开个出版英语学习、翻译帖（持续更新中）

英国出版界聚焦“2008，电子书年？”

11月19日，亚马逊公司推出了号称可以“改变人类阅读方式”的电子阅读器“Kindle”，引起了广泛的关注。Kindle采用电子墨水技术显示屏，但其最具创新的卖点还在于无线网络书店功能。
毫无疑问，在目前，在线发行商在电子书的发行领域占有绝对优势。自从亚马逊发布了他的电子书阅读器kindle以后，它就成为抓住人们想象力的第一个电子阅读器。这也引起英国出版界对电子书出版和发行的强烈关注。
市场份额有待开发
美国的数字出版成长很快，但是英国目前电子书市场仍然处于初步阶段。2008年的市场份额有多大？未来五年能达到多大的百分比？
在英国，电子书在英国并没有真正的阅读设备和销售渠道。麦克米伦数字出版部的莎拉•罗伊德说，我们一直在做数字出版的工作，但现在还处在初级阶段。市场份额的大小由图书的格式和类别决定，未来市场变化将会由不同影响因素的综合性来决定。对所有图书来说，不能说电子书销售将会在未来五年达到多大的百分比，因为有太多可变因素了。大众类虚构最近表现很好，但是在学术类，在线方面的收入已经达到10%，这很有意义。
20年前，没有人会认为一台电脑能够容纳一张CD的内容。现在是一个不同的时代，虽然电子书的市场不大，但未来需要关注电子出版。兰登出版集团数字部的菲奥诺拉•杜根表示，如果要确定市场份额的大小，就需要分类定位市场份额。如果你从虚构和叙述性的非虚构来看，虚构类将是数字化最慢的，而叙述性的非虚构类就将会很有意思。但是现在图书还没有彻底数字化。如果电子书的销售在不断增加，即使是1%，2%，这都是很有意义的。
泰勒弗朗西斯出版集团公司(Taylor & Francis Group)报告指出，他们的电子书销售额占总额的9%，这已经是一个非常客观的数据。但是英国中盘商园丁图书公司的商业总监鲍勃•杰克逊认为，这个数据和图书是不是电子书的格式没有任何关系，它的电子书的销售份额可能上升到10%，20%。但是他并不认为电子书销售会超过整个书业市场份额的50%。
电子书改变写作方式
哈伯柯林斯有声图书及电子书总监大卫•罗思-艾说，“我们现在一直在争论的就是现在的年轻人并不怎么阅读或者怎么没有去找书来阅读。如果提供给他们感兴趣的阅读设备，而电子书的阅读体验则可以让他们感到满足。所以，很有可能改变作者写作的方式。”
作为作家，娜奥米•艾德曼抛砖引玉，现身说法。虽然他的一半创作时间用于写小说，另一半用来编写电脑游戏，但对他来说，电子书的概念就是他的小说也可可融入游戏的平台。那样，游戏和多媒体同样是走在刀锋上。
既然电子书能创造一种新的创作方式，那么作者就可以用这种新的形式来写作，并创造出关联性和社区化的意义。哈伯柯林斯有声图书及电子书总监大卫•罗思-艾认为，电子书不仅为作者提供新的写作品台，也为读者提供了互动的机会；电子书提供给我们的不仅是内容，围绕电子书形成的互动，比如读者相互评论，读者写给作者的建议 ，读者自己加载阅读进度等。
电子书开启了一个特殊的图书时代，读者甚至可以把叙述性的游戏引入电子书。而出版商有很好的故事，这些故事也是很多电影制作的动力。那么，这样的电子书能不能转变年轻一代，让他们开始去阅读电子书呢？
“当读者在阅读一本书，产成了很好的阅读体验时，他会说，‘那不是与电影不同的方式吗？我要看看那电影。’然后他就开始看电影。这是我的一种幻想，但是会发生的，这种集中也会发生，可能需要25年的时间。”作家娜奥米•艾德曼说。
实体店销售有迹可循
电子书市场是由那些在做电子阅读器的公司做市场推广所建立起来的。他们开发电子阅读器需要大量资金投入，而且还要做店内培训，做小样，维护客户支持等等，所以他们同时拥有定价权。
但是很多实体书店顾虑重重。如果电子书的收益低于10%，那么他们就付不起高额的店面租金。虽然实体书店在电子书的发行面前看似迷雾重重，但也有渠道。
大卫 罗思-艾:我并不认为实体店就不能销售电子书。显然，在线零售商具有优势，然而实体店也拥有社区读者的优势。如果实体书店能够充分利用这个优势，他们也会找到适合自己的电子书销售渠道。
菲奥诺拉.杜根说，“人们愿意去实体书店买书。所以，这并不是一个关于图书转变数字版，离线转变为在线的问题。这个问题是我们将到达什么样的一个高度，然后会停下来。我们看到有声图书从传统的销售方式转变成了有声下载和互联网整版CD销售.”
鲍勃杰克逊表示，如果传统书店想要和电子书竞争，他们就需要注重有效性。如果消费者选择在线产品，那么书商们都应该往在线方面着力。他说，“消费者将会在任何他们能够去的地方买到电子书。我不认为大街上的书店就不能以邮件的方式卖电子书。如果你可以通过邮局把图书及给读者，为神木不可以用邮件发送电子书呢？”
   英国图书发行商书发公司（The Book Depository）的管理总监安德鲁克劳福德：我认为并没有电子书的主要零售商。如果在线零售商和实体书店能够互动联手，他们的潜力更大。
  







Will 2008 be the year of the e-book?
06.12.07
As Amazon.com starts selling e-books in the US, The Bookseller asks six book world professionals, including author Naomi Alderman and Random House's Fionnuala Duggan, to debate the opportunities and threats ahead for the UK market [you can see the full list of contributors here].
What proportion of the book market is likely to go digital next year? How about in five years?

Sara Lloyd (SL): “We’re all working within a set of parameters. I’d be surprised if anyone had specific sales targets within a set time period. There is no real device in the UK and no channels, let’s face it. It’s really only the beginning. Any action is in the US.”

Fionnuala Duggan (FD): “There is an e-book market out there; it’s not huge. In the US, it kind of chugs along at a reasonably low level and had a big injection with the Sony Reader. And in the UK, it chugs along at a low level. So, are we talking about 10%, 20%, 50%? To me, it’s a question of what do we mean by success in this market?”

Bob Jackson (BJ): “Taylor & Francis has reported its e-book sales at 9% of total revenue. But there’s not really anything wrong with the book as a format. It could grow to 10%, 20%. But I don’t think e-book sales will be more than 40% for books overall.”

SL: “It depends on format, genre and generation; there is a matrix of different influences on what will happen. You can’t say for all books that e-book sales will be a certain percentage in five years’ time, because there are too many variables.”

FD: “If you look at fiction and narrative non-fiction, fiction is going to be slowest [to migrate to digital], and narrative non-fiction is going to be very interesting; and consumer reference is a complete ‘web play’, but there will still be a role for a book.”

SL: “Trade fiction is the bit that is the last bastion. In the academic sector, online revenue is already 10%. It’s very significant.”

Andrew Crawford (AC): “In the music market, digital sales represent about 7% or 8% of total sales, and that’s a really developed market. And haven’t overall sales in the music industry declined something like 20% in the past two years?”

FD: “But books aren’t digital already—when they launch the CD in the 1980s they unleashed an unprotected digital master. At that time, nobody could have imagined a computer large enough to hold a single CD on. That was a different era. That was the seed of their future downfall.”

David Roth-Ey (DRE): “If e-book sales are incremental sales, it’s significant, even if it’s 1% or 2%—or if they’re new readers, or if people are buying more books than they would’ve otherwise. The e-reader is important for e-book sales in the next one to three years. If you buy an e-reader, you have to buy e-books.”

Do you think e-books will bring  about changes to the way in  which books are written, and what kind of changes?
DRE: “What excites me about the  e-book is the idea of creating a new form and then writers writing to this new form, creating a sense of connectivity and community. This is potentially commercial trade fiction—it’s a real opportunity, for writers and readers of romance fiction or what-ever, to interact. It really opens  up something special.”
NA: “I spend half my time writing novels and half my time writing computer games. For me, the really fascinating thing about the concept of an e-book is that I could have a novel which is also a game. In the same way that you had Masquerade in the 1970s, that had links to the outside world.”

SL: “This has already happened with Nintendo DS and ‘Hotel Dusk’. If as publishers we had the multimedia rights, maybe we could do more with it.”

FD: “It’s a question of rights, but it’s also a question of risk. To make a computer game now costs £10m; you need 200 people working for five years. Unless you’re confident that you know how to make and market a good game, then it’s a terribly risky business. The games business is completely different from book publishing. But building a multimedia presence around a book is not different, and it’s an obvious thing for the publisher to do.”

NA: “They are bleeding together at the edges, those two things—the game and multimedia presence. Creatively, that’s what’s interesting.”

FD: “Creatively? Yes. Conceptually? Yes. But from a business perspective? There’s a big difference between spending £10m on a computer game and hiring 200 people, and building a website around a book.”

DRE: “The opportunity that presents itself through an e-book is interactivity around the book. So there could be additional content; it could be readers commenting to each other or to the author, adding addenda.”
FD: “If you think about someone writing historical biography, they’ll spend many years researching, and there will be a lot of material which doesn’t make it into the book. So the question is, what happens to all that material? Can you build a community around the book, at the point of its creation, so that the author can get involved with a peer-review process? How do you bring in the rest of the material? How do you help the author find a digital platform to bring all these things to an audience?”
DRE: “What we’re really jazzed about is taking a young demographic who isn’t really reading—they’re not finding the books, the cool factor is definitely not there—and having the device that gets them excited, and an e-book experience that’s interesting to them. And potentially it’s going to transform the way you actually write books.”
NA: “There are possibilities of convergence, creatively, that it opens up.”

DRE: “You could gradually build from games into a book. It’s a kind of story-telling and a narrative anyway. As publishers we know we’ve got good stories—they’re the inspiration for so many films—so can we get that younger generation and convert them, and turn them onto books?”
NA: “As a reader it would be an amazing experience to be reading a book and say: ‘Wasn’t that different to the way it was in the movie? Show me the movie.’ And then you’re watching the movie. This is science fiction now, but it will happen, convergence will happen, maybe in 25 years.”

Where will consumers buy their e-books in future, and is there a role for traditional bookshops to sell e-books?

BJ: “Consumers will buy e-books from wherever they can. I don’t see why a high street shop can’t also sell an e-book and send it to an email address. If you can send a physical book to a postal address, why can’t you send an e-book version too?”
FD: “Who do you think is the main e-book retailer? You’ve got ebooks.com and Sony Connect (ebooks.connect.com).”

AC: “I don’t think there is a main e-book retailer out there.”
SL: “Amazon.com—since the launch of the Kindle. The Kindle is the first really interesting e-reader because it has Amazon behind it. It’s the first one to capture people’s imaginations.”
BJ: “Name an e-book seller in the UK.”

FD: “W H Smith.”

BJ: “And a second? I can’t.”
FD: “The market is created by those who spend money marketing the e-readers. You have to spend money on launching them, getting the pricing right, the instore training, demos and customer support. To launch a consumer electronic device is a major thing, and you need a big manufacturer to get involved. Sony’s continuous commitment to the market is very welcome by us.”

DRE: “Do you think that retailers who do not specialise in books will ever seriously involve themselves with e-books, given the investment involved and the infrastructure required?”
AC: “They will offer them, but it will be the non-retailers that will sell more. Newspapers will be able to sell books. Places where they are saying: ‘You should buy this book.’ ”
NA: “Yes, it’s about the ambient experience. When you’re doing your shopping on Tesco.com and it sees that you’ve bought three types of fish, and it says: ‘Would you like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s fish book?’, and then you can just get it instantly.”
BJ: “The traditional book industry, if it really wants to compete, has got to go to availability. And if consumers are choosing to buy online, then that’s where booksellers have got to be.”
DRE: “I don’t think the high street is written off, at all. Obviously the online retailers have an advantage, but the high street does have the community advantage. If they work that advantage, they have a play there.”
AC: “They have potential if they can get their act together. But there are at least three major booksellers who are really dragging their feet on this.”
FD: “People really love going into bookshops. So this isn’t a question of a direct transition of books to digital, or offline to online. The question is at what point is this going to plateau and stop? With audiobooks, we are looking at a shift from traditional retail to audio downloads and internet sales of CDs. All that has an effect on the traditional retailers’ decision to support the CD format, based on sales per square foot. Even if sales shift online by 10%, it has an impact on the trade. So we have to be ready to shuffle and reshuffle, and fill that space with something else.”
AC: “Most physical booksellers are having trouble keeping their heads above water. If there is going to be a 10% turndown, they won’t be able to afford the extremely high rents.”

FD: “Retail generally is suffering because online retail is growing so phenomenally. If we talk about the small niche companies and about marketing becoming a selling opportunity, you get into the long tail concept. You have your aggregators—your mass market people—and then you have your long tail of all the activities that people are doing online. They are all being collected by a back-end that does the selling—the technical powerhouse that a company like Gardners can provide. The front-end is customised and pretty, like an author’s website or the niche retailer, but the back-end is the person who knows how to deliver the e-book and do the DRM and has the economies of scale.”

E-BOOK ROUND TABLE
Naomi Alderman (NA)  娜奥米•艾德曼
Alderman is an author, e-books enthusiast and writer of alternate reality computer games. Her first novel, Disobedience, won the Orange Award for New Writers in 2006, and she also took the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in March 2007. She is a lead writer at games design agency Mind Candy.
Andrew Crawford (AC) 安德鲁克劳福德
Crawford is The Book Depository’s managing director. He founded The Book Depository in 2004, selling books online by using innovative supply chain technology; UK sales have grown to £24m in three years. Crawford previously set up pan-European operations for Amazon, and began selling books online in 1996 with bookpages.co.uk.
Fionnuala Duggan (FD) 菲奥诺拉.杜根
Duggan is director of Random House Group Digital. She was previously vice-president, new media, at EMI Music Europe and International. She holds an MBA from French business school INSEAD and a degree in experimental physics.
Bob Jackson (BJ) 鲍勃杰克逊
Jackson is commercial director at Gardners. He has worked at board level at the wholesaler for 25 years, and was previously trade sales director at Hodder & Stoughton. In April, Gardners announced its intention to create a digital warehouse, which it hopes will go live in the first half of next year.
Sara Lloyd (SL) 莎拉罗伊德
Lloyd is Pan Macmillan’s head of digital publishing, responsible for developing a digital strategy and publishing stream. She was previously Palgrave Macmillan’s business development director, where she created and developed Grove Music Online and Grove Art Online, and oversaw the set-up of an online subscription service at Nature.
David Roth-Ey (DRE) 大卫 罗思-艾
Roth-Ey is director of audio and e-books at HarperCollins. He recently moved from HarperCollins US, where he was editor-in-chief of Harper Perennial and Harper paperbacks; he was previously at Quality Paperback Bookclub.
Reporting by Liz Bury, Hannah Davies and Laura Barnicoat.

Classics rebrand for OUP
03.01.08 Tom Tivnan
Oxford University Press will be rebranding its entire Oxford World Classics (OWC) series with a "fresh, clean and inviting" look to appeal to general readers, in the first revamp of the list's design in 10 years.
Focus groups had told OUP that the familiar block red front covers, often illustrated with an Old Master painting, had seemed "old fashioned, serious and tricky". The new look will feature a single image or close-up detail of a painting, with title and author information on a single white block. The spines will retain a similar red and white look to the previous design.
The 700-plus titles on the list will be revamped in scheduled batches of 80 per year, beginning in April. Titles will also be rebranded as they go into reprint. OUP is to focus on the top 250 selling titles, which account for about 75% of the revenue for the series.
The content, including apparatus, notes and introductions, will remain the same and OUP says it will not raise prices. ISBNs will change for the new editions.
Judith Luna, OWC senior commissioning editor, said that OUP was responding to the increased activity in the classics market. She added: "But it is really to get people to look at familiar books again in a new way and get people to realise how rich these books are. The old look had perhaps more of an academic feel to it. We want to keep the introductions and apparatus that make them good for academics, but also want to appeal to general readers who just want to read Pride and Prejudice."

The launch is being backed with a campaign named "More Than Words". Titles are being released in six batches: Desire, Dream, Escape, Believe, Discover and Thrill. The first release is in April under the Desire and Dream categories. Desire has nine titles, including Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Austen's Sense and Sensibilty and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Ten titles are grouped under Dream, including Austen's Emma, J M  Barrie's Peter Pan and Other Plays and Plato's The Republic.
Luna said: "The idea is simply to get people discussing the books, such as why Moby Dick is under Desire."
Escape titles are available from June, Believe and Discover in August and Thrill in September. Bookmarks, posters and counterpacks with More Than Words branding are available from OUP.
The series rebrand has an official launch at the London Book Fair in April. OUP's media campaign will include trade and consumer advertising, print and radio coverage, microsites for the More Than Words categories and sponsored events at a number of book festivals.


牛津大学出版社重新出版经典系列图书

近日，牛津大学出版社宣布，其将重新出版多个“牛津世界经典”系列的经典图书。这些经典图书奖以“新鲜、清晰、悦目”的装祯设计重新面世。首批经典系列图书奖在接下来的10年间逐步推出。这一项目将于今年4月开始启动。
当重新印刷时，这些图书将以新的装祯设计风格与读者见面。英国知名大众消费选择分析公司——焦点集团认为，大家熟悉的经典图书通常以红色作为封面的基调，封面设计通常是有大师级的插画风格，但是这些却显得"老土，严肃，有点儿诡异" 。所以该公司建议牛津大学出版社，这些经典图书的全新外观设计应该以单一的形象或者近距离表现细节的画面来设计，而且书名和作者需以单一的白色字体来体现。而书脊则沿袭以前的红色或白色的设计风格。牛津大学出版社予以采纳。
首批该项目的经典图书将有700多个选题，牛津大学出版社预计每年出版其中80个选题。牛津大学出版社方面表示，其将主要集中出版销量排行靠前的250个选题，预计这250个选题出版后的盈利将占整个项目盈利的75%左右。
牛津大学出版社方面表示，图书的各部分内容（包括评注，注释，背景介绍等）都将保持不变，价格也不变。但是，这些新书将以新的ISBN号重新出版。

“牛津世界经典”重印项目的高级责任编辑朱迪斯•卢拉表示，牛津大学出版社开展该项目是基于经典类图书市场的增长力而展开的。她说，“这确实让读者能够再次以新的方式看到他们所熟悉的图书，这也让人们再次意识到这些图书的内容到底有多么的丰富。老版本的图书给人的感觉可能更学术一些。所以，我们想保持图书简介和评注的学术风格，但是我们也希望吸引更多的大众读者来阅读《傲慢与偏见》这类经典图书。”
在这个项目启动之前，牛津大学出版社将开展“不只是文字”的预热活动。该项目将以欲望、梦想、逃脱、信念、发现、惊悚等六个类别分批出版。比如，欲望类将有9个选题出版，包括赫尔曼•麦尔维尔所著《白鲸记》(Moby-Dick)、简•奥斯丁的《理智与情感》、莎士比亚的《罗密欧与朱丽叶》等。梦想类将有10个选题，包括简•奥斯汀的《艾玛》、J.M.巴里(J.M. Barrie) 的《彼得潘》及其其他戏剧，还有柏拉图的《理想国》等。
朱迪斯•卢拉说，“重印这些选题的目的很简单，主要是希望人们能够重新开始讨论这些图书，比如为什么《白鲸记》里的莫比•迪克会有那么强大的欲望等。”
逃脱类图书将于今年6月与读者见面，而信念类和发现类将于8月，惊悚类将于9月与读者见面。图书的书签、宣传海报将在“不只是文字”活动期间发布，读者可以向牛津大学出版社索取。
这个系列的发布将在今年4月的伦敦书展期间进行发布。牛津大学出版社的媒体活动将包括图书相关交易和读者建议等。届时，多项赞助活动将在伦敦书展期间展开。

scott?

scott?

yep!