春天来了，纸质书的春天也来了？

资深品牌咨询师、《纽约时报》（New York Times）旗下时尚杂志《T》的时尚主编玛丽-艾美莉·索维 （Marie-Amélie Sauvé）自立品牌，逆潮流创办纸质时尚杂志，哪里来的自信？电子书阅读器和网络资源风靡全球，纸质书是否气数已尽？中国的出版市场，风往哪边吹？freemium为何意？

“我不是针对谁，我只是说在座的各位都是垃圾。”

Marie-Amélie Sauvé, a whip of a woman in leather trousers and new-season Louis Vuitton boots, is in her Left Bank offices near the Eiffel Tower.She has a lean patrician grace and a Parisian's candour：she's sparklingly direct.

时尚达人玛丽-艾美莉·索维（Marie-Amélie Sauvé）穿着皮草裤与最新季路易威登（Louis Vuitton）皮靴，坐在距离艾菲尔铁塔不远处的左岸办公室里。身材苗条的她浑身透着优雅的贵族气质，说话是巴黎人的率直：说起话来直来直去。

“Most of them look like garbage,” she says of fashion magazines.“What I see in magazines is not desirable.That needs to change.For me, all the fashion shoots I see, they all look the same.”

“多数杂志就像垃圾。”她这样评价时尚类杂志，“我觉得内容差强人意，需要大动。在我看来，所有的时尚广告片都大同小异。”

After years in the shadows of the fashion spotlight, Sauvé is about to step into its glare with a new project of her own.Mastermind, her debut magazine, is launched next week.

远离喧嚣时尚多年后，索维即将用自己的全新项目闪亮登场时尚界——她创办的时尚杂志《Mastermind》将正式发行。

信心来源于全新的时尚理念。

“I've tried to make an international magazine,” she says of its ambitions, which are trans-generational, global and, crucially, garbage-free.For starters, it's not a fashion magazine.“It's about many different things：society, architecture, literature, what is going on in the world,” she explains.“You can't talk about fashion alone.It's not relevant.I love fashion, of course, but now, because of the internet, I see differently.”

“我一直想打造一本具有国际影响力的时尚杂志。”她这样评价自己这本杂志的“雄心抱负”——跨越代际，以及具有全球视野，更重要的是：不含有任何时尚垃圾。首先，这并非单纯的时尚杂志。“它的内容五花八门：社会，建筑、文学以及全球动态。”她解释道，“我们不能单纯谈论时尚，这并不重要。我当然酷爱时尚，但网络无处不在，所以我如今看待时尚的角度变了。”

网络如此发达，为何却反其道而行之，从纸质书入手呢？

Sauvé has a lot of point.And a lot of view.But if her candour catches one off-guard every so often, so does her confidence in an old-fashioned print magazine format for which she has yet to develop any significant digital strategy.“For the moment it's just an object,” she says of the magazine.“I think it was really important to create that object, and for people to touch it.But[in future]we want to develop something on the internet, of course, because that's the future anyway.”

索维言之有理，而且想法很多。但如果说她的率直有时让人措手不及的话，其对传统纸质杂志的信心也让人大感意外（她仍未推行意义重大的数字化杂志战略）。“目前，《Mastermind》只是本纸质杂志。”她说，“我当时觉得实物杂志以及让读者真正触摸它至关重要。但将来我们当然想推出网络版，因为那是未来发展趋势。”

索维选择从纸质书入手与近年来纸质书回暖也不无关系。

There are signs of the book's renaissance all around.Waterstones, the UK book chain, returned to profit last year after suffering six years of losses.Sales of print books in the US rose by 3 per cent, while those of ebooks have fallen.Digital technology has not unleashed the same revolution in publishing that it has for music, television and news; we still like to read books.

如今到处都有图书复兴的迹象。英国连锁书店“水磨石”（Waterstones）在6年亏损后，去年恢复盈利。美国纸质图书销售增长3%，同时那些电子书的销售下降。数字技术没有推动出版业爆发音乐、电视和新闻领域的那种革命，我们仍然喜欢读书。

纸质书起死回生，其原因竟是纸质书与电子书价格的博弈。

The book's enduring popularity is widely hailed as a heart-warming tale of traditional values triumphing over cold, hard technology.This is not the whole story, however.It can equally be read as the narrative of Amazon's growth：if you cut prices, people buy more and if you raise prices, they buy less.

图书持续受欢迎，被普遍誉为温暖人心的传统价值故事胜过了冰冷的技术。然而，这并非故事的全部。它同样可以被解读为亚马逊成长的故事：如果你降价，人们就会更多购买，如果你提价，他们就会减少购买。

Customers enjoy the touch and feel of printed books：Americans read an average of 12 books a year, and most of those are physical.But they also prefer low prices, and do not like the fact that ebooks are comparatively expensive.Take The Whistler, John Grisham's new blockbuster, which was selling on Amazon this week for $14.47 in hardback and $14.99 on Kindle.

顾客喜欢纸质书的触感：美国人平均每年阅读12本书，其中大部分是纸质书。但他们也青睐低价，不喜欢电子书相对昂贵的事实。以约翰·格里沙姆（John Grisham）的新畅销书《吹口哨的人》（The Whistler）为例，它本周在亚马逊的精装本售价为14.47美元，而Kindle上的售价是14.99美元。

That is the new reality：ebooks from publishers such as Penguin Random House and HarperCollins often cost more than hardbacks as well as paperbacks.Mr Bezos's efforts a decade ago to promote mass adoption of the Kindle by discounting bestsellers to $9.99 and making ebooks cheaper than books has faded.It is now the other way round：Amazon favours print.

这是新的现实：企鹅兰登书屋（Penguin Random House）和哈珀柯林斯（HarperCollins）等出版商的电子书售价往往超过精装本和简装本。贝索斯不再像10年前那样，为了推广Kindle而将畅销书打折到9.99美元，使电子书比纸质书更便宜。现在正好颠倒了过来：亚马逊青睐纸质书。

It makes perfect sense for Amazon.The company invested in launching and developing the Kindle and now dominates the ebook market：B&N has retrenched with the Nook and iPhones are used for other activities than reading ebooks.To the degree that cheap ebooks were needed to promote Kindles, the urgency has passed and some profit-taking is rational.

这对亚马逊来说非常明智。该公司投资推出并发展了Kindle，如今在电子书市场占据主导地位：巴诺已停产Nook电子书阅读器，iPhone被用于其他活动而非阅读电子书。就当初利用廉价电子书推广Kindle来说，现在已经没有那么急迫，斩获一些利润是理性的。

For now, the book's renaissance suits Amazon, publishers, and readers.“It turns out people like paper if they are not penalised financially,” says Mike Shatzkin of the consultancy Idea Logical.

就现在而言，图书的复兴符合亚马逊、出版商和读者的利益。咨询公司Idea Logical的迈克·沙茨金（Mike Shatzkin）表示：“事实证明，只要人们在经济上不吃亏，他们就会喜欢纸质书。”

然而对于中国来说，情况似乎还有所不同。

我们以亚马逊2016年度图书排行榜第一名《岛上书店》为例：

该书属于kindle unlimited 免费范围，购买kindle版本需9.99元，而纸质书则是24.2元

Photo Credit：Amazon

世界上最大的出版业科技服务供应商Ingenta总结了中国出版业的几大特点：

1.Books are cheap （literally）

书都很便宜（真的）

In China books are cheap, and this is especially so in the case of ebooks.The typical selling price of an ebook in China tops out at around 8 Yuan（around $1.30）, putting books in the same price range as basic grocery items as rice or potatoes.Consequently it's rare for people in China to buy books as gifts, and books remain something that consumers buy for themselves.

在中国，书都很便宜，尤其是电子书。一本电子书一般价格在8元左右（即约1.3美元），与大米、土豆等食品杂货的价格处于同一水平。因此，在中国人们很少买书作为礼物，消费者们一般只会买给自己。

2.Chinese reading…is all about mobile phones

中国人的阅读大多在手机上

China is an example of what is often called a ‘mobile-first' economy, meaning that many consumers primarily use their phones to access the internet.One estimate by Boston Consulting Group suggest that as much as 90% of internet browsing in China is conducted on smartphones.This means that any company looking to capture a slice of the Chinese digital reading market needs to target mobile phones.One early entrant into this market was China Mobile, one of China's biggest mobile carriers.It launched its own ebookstore in 2009, aiming itself at the growing number of Chinese commuters, many of whom have long journeys to and from work.

中国是通常被称为“移动优先”经济的典范之一，也就是说，许多消费者优先选择用手机上网。波士顿咨询公司（Boston Consulting Group）估计，在中国，约90%的网页浏览都是在手机上操作的。这也就意味着，如果哪个公司想要在中国的电子阅读市场分一杯羹，就必须将目标对准手机。较早进入这个市场的是中国最大的移动运营商之一，中国移动。该公司于2009年上线电子书城，专门针对数量不断增加的通勤者，他们大多上下班路程很远。

Photo Credit：Ingenta Source:Enfodesk

3.Chinese readers love serial fiction

中国人喜欢连载小说

One key difference between the Chinese reading market and the book market in the west is that millions readers in China are hooked on serialized fiction.We reported on the Chinese phenomenon of ‘freemium fiction' back in 2011, and since then the trend has only grown in popularity, with some series racking up in excess of 200 million readers.

中国的阅读市场与西方的一大不同就是上百万的读者喜欢连载小说。2011年我们就报道过中国的“免费增值小说”的现象，自那时起，这个趋势只增不减，有的系列竟拥有超过2亿读者。

新词速递freemium

这是一个“新生的”组合词：由free和premium组成，自然也就结合了两者的意思，“免费增值”。这个词也代表这一种新兴的商业模式：免费增值商业模式（Freemium business model）。这种商业模式利用了消费者的心理，从一开始的免费提供，到消费者产生产品依赖后，则开始收费。或者利用相似的方法，在产品上免费，却在其他地方获取利润。如今，免费使用却付费升级的软件，以及会员才能看大结局的电视剧都是利用了这一种消费模式。文中的freemium fiction就是指许多网络连载小说（serialized fiction），通常会在一定量的免费阅读后开始收费。freemium，你记住了么？

词汇总结

unleash[ʌn'liːʃ]

v.发动；解开…的皮带；解除…的束缚

Digital technology has not unleashed the same revolution in publishing that it has for music, television and news; we still like to read books.

数字技术没有推动出版业爆发音乐、电视和新闻领域的那种革命，我们仍然喜欢读书。

hail[heɪl]

v.致敬；招呼；向...欢呼；猛发

The book's enduring popularity is widely hailed as a heart-warming tale of traditional values triumphing over cold, hard technology.

图书持续受欢迎，被普遍誉为温暖人心的传统价值故事胜过了冰冷的技术。

candour['kændə]

n.正直，公正；直率；洁白

format['fɔːmæt]

n.格式；版式；开本

If her candour catches one off-guard every so often, so does her confidence in an old-fashioned print magazine format for which she has yet to develop any significant digital strategy.

如果说她的率直有时让人措手不及的话，其对传统纸质杂志的信心也让人大感意外（她仍未推行意义重大的数字化杂志战略）。

freemium['friːmɪəm]

n.免费增值

We reported on the Chinese phenomenon of ‘freemium fiction' back in 2011.

2011年我们就报道过中国的“免费增值小说”的现象。