his daily commute to and from work - using it to write a book which has now been published.

In what is believed to be a world first, Robert Bernocco, an IT professional in Piedmont, northern Italy, wrote a 384-page science fiction novel, "Compagni di Viaggo" ("Fellow Travelers"), on his Nokia using the phone's typing system.

"It really was a time management issue. He had a book in him and really wanted to write it but found he just didn't have the time to sit and do it on a computer," said Gail Jordan, a spokeswoman for the book's online publisher, Lulu.com.

Writing in standard Italian rather than text message shorthand, Bernocco divided his manuscript into short paragraphs, saved them on his phone and then downloaded them onto his home computer for proof-reading and editing.

The book, which is believed to be the first book ever written on a cell phone and published, took him 17 weeks to complete.

"Only a few years ago I would have struggled to find both the time and the publisher to enable me to create this book," Bernocco said in a statement.

"Thanks to my Nokia and Lulu, I am now proud to be a published author."

Lulu.com was founded in 2002 by Canadian businessman Bob Young, who also co-founded software company Red Hat Inc., to publish books, videos and other multimedia products on the Internet.

"The fact that this gentleman had this - no pun intended - novel idea to do it off his phone and found it so simple to then upload it on our site and create a book speaks exactly to what we do, we are time saving for people," Jordan told Reuters.

There are about 323,000 items published on Lulu.com with Bernocco's book ranked at 19,720 by sales, selling for $17.38. Lulu.com recoups expenses and takes a 20 percent cut of the profit on a book sale.