The Future of the Book: Chapter III

书的未来：第三章

 

In which new sorts of author meet new sorts of reader

新型作者遇到新型读者

 

Before the 19th century it was common for writers to publish themselves, a practice that carried no particular stigma, but imposed a significant burden of inconvenience on seller and buyer alike. One author in Paris had to direct buyers to his home on “Mazarine Street…above the Café de Montpellier, on the second floor using the staircase on the right, at the far end of the alley”. As publishing became a mass-market business in subsequent centuries, the self-published came to be seen as kooks or egotists, and treated as marginal in either case. Readers went to bookshops, bookshops bought from publishers and that was the way it was. Bookshops mostly refused to stock them. Today self publishing has made a comeback. The internet enables people to sell their e-books and print books without the hassle of directing people to their homes or trying to get bookstores to display them. It also offers them success on a scale never before possible.

 

十九世纪以前，作者自己出书很普遍，这不是什么羞耻之事，但给卖书和买书的人都带来了很大的不便。巴黎的一名作者不得不告诉买家，自己的家位于“Mazarine大街……蒙彼利埃咖啡馆的楼上，从右手边的楼梯上到二楼，走到走廊尽头”。之后几个世纪里，出版变成了一个大众市场的生意，自己出书的人开始被视作怪咖或自大狂，无论哪一种，都被当作边缘人群对待。读者去书店，书店从出版商那里买书，这是图书行业的操作模式。书店基本上拒绝囤书。如今，自出版东山再起。有了互联网，人们可以出售自己写的电子书，也可以印刷出书，而不需要再费力告诉别人去自己家的路线，或者想办法让书店愿意展示推介自己的书。就规模而言，网络给他们带来的成功前所未有。

 

At last spring’s London Book Fair there was a booth rented by eight authors who said that, between them, they had sold a staggering 16m books and spent weeks on the New York Times bestseller list – all without the help of a traditional publisher. They are used to having their claims dismissed; Bella Andre, a self-published romance writer with an economics degree from Stanford, got so irked when a publisher challenged her heady sales figures that she took a picture of a bank statement and sent it to him. “No one is counting our books in any survey that comes out in the media,” sighed Barbara Freethy, another romance writer. She says that, as of September, she has sold over 4.8m books.

 

在2013年春天的伦敦书展上，租用了同一个展位的八名作者说，他们统共卖出了数目惊人的1600万册书，登上《纽约时报》畅销书榜数周，这都是在没有传统出版商经手的情况下实现的。人们通常都不相信他们这些话，对此他们已经习以为常。自己出版爱情小说的作者贝拉·安德烈（Bella Andre）持有斯坦福大学的经济学学位。曾有一名出版商质疑她说的那些振奋人心的销售数字，这让她大为恼火，拍了一张银行账单的照片传给对方。“媒体上发布的那些调查从来不把我们的书计算在内。”另一位爱情小说作者叹气道。她说，到9月份她已经卖出了480多万册书。

 

To write a book costs nothing but time. To hire an editor, cover designer, formatter and publicist can, if you think them necessary, be done for $2,000 or less. Amazon will publish and sell the resultant e-book to any of its 250m customers who may be interested; smaller sites will do the same, and many offer print-on-demand sales, too. Authors who self publish an e-book through Amazon get up to 70% of net sales, as opposed to the 25% they might get on an e-book that went through a publisher. Last year Amazon’s sales of self-published books were around $450m, according to one estimate; a former Amazon executive thinks the number is higher. In America about a quarter of the books that got an ISBN in 2012 were self-published, according to Bowker – almost 400,000 titles. In 2013 self-published books accounted for one out of every five e-books purchased in Britain, according to Nielsen.

 

写书的唯一成本是时间。若你认为有必要，你可以雇一名编辑、封面设计师、排版员、宣传人员，不超过2000美元就能搞定。亚马逊会出版你的电子书，把它卖给其2.5亿用户中任何对它感兴趣的人；更小的网站也会这么做，许多还提供按需印刷的销售方式。通过亚马逊自己出版电子书的作者最多能拿到销售净额的70%，而通过出版商出版电子书只可能拿到25%。据估计，2013年亚马逊自出版图书的销售额在4.5亿美元左右；网站的一名前主管认为实际数字更高。根据Bowker的数据，在美国，2012年拿到ISBN的图书中约四分之一为自出版，共约40万本。根据尼尔森的数据，2013年英国销售的每五本书中就有一本为自出版。

 

“Wool” started off as a short story online about a subterranean city called the Silo. Reader enthusiasm and feedback encouraged its author, Hugh Howey, to extend it into a novel. More enthusiasm followed. Simon & Schuster, a big publisher, did an unusual deal to license rights to the print book, while Mr Howey continued to sell the e-book off his own bat. It became a bestseller and may become a film. The film of “Fifty Shades of Grey”, the poster-child for online fiction, hits cinemas next year. Like “Wool”, E.L. James’s “Fifty Shades...” started off online, and some of its e-book success has been attributed to the fact that reading erotica is more discreetly done on a tablet. But since being acquired by Random House it has done remarkably well in its printed form, too. All told, it and its two sequels have chalked up sales of over 100m worldwide.

 

《羊毛战记》（Wool）最初是发布在网上的一则短故事，描述Silo这座地下城市里发生的事。读者的热情和反馈鼓舞作者休·豪伊（Hugh Howey）把它扩写成一篇小说。继而引发了更多的狂热。大型出版商西蒙与舒斯特（Simon & Schuster）做了一笔不寻常的交易，买下了纸质书版权。而豪伊继续以一己之力销售电子版。它变成了一本畅销书，可能还会被拍成电影。根据网络小说代表作《五十度灰》（Fifty Shades of Grey）翻拍的电影已经上映。和《羊毛战记》一样，E·L·詹姆斯（E.L. James）的《五十度灰》也是从网络起步，这本电子书的成功部分要归功于一点：人们可以在平板电脑上更私密地阅读色情作品。但自从兰登书屋买下版权后，其纸质书同样大卖。这本书和它的两本续集在全球总共卖出了逾一亿册。

 

Like Ms James, most writers still sign with publishers when they have the chance, because print books remain such a sizeable chunk of the market. But the self-publishing boom is changing how those publishers work. Self-published authors attract readers by selling their books for just a few dollars and are aggressive about offering promotions to boost sales. This puts pressure on publishers’ prices – especially in genre fiction, where self publishing is most powerful. In the past five years the revenues of Harlequin, a publisher of romantic fiction, have dropped by around $100m; in May it was purchased by HarperCollins.

 

和詹姆斯一样，一旦有机会，大部分作者还是会和出版商签约，因为纸质书的市场份额依然庞大。但自出版的蓬勃发展正在改变出版商的工作方式。自出版作者以几美元的价格售书以吸引读者，他们也很积极地打折促销。这对出版商的定价造成了压力，尤其在类型小说这个自出版最强大的领域。过去五年爱情小说出版商Harlequin的销售额下跌了约一亿美元，2014年5月它被哈珀柯林斯（HarperCollins）收购。

 

As well as changing what publishers can charge for some types of book, self publishing also changes how they go about finding them. Publishers hoping to spot the next hot thing have started to scour online writing sites, such as Wattpad, where people receive feedback on their work from other users. Any interest they show is normally warmly appreciated. In the past 12 months the average earnings for self-published authors have probably been around $1,180, reckons Mark Coker, the boss of Smashwords, a self-publishing platform, with most of them getting less than that. Such authors find themselves highly dependent on Amazon’s recommendation system and websites that offer promotions to boost their sales; most readers still gravitate to books that have been professionally written, edited and reviewed.

 

除了导致出版社调整对某几类图书的定价，自出版也改变了他们挖掘新书的方式。想要找到下一本热门书的出版商已经开始搜索写作网站比如Wattpad，在那里人们从其他用户那里获得对自己作品的反馈。出版商显现出的任何兴趣通常都深受欢迎。自出版平台Smashwords的老板马克·科克尔（Mark Coker）估计，过去12个月中，自出版作者的平均收入可能在1180美元左右，而其中大部分人的收入低于这个数字。这些作者发现自己极大地依赖亚马逊的推荐系统，以及其他提供打折促销的网站；大部分读者仍然青睐那些专业撰写、编辑和评论的书。

 

But the advantages of being “properly published” – editors, promotion, and the like – should not be oversold. “We have to be careful not to compare the reality of self publishing with the ideal of legacy publishing,” says Barry Eisler, a thriller writer. In 2011 he walked away from a publisher’s advance of $500,000 in favour of the self-publishing route; he says the decision paid off well. Susan Orlean, an author and a staff writer at the New Yorker, considered something similar for a recent book. “In a million years I would have never thought of that before,” she says. She thinks the day will come when publishers may have to start unbundling their services. “The mere fact that publishers make hardcover books won’t be a powerful enough argument. They will have to reimagine their role.” Publishers could start offering “light” versions of their services, such as print-only distribution, or editing, and not taking a cut of the whole pie.

 

不过，所谓“正规出版”——带有编辑、推广和诸如此类环节——的优势不应被过度吹嘘。“我们得小心，不要拿传统出版的理想情形和自出版的现实相比。”恐怖小说作者巴里·艾斯勒（Barry Eisler）说。2011年，他放弃了一家出版社50万美元的预付款，而选择了自己出版。他说这个决定获得了很好的回报。作家及《纽约客》杂志的专职撰稿人苏姗·奥尔良（Susan Orlean）正在为自己最近写的一本书做类似的考虑。“过去我绝不会想到（自出版）。”她说。她认为会有这样一天，出版商将开始分拆自己的服务。“单单能够制造精装版图书不具有足够的说服力。他们得重新设想自己的角色。”出版商可以开始提供“轻”版服务，比如只做纸质发行或编辑，而不再从总收入中提成。

 

Publishers realise that they have to change. “Publishers will only be relevant if they can give authors evidence that they can connect their works to more readers than anybody else,” admits Markus Dohle, who runs Penguin Random House, the world’s largest consumer-book publisher. Such connection is crucial, because the same technology that is making it easier for people to publish their own books is also making it easier for them to explore new ways of finding, sharing, discussing and indeed emulating the books of others. (Ms James’s “Fifty Shades of Grey” started off as fan-fiction based on the characters of Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling “Twilight” books.) From online reviews to the world’s numerous literary festivals to all sorts of social media, writers are ever more aware of and available to their audiences. Ms Orlean says she was used to “writing into the void”, but now posts regularly about what she is working on. For her and others the contact seems like an opportunity. Others find it irksome. Most, probably, see it as a bit of both. But it is not going away. And it is not entirely new.

 

出版商意识到他们必须做出改变。“出版商要向作者们证明，和任何其他人相比，他们能让作品覆盖最多的读者，唯有这时他们才是重要的。”运营全球最大的大众图书出版商企鹅兰登书屋（Penguin Random House）的马库斯·多勒（Markus Dohle）说。和读者的这种联系至关重要，这是因为，让人们更容易自己出书的技术也让他们更容易探索新途径来发现、分享、讨论甚至模仿他人的作品。（詹姆斯的《五十度灰》最初就是粉丝小说，基于斯黛芬尼·迈耶（Stephenie Meyer）的畅销书《暮光之城》（Twilight）中的人物写就。）从网上书评到全球不计其数的文学节，到各类社交媒体，作者们越来越注意到读者的存在，也越来越贴近读者。奥尔良说，自己过去习惯“对着虚空写作”，但现在会定期发帖子告诉大家自己正在写什么。对于她和其他一些人来说，这种接触看似一种机会。但另一些人对此感到厌烦。或许在大部分人眼中，两者感受兼而有之。但这种联系不会消失不见。而它也不是全新的。

 

In Cicero’s day authors ready to launch their newest work would gather their friends at home or in a public hall for a spirited recitatio, or reading. Audiences would cry out when they liked a particular passage. Nervous authors enlisted their friends to lend support, and sometimes even filled seats with hired “clappers”. They were keenly aware of the importance of networking to get influential acquaintances to recommend their works to others. The creation of books started off as something both personal and social; the connection embodied in that dual nature is at the heart of what makes books so good at refining and advancing thought. It was just that the practicalities of publishing in the printing-press age made the personal connections a bit harder to see.

 

在古希腊西塞罗的时代，当作者们预备发布新作时，会在家里或公共会所聚集朋友，精神饱满地背诵或朗读自己的作品。听众喜欢某一段时会大声说出来。紧张的作者会找些朋友来捧场，有时甚至找“托儿”来填场子。他们非常明白人脉的重要性，会找有影响力的熟人来把自己的作品推荐给他人。书在创生之初兼有个人和社会属性；而书之所以成为改善和发展思想的绝佳工具，这种双重属性所包含的联系是关键所在。只不过，在印刷时代，出版的实用性使得这种个人联系有点更难被看到。

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