因为要考博的缘故，我最近花20天的时间“翻完”了范里安的《微观经济学：现代观点》（中文，第六版，上海三联），感慨万千！ 以 前在读多恩布什的《宏观经济学》（中文）（详见站内链接http://www.pinggu.org/bbs /dispbbs.asp?BoardID=48replyID=11484id=2251skin=0）、范里安的《微 观经济学（高级教程）》（经济科学出版社）和罗默的《高级宏观经济学》（中文版，商务和上海财经大学）时，我就感受到了翻译版教材的“糟糕”！这次的经历 足使“翻译之害”让我刻骨铭心！ Varian的 《Intermediate Microeconomics》在经济学界口碑很好。在这次“痛苦之历”之前，我学习过这本英文教材。虽然当时只是挑核心部分读，但其连贯的逻辑和优美的 文笔已给我留下深刻的印象！但存在一个问题：虽然读懂了，但记不住！这样肯定经不起考试的检验。于是，我只好抱着一种诚惶诚恐的心理翻开中文版的教材！我 发誓，如果不是考试，我绝不会读翻译版教材！ 有 人可能会问，“20天’翻完’这本教材，不可能吧？”我对此问题的回答是:你不完全对？对的一面是：从第三十章“交换”开始，我就翻不动了；为了赶进度， 我硬着头皮翻了下去，虽然很多时候都不知道它在说什么，不知道它的逻辑；错的一面是：我精读过高鸿业编的《西方经济学》、平狄克等著的《微观经济学》（中 文）、蒋殿春的《高级微观经济学》，阅读过一些经济学文献，有一定的基础，所以就翻得快。详细情况，且听我细细道来： 总 体上讲，这是一本内容比较全的中级微观经济学教材。与高的《西经》和平狄克等的《微观》相比，它新增的内容主要体现在不同偏好的具体讨论、显示性偏好理 论、斯勒茨基方程、等利润线、福利经济学定理等。因为“好”是一本教科书理所当然的责任，所以我就没必要再为它树碑立传了！再说，市场已经强有力地证明了 这一点！我要说的是它做得相对不够好的地方！ 首 先，很多地方写得不够细致！例如，它没有明确边际替代率MRS12的下标的经济含义。MRS12指消费者为再获得一单位商品1而愿意放弃的商品2的最大数 量，或者指要消费者放弃一单位商品1而必须付出的商品2的最小数量。他的这个小疏忽在许多地方给学生的理解带来了麻烦！这一点在其复习题中体现得最为明 显。如第3章后的习题9，What is you marginal rate of substitution of ﹩1 bills for ﹩5 bills?显然，答案是-1/5,因为我们为了多得一单位的1美元钞票至多愿意放弃-1/5美元的5美元钞票。但是他给出的答案是“-1/5或者-5， 这取决于你把哪种商品看作横轴”。还有第31章后的习题4，“如果鲁滨逊的椰子和鱼之间的边际替代率是-2，……”；看到这个题干，我马上就会想到 MRS12＝-2（1代表椰子，2代表鱼），但他的答案的理解跟我恰好相反！想一想，如果这是考试，谁该对我的差成绩负责？高的教材在这点上做得很好。再 者，“成本曲线”那一章就没有高的教材写得好；（顺便提一下，我对高的教材的评价越来越高！）“垄断行为”、“寡头垄断”那两章跟平狄克的教材相差甚远！ 当然，这些都可能是它为“内容全面”而必须付出的代价！ 其 次，有些地方出现了错误！翻译版在开始讲线性需求曲线加总（pp.219）时，说明了两个线性需求函数加总后得到的需求函数会出现扭者，但在讲线性价格歧 视时（pp364、pp.365）,它忽略了这一点，简单的把它们加了起来。这种做法肯定是错误的，因为如果边际成本足够大，那么就这种做法会导致错误的 答案。书上的答案之所以正确，是因为边际成本小！在第29章讲足球赛中罚点球的混合策略均衡（pp.423-426）时,作者也出现了不少错误！图 29.4的反应曲线，把行和列的标反了（pp.427）！可能因为前面的部分“翻”得相当快，所以没发现什么错误。 最 后，关于翻译！译者的翻译能力确实很强，佩服！个人认为，此书总体上翻译得比《微观经济学高级教程》（经济科学）和《高级宏观经济学》（商务、上财）要好 很多，但比平狄克的《微观》要差那么一点。在读平狄克的《微观》时，我没遇到很多拗口的句子，但读此书时，遇到的不知所云的句子实在太多了。下面以最后一 章《不对称信息》为例具体谈谈。 开头第一段 （pp.544），“在前面所有的关于市场的研究中，我们舍弃了信息不同引起的问题。假设购买者和销售者对于市场销售的商品的质量都有完全的信息。如果商 品的质量很容易检验，这个假设就可以获得辩解。如果容易指出哪种商品是高质量的商品和哪种商品是低质量的商品，那么商品的价格就能做出反映质量差异的调 整”。有一定经济学基础的人都知道这段话是什么意思，但是读起来相当拗口！！谁和谁“信息不同”，哪里的“信息不同”，“信息不同”到底指什么东西？“一 个假设可以获得辩解”这样的句子在中文中几乎没有出现过。让我们看看原文吧！“So far in our study of markets we have not examined the problems raised by differences in information: by assumption buyers and sellers were both perfectly informed about the quality of the goods being sold in the market. This assumption can be defended if it is easy to verify the quality of an item. if it is not costly to tell which goods are high-quality goods and which are low quality goods, then the prices of the goods will simply adjust to reflect the quality differences.”整段三句话，里面的词汇没有一个超过高中生水平的。虽然我不是英美人，但读起来就是舒服。我翻译如下：“在前面所有关于市场的 分析中，我们没有考虑交易者拥有的信息量不同所带来的问题，因为我们假定了买卖双方都完全了解市场上交易的商品的质量。如果很容易判断商品质量的高低，那 么这个假定就是合理的。如果判断商品质量的高低的花费不大，那么商品价格就会根据质量差别做出调整。”大家也可以试着翻译下，但无论你翻译得怎样好，还是 会遗漏原文所表达的一些信息。这是任何语言之间的翻译都面临的一个共同问题。 36.3 逆向选择最后一段（pp.548）,“事实上，存在着许多有助于解决这种市场低效率的社会机构。一般情况是，雇主把保障计划作为一揽子附加福利的组成部分 提供给他们的雇员。保险公司能够将它的费率建立在这些雇员的平均风险的基础上，同时又确保所有的雇员一定参加保健计划，因此，逆向选择被排除”。我硬是没 法理清最后一句话的逻辑！且看原文，“In fact there are social institutions that help to solve this market inefficiency. It is commonly the case that employers offer health plans to their employees as part of the package of fringe benefits.The insurance company can base its rates on the averages over the set of employees and is assured that all employees must participate in the program,thus eliminating the adverse selection.”理解最后一句话的关键在于弄清“and is assured that”所表达的含义。按照字面意思，“保险公司被保证”，所以“and”连接的两个部分不构成并列关系，将“and”翻译成“同时”是不妥的。实际 上，后面部分是前面部分的条件状语。通过仔细分析发现，整段包含三个行为个体：雇主、保险公司和雇员。保险公司是保险人，雇主是投保人，雇员是被保险人。 被动语态“is assured that”中的主语是雇主。于是，最后一句可以翻译为：“如果雇主保证所有雇员都参加了保险计划，那么保险公司就可以基于雇员的平均风险水平确定费率，从 而避免了逆向选择问题。” 36.4道德风险最后 一段（pp.549）,“同标准的市场分析相比较，这也是一个似非而可能是的结论。……而如果消费者连续采取相同量的提防行动”。我相信，大家看到这两句 话时的感觉一定很不爽，可能还会在心里嘀咕“连我小学时的水平都不如”。第一句话的英文是“This is also a paradoxical result when compared with the standard market analysis”，大家顺口就会翻译出“与标准的市场分析相比，这又是一个自相矛盾的结论”（在前面存在逆向选择的情况时，出现过一个自相矛盾的结论， 所以这里用“又”）。为了追根到底，我用爱词霸搜索，结果如下:“paradoxical，似非而可能是的，反论的，荒谬的，自相矛盾的，诡辩的”。看来 作者是直接用了第一个词条。 还有几个零星的翻译错误：福利那章32.4的标题（pp.486）英文为Individualistic Social Welfare function,此书译作“个人社会福利函数”。咋一看，个人和社会并列在中文上是对立的两个概念，怎么能放在一起呢？实际上，这里译作“个人主义社会 福利函数”，意为“个人的福利水平只与它本人的配置状况有关”，所以是个人主义的。32.5节经它一翻译，应有的前后对应关系全没了，大大影响阅读。 32.6节第4段将“swap”译作“交换”也是不妥的，因为在中国学生脑子里，“交换”对应的单词是“exchange”,而不是“swap”，而这两 个单词之间的差别相当大。 时间关系，其它翻译不当支出就不一一指出了。 在 上面具体举例论证时，我都试着对相应段落做出了翻译。虽然我的翻译水平和经济学水平跟原书译者不能相提并论，但我敢肯定，就上面具体几点而言，我翻译得要 比原书译者好！虽然大家可以提供更加“信、达、雅”的译法，但任何译法肯定都不可能完全传达原文所包含的信息量。实际上，英文和中文是两种差别很大的语 言。例如，英文在叙述两个以上的连续动作时是不管时间先后的，而中文通常是按照动作先后顺序依次描述的；英文为了追求逻辑关系的严密性，常常使用结构繁杂 的长句，而这在中文中很少见；等等。如果大家想获得语言上的美感享受，如果大家想领略经济学的美妙和趣味性，如果大家想学好经济学，还是直接看英文版教材 吧！英文并不像你想象中的那样难，英文版经济学教材中的生词也并不像你想象中的那样多！ 最 后还要提醒大家的是，读翻译版教材的后果不仅仅是学不好经济学，而且还会影响大家的中文写作水平。我自己就深受其害！如果你看了这篇帖子，就知道我受到的 毒害有多深！（我以前的写作水平要比现在强，得过全校性的征文大赛二等奖，在学校刊物上发表了不少“文学作品”）。我是在和导师讨论我的拙作时突然意识到 这一点的。我导师60多岁了，对论文中的“的、地、得”都做区分。他当时感叹我的写作能力，我顺口而出“看翻译的资料多了，在所难免啊”！其实，大家只要 稍加留意就会发现，《经济研究》、《经济学（季刊）》等名刊上的有些文章文笔也很糟糕！我估计，他们也是译作的受害者！ 注： 考试完毕，我又把几个以前没敲上去的“不当之处”加上起了。如果您们发现了“不妥之处”，请您把它在此贴贴出，然后我把它都加进楼顶！相信通过我们的共同努力，可以为今后开始学经济学的学子提供一些有用的帮助。
这是本期《波士顿评论》的一篇重头文章，资料翔实，论点也很精辟，展现了当整个出版业被一个超级在线书店所掌控时... 当读者像买罐头一样地买书时，读者和出版商最终会明白出版业的未来将糟糕到何种程度 。 现把它原汁原味地转载过来。 http://www.bostonreview.net/BR35.6/roychoudhuri.php Books After Amazon Onnesha Roychoudhuri The man sitting next to me takes out his new Kindle. How do you like that thing? I ask. He instantly becomes animated, angling the Kindle toward me so that I can better see its face. Its great, he says. I can download tons of different books and magazines. Then, eyeing my hefty, hardback of John Dos Passoss USA trilogy, he adds, Cheaper than that, too. $9.99. There, our conversation ends. I am unsure of where I fall on the Luddite spectrum, but Ill admit to inhaling the odor of leather-bound volumes. Having moved over a dozen times, though, Ive also found occasion to curse their weight. So, too, has Jeff Bezos. Bezos calls the Kindle a response to the failings of a physical book. He told attendees of a technology conference in New York: Im grumpy when Im forced to read a physical book because its not as convenient. Turning the pages . . . the book is always flopping itself shut at the wrong moment. His conclusion? Its had a great five-hundred-year run . . . but its time to change. That Bezos is unencumbered by reverence for the physical entity should be no surprise. The book has always been an object of convenience to Bezos, whose principal interest is capturing market share. In 1994 Bezos set out to create a new kind of online business. The specific product was irrelevant; what was important was how it would be marketed, sold, stocked, and shipped. He made a list of the items he could carry, including CDs, videos, computer software and hardware, and books. Books won out because there were so many, and demand was steady. The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) also allowed him to organize and index the millions of books in print. No catalogue or bookstore could possibly have it all, Bezos reasoned, but he could. Amazons ascendance no doubt is a function of its nontraditional ways. Though neither a publisher nor strictly-speaking a bookseller, it has become the worlds largest retailer of books in any form. And it has done so as a software company that offers great deals on Vienna sausages as well as hardbacks. Bezoss customers come for the low prices, not to fondle, sniff, or otherwise interact with the product. The most one can do is browse some pages electronically. Bezos thinks pleasing the customer is all that matters, and his strategynearly endless inventory at rock-bottom pricesis working. Today an estimated 75 percent of online book purchases in the United States are made through Amazon, and its overall market share in book sales is astonishingly high. Some publishers make more than half of their sales through Amazon. So when Bezos rang the death knell for the physical book, people paid attention. Even before the Kindle, Amazon wielded enormous influence in the industry. Now it is positioned to control the e-book market and thereby the future of the publishing industry. What happens when an industry concerned with the production of culture is beholden to a company with the sole goal of underselling competitors? Amazon is indisputably the king of books, but the issue remains, as Charlie Winton, CEO of the independent publisher Counterpoint Press puts it, what kind of king theyre going to be. A vital publishing industry must be able take chances with new authors and with books that dont have obvious mass-market appeal. When mega-retailers have all the power in the industry, consumers benefit from low prices, but the effect on the future of literatureon what books can be published successfullyis far more in doubt. For decades the publishing world has been anxious about the end of books. Industry consolidation has led to a much-lamented shift to a business-oriented ethos, particularly at some of the larger conglomerates. With corporate ownership came a demand for profit margins that the book-publishing world had never seen. Yet even if new management is nothing like that of the pastgentlemen with large fortunes who became gentlemen with small fortunespublishing remains an intensely people-driven business, the kind where folks meet face-to-face. Even today most people involved in publishing are there because they love good books. For most of their modern history, the primary goal of publishers was to find brilliant writers and produce books. Publishers left it to other book loversindependent bookstores across the countryto sell the fruits of their labors. Booksellers not only carried books tailored to their local audiences, but also promoted their favorite new books through personal recommendations to their customers. All indies ordered books at a standard discountsomewhere around 40 percent off the list price. In the 70s and 80s the number of new book titles grew steadily, as did the number of independently owned bookstores. Where once a publisher had to worry about competing for shelf space, now its entire list of books could be available to customers. But this trend came to a halt when chain superstores such as Barnes Noble and Borders began taking over in the late 80s. They set up shop down the street from successful independents, lured customers with a broader array of books and lower prices, and put their competitors out of business. In the early 90s there were roughly 6,000 independent bookstores across the country. Today, that number is closer to 2,200. There is not a whole lot of mystery behind these stores runaway success. Barnes Noble wasnt getting rich by offering caffeine with the classics; it was negotiating better discounts from publishers. In 1994 the American Booksellers Association (ABA), a group that represents independent bookstores nationwide, filed suit against five major publishing companies for offering discriminatory discounts that werent justified by costs. One large publisher, for instance, was requiring that bookstores order 3,000 of their books in order to get a 48 percent discount. A smaller order would net a 40 percent discount. That meant that smaller stores, making smaller orders, could not afford to meet larger retailers prices. With even the higher-volume indies unable to compete, small bookstores across the nation were forced to close their doors. While publishers were guilty of providing two-tiered discounts, there was reason to believe that the chain stores were using strong-arm tactics to demand these discounts of larger publishers. Bruce Spiva, one of the lawyers who brought the ABAs case, recalls hearing that the chain stores had threatened to remove publishers books from stores if they didnt cooperate. The five publishers (Houghton Mifflin, Penguin USA, St. Martins, Rutledge Hill, and Hugh Lauter Levin) settled, but in 1997 the ABA found that the chain bookstores were still demanding and receiving discounts that werent being made available to independent bookstores. The ABA sued Barnes Noble and Borders directly for leveraging discriminatory discounts. In 2001 this lawsuit, too, was settled, on the condition that a large amount of the evidence the ABA had collected against the chain stores be destroyed. This era of publishing consolidation and chain growth also marked the rise of promotional allowances or co-operative advertising (co-op). Big chains pressured bookmakers to pay for top placement in outlets$20,000 for two weeks in the front of the store, sayor to provide customers special in-store discounts. Such promotions are now standard, with roughly 4 percent of publishers net revenue devoted to them. As the focus shifted to the bottom line throughout the industry, the ABA and many others in the publishing community worried about the effect of revenue-obsession on what would get published, and with good reason. It has become common practice for representatives of large retailers to weigh in on everything from book covers to sample chapters of manuscripts. In some cases, retailers even demand changes. One editor at a major publishing house, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity for fear of employer sanctions, told me that agents of Barnes Noble, Borders, and Target are frequent participants in meetings about potential books. Without their buy-in, the publisher is unlikely to go forward with a book. Ideas that excite independents might be scrapped if they dont get a chains stamp of approval. As a result of this pressure, major publishers have become less inclined to take a chance on new authors and more wary of published authors whose previous works were only moderate sellers. Jamie Raab, publisher of Grand Central Publishing (formerly Warner Books) for 24 years, says that without the independent bookstores to help in the process of discovery and nurturing, it became riskier to invest in a talented but unknown writer. Although smaller houses often pick up promising new authors, they dont always have the resources to pay for preferential status in mega-stores. A full range of new works and authors make it into print, but breakout books for smaller publishers are now rare. And the emergence of Amazon, the biggest of the big-box retailers, has exacerbated these effects while introducing a slew of new headaches for publishers of every size. In 1995 Bezoss new online model had the book world atwitter. Where once a publisher had to worry about competing for limited shelf space, now its entire list of booksold and new alikecould always be available to customers. This was a godsend for small publishers as well as self-publishers, who otherwise had few ways of finding a retail audience. Its because of them that our backlist lives, explains Margo Baldwin, president of Vermont-based Chelsea Green Publishing. Amazon has been hugely important to us. If you go in as a small publisher and sell to Barnes Noble or Borders, you have a set of buyers who may or may not take your books. made the marketplace accessible to everyone in a pretty equal way. When Ten Speed Books refused to give Amazon a higher discount, its books disappeared from the Web site. Publishers were also excited about not having to take so many returns. Bookstores typically order stock from publishers on consignment and return unsold copies, but most of the books Amazon ordered from publishers were non-returnable. Yet, before long, the mood soured. Over the course of the next decade, Amazon pushed standard discounts to 5255 percent, with some as high as 60 percent. In contrast, bookstoreseven the chainsget discounts that usually top out around 50 percent. That small margin can mean the difference between surviving another day or folding, particularly for a publisher doing modest print runs. In addition to pushing discounts up explicitly, Amazon began to get creative about what constituted co-op. In 2004 Publishers Weekly reported that publishers were being asked to pay higher co-op rates to Amazon, and those who didnt sign up would be subject to such changes as Amazon not selling their books at a discount and not having their titles surface in various merchandizing and advertising programs. There was more: Amazon also may turn off the search options to publishers books, making it possible to find a title only when the correct name of the book or the ISBN is entered. What publishers were supposed to get in exchange for this co-op, was, essentially, not being made to disappear from the Web site. Winton calls the tactic a discount grab in the guise of getting co-opin other words, a way of getting around antitrust laws that put a cap on the discount a retailer can demand. Dennis Loy Johnson, head of Melville House Publishing, was one of the publishers approached by Amazon and encouraged to sign on to the new program. He refused and two weeks later received a visit from a cadre of Amazon employees at a book convention. It was one team of guys one day and then another team of guys the next, he recalled, when we spoke in May of 2009. They kept saying, Why arent you participating in the program? in this really heated, aggressive way. I told them we couldnt afford it. They countered that Johnson couldnt afford not to. When Johnson returned from the convention, he discovered that the entire catalogue of Melville House books had disappeared from Amazon.com. I just didnt believe they were going to play hardball like that, he told me. Even a search for ISBNs failed to bring up Melville Houses books. Johnson gave in and agreed to the new plan. Soon after, his books reappeared. In a recent article in The Nation , Johnson says that when he refused to sign onto the new program, Amazon reps told him they were keeping an eye on him and advised him to get in line. Johnsons story is familiar to Phil Wood, former publisher of Ten Speed Press in Berkeley. Wood received a phone call from Amazon around the same time as Johnson. What it amounted to, Wood says, is that they wanted more discount. When Wood refused, the Amazon flunkyas Wood puts itthreatened to delist all of Ten Speeds books. I didnt even know what that meant, Wood says. I told him to go fly a kite. Ten Speeds books then disappeared from the Web site. For about a week, Wood fielded panicked calls from his authors, wondering where their books had gone. Never a fan of computers or email, Wood sat down to pen a letter to Bezos. I described what his company had done, and I said this was not the way gentlemen treat gentlemen, Wood told me. He informed Bezos that his next letter would be to The New York Times . After a week Wood received another call from Amazon, further pressuring him to agree to the new terms. When Wood again refused, Amazon relented, and agreed to continue doing business with Ten Speed on the original terms. High co-op fees allow Amazon to claim higher discounts without asking for them, but sometimes the company doesnt bother with pretense. Two years ago an Amazon buyer told Kristen Frantz, vice president of sales and marketing at Berrett-Koehler, a San Franciscobased publisher of business titles, that her companys discounts werent high enough. Frantz checked around and found that Berrett-Koehlers discount to Amazon was about average. She brought her concerns to her distributor, Ingram Publishing Services, and her representative there was able to go to bat on her behalf, arguing to Amazon that Ingram, as Berrett-Koehlers distributor, should be handling the terms and that the discount should stay as-is. Once we made that clear to them, they left us alone, Frantz says. I think they just try to squeeze everything they can out of publishers, and if youre small or on your own, youre going to be much more vulnerable. Frantz might be right. Scale seems to matter to Amazon. Ten Speedresponsible for bestsellers such as What Color Is Your Parachute and the Moosewood Cookbook was doing at least three million dollars in annual business with Amazon. Melville House was doing less than a hundred thousand. But Amazons punitive tactics may be more arbitrary than that. A number of publishers have said no to Amazon and lived to tell the tale, suggesting that publishers ought to push back harder. Of the 20,000 employees at Amazon, just one is a full-time liason between the company and publishers. Nonetheless, cases of disappearance continue. Amazon doesnt always go as far as delisting books entirely. Sometimes it just makes them impossible to purchase by taking the buy button off a titles page. In 2008 two huge British publishersBloomsbury and Hachettehad their buttons pulled. That same year, Amazon also removed buy buttons from any printon-demand publisher that didnt use Amazons on demand printer, Book-Surge, a move that led to an antitrust lawsuit in which Amazon agreed to pay a settlement to a competitor, though it admitted no wrongdoing. The Authors Guild recently launched WhoMovedMyBuyButton.com in order to keep track of buy buttons. On the front page of the site is a note greeting visitors: See, the folks at Amazon have a headlock on the online book world, and they tend to get carried away. Thats why we developed WhoMovedMy-BuyButton.com. Well keep an eye on your Buy Buttons, checking daily to make sure theyre safe. If theyre AWOL, well let you know by e-mail. Well also let you know when they return. Buy-button disappearances are just one of the tensions that have emerged between publishers and Amazon. Publishers accustomed to the more bibliophilic operators of independent stores and even Barnes Noble find it jarring to deal with Amazons lawyers. Woods frustration at Amazons lack of gentlemanliness is echoed by many other publishers who wonder why Amazon keeps putting the screws to them. (The majority of publishers contacted for this article chose not to speak on the record, citing their fear of retribution for divulging Amazons tactics, which one publisher described as a You do this, or well fuck you over approach.) In a July 2009 interview, Mike Shatzkin, a publishing consultant and author of the popular publishing blog The Shatzkin Files , put it this way: Amazon sell all kinds of things besides books; they sell their technology. They have a lot of fish to fry besides the fish that the people in the publishing business think about. And as Amazon has grown in clout, these differing priorities have caused more and more anxiety. Theyre not quite family to the same extent that the retailers have always been in the business, Shatzkin says. Publishers who once met directly with Amazon representatives find they can no longer reach anyone at the company, even by phone. Many publishers with distributors dont even know the name of the person who buys their books at Amazon. The relationship is almost exclusively handled by the distributor. Indeed, of the 20,000 employees at Amazon, just one is tasked full-time with working as a liaison between the company and publishers. Jeffrey Lependorf, Executive Director of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses and of Small Press Distribution, suggests that the difference between Amazon and brick-and-mortar bookstores is most evident in how they market books: I think even people at Amazon would say that its essentially a widget seller that happens to have begun by focusing on books. Many people, like me, will say you cant sell a book the same way you sell a can of soup. At the heart of the soup-can analogy are the algorithms that Amazon uses to recommend books to customers. Most customers arent aware that the personalized book recommendations they receive are a result of paid promotions, not just purchase-derived data. This is frustrating for publishers who want their books to be judged on their merits. I think their twisted algorithms that point you toward bestsellers instead of books that you might actually like a shame, Gavin Grant, cofounder of Small Beer Press, laments. Algorithms can also affect how much customers pay for books. Individual customers may get different discounts on the same book depending on their purchase history. The practice is euphemistically called dynamic pricing. According to Roger Williamsthe former sales director at Simon Schuster, and one of the first salespeople to deal directly with Amazonthe complexity of the algorithms is such that, Amazons employees sometimes dont know themselves what is going to show up in some of the pages that appear. In addition to selective pricing and sponsored recommendations, Amazon uses its sales rankings to sell books. One might think that at least these are sacrosanct, generated exclusively from hard numbers. But last year Amazon de-ranked hundreds of gay- and lesbian-themed books. Without a sales rank, the visibility of the titles plummeted. Initially, Amazon claimed this was the result of books being tagged as adult material, even though many of the books did not contain content any more explicit than other books that remained ranked. Soon after, the company changed its tack and denied that it had any such adult-material policy. In the end Amazon called it a glitch but did not explain what the glitch was, or how it could be prevented in the future. Amazon had to cede pricing control to Macmillan because the publisher has a monopoly over their own titles. Amazons handling of e-book pricingand publishers responsewill have perhaps the most far-reaching effects on the industry. The situation thus far is not encouraging. To create a new market and generate demand for the Kindle, Amazon set the e-books price at $9.99. Publishers were not consulted. If Amazon had asked publishers what they thought about locking in e-book prices at $9.99, it would have been subjected to a chorus of outrage. Thats because the math behind publishing is seldom in a publishers favor. The sale of a twenty-dollar hardcover nets a large publisher about ten dollars. Royalties run the publisher about three dollars, and the costs of printing, binding, and paper are a further two dollars (more for low-volume titles). Take $1.20 for distribution, two dollars for marketing, and that leaves a publisher with roughly $1.80 to cover rent, editing, and any other costs. A smaller publisher might keep closer to a dollar per book. E-books reduce the cost of printing, binding, and paper, but royalties tend to run higher, and all other costs are largely unchanged. Publishers account for these costs when they slap a price tag on a book, so Amazons decision to set the price irrespective of them set off a wave of anxiety. Amazon, hardly oblivious to these economics, chose to absorb the loss, paying publishers for the price of the equivalent printed book in order to make the deal more appealing. But Amazon has successfully established customer expectations at an impossibly low rate, and publishers worry that at some point the retailer will no longer take on losses to sustain it. Theres no way they can continue to sell . . . at a loss, says Johanna Vondeling, vice president of business and development at Berrett-Koehler. Eventually, theyre going to change their minds on this, and I think all publishers should be worried about what happens when they do. Theyre going to keep that e-book price where it is. Theyre going to turn around and say to the publishers, Tough. All were going to pay you on is the split of $9.99. While the $9.99 price has evolved, it is still the most popular e-book rate on Amazon. And even with elastic pricing, Amazon remains in control, using its algorithms to set the price of e-books. This past January John Sargent, CEO of the publisher Macmillan, met with Amazon executives in hopes that he might regain control over the pricing of Macmillans books. If anyone could sway Amazon, it was Macmillan, a huge bookmaker with imprints such as Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; Henry Holt; Picador; and Times Books. Sargent flew to Seattle and laid out his terms. By the time he stepped off the plane in New York, Amazon had removed the buy button from every Macmillan book on the Web site. Negotiations between retailers and publishers have historically been behind closed doors, so it was that much more dramatic when an irate Sargent wrote a blog on the Macmillan Web site chronicling the messy details. Before long, Amazon announced that it had no choice but to cede pricing control to Macmillan because the publisher has a monopoly over their own titles. Macmillans success is a heartening development. It and a handful of other large publishers have taken over pricing of their own e-books. But smaller houses have not been so lucky. Johnny Temple, founder of the independent press Akashic Books, is not sure whether he will eventually be able to negotiate the same terms that the big publishers have with Amazon. If we had a room full of lawyers, maybe we would be working with them and thinking about the future terms, Temple says. But were just busy trying to stay in business. As is the case with most large retailers, those publishers with a lower sales volume are simply treated differently. The conceit is that the market demands the $9.99 price tag. But in the case of e-books, Amazon is the market. For small publishers Amazon provides unprecedented access to a larger audience of customers. The costs of reaching this audience can, however, outweigh the benefits. For Gavin Grant, keeping Small Beer Press afloat without slashing already-modest author royalties means making cuts in advertising and marketing budgets. Grant isnt shy about Amazons role in keeping him in this tight spot: If I meet a reader and they say, I buy all your books through Amazon, I often say to them, Thats great for Amazon, thats great for the shipper. It does nothing for me, and it doesnt do much for the author. Many in the publishing community mock Amazon as the Wal-Mart of books, but its important to remember that Wal-Mart is also the Wal-Mart of books. Last year, Target, Amazon, and Wal-Mart fought a price war over a handful of new hardcover bestsellers. Books with $25 and $35 retail prices were being offered for nine dollars or less. In response to the price war, the ABA wrote a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ), requesting that it investigate possible illegal predatory pricing. David Gernert, a literary agent who represents the novelist John Grisham and was quoted in the ABA letter, told The New York Times : If readers come to believe that the value of a new book is $10, publishing as we know it is over. If you can buy Stephen Kings new novel or John Grishams Ford County , for $10, why would you buy a brilliant first novel for $25? People who tend to read Grisham and King arent necessarily reaching for a brilliant first novel, but Gernerts point still has some force: devaluing the books produced by an industry already squeezed to the brink is not likely to benefit the reader in the end. The DOJ made no formal reply to the ABA, nor is it likely to (when contacted for this article, a DOJ representative had no comment on the letter). Enforcing anti-trust statutes, particularly in the publishing world, has always been a difficult endeavor. The relevant laws (part of the Robinson-Patman Act) have their roots in the 1930s, an era in which healthy competition was measured not only in low prices but also according to the diversity of retailers. A portion of the Robinson-Patman Act states, for instance, that it is illegal to charge different prices in different geographic areas simply to undersell local stores, a practice critical to the business strategies of large companies such as Wal-Mart. But the DOJ doesnt bring Robinson-Patman cases anymore, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) does so only rarely. John Kirkwood, a former FTC lawyer, explains that the Robinson-Patman Act is thought to be anti-consumer, so courts are skeptical if not hostile. The thinking is that, if prices are getting lower, the consumer must be benefiting. In July Bezos told the press: Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover booksastonishing when you consider that weve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months. The company refuses to release exact figures, so theres nothing to back this claim, but with Amazon cutting the price of the Kindle in order to remain competitive with Apples iPad, there can be little doubt that Kindle salesand e-book salesare up. Though that part about being astonished probably isnt true. Amazons quest is market control, and it goes to great lengths to ensure it. At the end of the day, an Amazon source explained, the market is going to determine what the right price for this content is. The conceit is that that $9.99 price tag is what the market demands. But in this case Amazon is the market, havingwith no input from its suppliersalready dictated the price and preempted the standard fluctuations that competition and improved efficiency impose on prices. It was only through Macmillans negotiating that a new e-book-pricing model emerged, and then only for certain, privileged publishers. Cheap books are easy on our wallets, but behind the scenes publishers large and small have been deeply undercut by the rise of large retailers and predatory pricing schemes. Unless publishers push back, Amazon will take the logic of the chains to its conclusion. Then publishers and readers will finally know what happens when you sell a book like its a can of soup.
出书的哪些事 张学文 2009.7.4 潜科学论坛上最近就出版书的事，引起了一些议论。我这里提供一些认识供参考。 l 出书主要涉及两个方面：作者，出版社。作者的目的，能力，出版社的利益，认同，能力是有关环节。 l 一些学人没有出版过自己的书，难免有一些天真的认识：认为我写的书，一经问世就会轰动，书要再版，我要成名、发财 ，可真的进行了一番苦旅，出版了一册书。其苦味只有自己吞。原先的浪漫认识大多都云飞雨散。 l 确实，科技类的书，如果不是教科书、成功的科普书，急需的参考书，其印量多在 1000 册以下。这个印量对出版社肯定是赔钱的事和难销的书。于是不能赔钱的出版社自然找你要出版费、什么书号费等等，而且全部的书都由你自己拿去，他们没有兴趣把书推向书店、读者。所以，尽管你自己掏腰包出书，如果你最初对这样结局没有精神准备，就很伤心，成绩感被失败感代替。 l 现在的出版社，原则上只要你肯出钱，基本都可以出版你的著作。但是，你显然需要十分审慎行事。写书时就要考虑读者群，要让出版社的认识到这本书的社会需要量超过 3000 册，出版社发生兴趣，不仅可以免收出版费，还可以給你稿费！核心是市场！ l 一篇论文的发表，往往要由专业的审稿人裁定，于是有人感到发表难。相比之下，一个书稿是否可以出版，其审核过程，专家的意见退居次要地位。核心是出版社的编辑，而出版社编辑往往不是该领域的权威，他们仅是编辑、出版和经销的行家。从这个意义上讲，出书比发表文章容易通过。自然你写一本系统而没有自相矛盾的书也相当不容易。 l 要考虑出版社的威望，不合适的出版社，可能反而让你的著作降格！ l 据说外国的出版社一般不能在国内印刷厂印刷其图书。 l 花 2-3 万，有 20 万字的书稿，找个出版社，出版一本印 1000 册自己全部拿回的书，我估计现在是可以做的到的（包括论文集）。 l 我们这里的电子书出版费是这样的：交 1.2 万元，电子出版社把你給他的电子稿变成电子书（光盘），有正式书号，出版社給你 1000 张光盘（每张标价 38 元）。而光盘的容量是百兆以上，几乎可以把你终生的文字稿都包了进去。 l 如果你有课题费，有确定的销量，购买团体，问题就是另外的情况了。策划人找你来写书，情况又是另外的样子。 l 2008 年本人就个人出书的经历写过 7 篇短稿登在科学网博客 http://www.sciencenet.cn/u/zhangxw/ 上，其第 1 篇的地址是 http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=19269 ，欢迎参考它们。
标签: 出版社
