出版与作家生涯2011novelr.com编辑精选
非常富有的独立作家
The Very Rich Indie Writer
导读
这篇讲一位独立作家靠自助出版电子书获得可观收入，并由此引出对作品质量、读者定位和传统出版门禁的讨论。对写作者来说，它提示：不必把出版社当作唯一通道，找到自己的读者、经营渠道并持续输出，可能比追求传统认可更实际。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
先锁定一个具体读者群和类型，再围绕他们的需求写，而不是试图讨好所有人。
- 02
把博客、社区和口碑当作作品的前置渠道，让读者先被故事吸引，再转化为购买。
- 03
连载或系列化能培养稳定读者和复购，尤其适合类型小说和年轻读者市场。
- 04
自助出版降低门槛，但作品仍要经得起与同类传统出版物比较；渠道和内容质量要同时经营。
HN 评论精选
独立作品的质量未必差到需要出版商背书，传统出版流程对读者未必是增值。
我读她所属的类型但不读她的书（看过几段就决定跳过）。可以说：1）质量明显不如我喜欢的同类型作者，但关键在于，它至少和一些我花钱买过的纽约出版书难以区分。2）我没有觉得“这段摘录缺的就是一个出版商——你看它多像没被出版过”。3）我祝她成功，并强烈希望我喜欢的作者也采用这种模式，因为维持现状对我没有价值，反而让我遭遇区域锁区或“书已准备好——明年你就能读”这类麻烦。
patio11查看英文原文
As someone who reads her genre but not her books (saw a few paragraphs, decided to pass), I'd say: 1) The quality was noticeably worse than authors in the genre I enjoy but, critically, difficult to distinguish from at least some New York books that I've paid money for. 2) I did not find myself thinking "Dang, you know what this excerpt needed? A publisher. I mean, look at it, it's so... not published." 3) I wish her every success, and strongly hope that authors I enjoy adopt the model themselves, because continuing the current model adds no value to me and, in fact, subtracts it when I have to deal with territory lockouts or "The book is ready -- you can read it next year."
出版门禁容易保守化，自助和网络渠道更能容纳跨类型、原创但不符合主流套路的作品。
顺便说，因为网络小说和自助出版，我找到了一些很喜欢、但很可能永远不会被任何出版商出版的作品。我认为只要有这种守门人，他们就会偏保守，只接受与成功作品相似的东西。例子：《An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom》是一部以维多利亚世界为背景的成长故事，情色不是重点；它很好也很原创，但混合了太多类型、与我习惯的作品太不同，我不指望主流出版商出版它。另一个大例子是同人小说，比如 Eliezer Yudkowsky 的《Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality》，它永远不会被出版因为它是同人，但它原创且与我平时看到的主流出版作品很不同。
nicolas_t查看英文原文
As an aside, I find that thanks to online web fiction and self publishing I found some works I really enjoyed but probably would never have been published by any publisher... I think that whenever you have gatekeepers like this, they can get a bit too conservative and tend to only accept work that is similar to successful works. For example, An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom http://www.meilinmiranda.com/intimate-history An erotic (but not the main focus) coming of age story in a victorian world. It's really good and original, but it mixes so many genres and is so different from what I'm used to that I wouldn't expect any mainstream publisher to publish it... The other big example of this is some works of fanfiction like Eliezer's Yudkowski Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality which is popular here... It would never be published because it's fanfiction but it's original and is quite different from what I'm normally used to by mainstream publishers...
成功关键是找到细分受众并经营渠道，而不是依赖传统“专业写作”认证。
在我看来这适用于“找细分市场”策略。她找到了一个细分市场，一群想要特定服务的特定受众。他们不追求专业写作，至少大多数人不是；看论坛，有人提到这一点，但其他人似乎不太在意。亚马逊帮了她，互联网也是。她写博客，人们被她的故事吸引。之后她出一本书，便宜到 3 美元，人们购买。博客、亚马逊、口碑……都带来销量。她赚钱。找细分市场，弄清顾客想要什么，做出产品并获利。
csomar查看英文原文
In my opinion this applies to the "find a niche" strategy. She found a niche, a particular audience that want a particular service. They are not looking for professional writing, at least most of them (look at the forum, someone mentioned it but the others don't seem to be too much bothered). Amazon helped her, the Internet too. She blogs, people get attracted with her stories. After that, She releases a book, cheap like $3, people buy. Her blog, Amazon, word of mouth... all of that bring her sales. She makes money. Find a niche, figure out what your customers want, make the product and profit.
年轻成人市场和系列化电子书有强付费潜力，设备普及与礼物场景也在推动增长。
我感觉她聚焦的年轻成人小说领域，总体上正是很多电子书收入的来源，而且会扩展到所有领域。可以想见，连载作者让孩子迷上系列后，能有不错且递增的收入流。传统出版的年轻成人小说也有粉丝排队买精装新卷的例子。纽约时报文章提到，在 HarperCollins，2011 年 1 月电子书占年轻成人销售的 25%，一年前约 6%。文章还观察到很多孩子收到电子阅读器作礼物；亲戚想不出送什么书时，会买阅读器，可能再配亚马逊礼品卡或装满 Gutenberg 文本的 DVD。可以想象不久后会出现更年轻的作者赚钱故事。
reeses查看英文原文
I have a feeling the young adult fiction area (where this author is focused) is where much of the ebook money is coming from in general(but it's going to balloon everywhere). I can see how serial authors who get kids hooked on their series can have a nicely incrementing revenue stream. I'm sure you can think of a couple examples of traditionally published YA fiction that have long lines of fans loyally paying top dollar for hardcover versions of the newest volume. There was an article earlier this month in the NYT (web version: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/books/05ebooks.html) with some observations on children consuming ebook content. "At HarperCollins, for example, e-books made up 25 percent of all young-adult sales in January, up from about 6 percent a year before — a boom in sales that quickly got the attention of publishers there." And that's from the publishing 'house' example. The NYT article also observes that a lot of kids are getting ebook readers as gifts. When a grandparent/aunt/uncle can't think of a specific book to give a kid for their birthday or whatever, rather than give them a piece of junk toy or unwanted clothes, they can buy an ebook reader, maybe with a small Amazon gift certificate or a DVD full of formatted Gutenberg texts. I can only imagine it will be a short time before the author's age falls even further for some of these stories of young writers making money. I could see the clever goth girl in junior high pounding out a thin book a month and self-publishing for $.99.[1] Ebooks have disconnected the feeling of "value" and "heft" of a book, which publishers have been inadvertently reinforcing for years with the hard/soft cover versions of books. As with the Twilight (although, not so much with the Harry Potter) books I mentioned earlier, our idea of "quality" isn't necessarily important to hook kids. If it's escapist literature with a character with whom a kid can identify, you could pull a George Lucas (oh look, another one) and use Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces as a money-printing machine. [1] What a perfect time, too: take the last few years of your livejournal blog, put it into chapters, and format it for the Kindle.
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