出版与作家生涯2011readwriteweb.com编辑精选
J.K. 罗琳的下一章：对出版业施下的变形咒
J.K. Rowling's Next Chapter: A Transfiguration Spell on the Publishing Industry
导读
这篇讨论围绕 J.K. 罗琳通过 Pottermore 直接销售《哈利·波特》电子书展开，核心是作者对发行渠道、销售数据和版权收益的控制权变化，而非“自助出版”本身。对写作者来说，它值得读，因为涉及合同透明度、平台与自有渠道的取舍，以及版权/商标归属这些会直接影响创作回报的问题。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
分清“出版”和“发行”：自建网站卖电子书只是自发行，不等于绕开出版社，合同里的授权范围仍要看清。
- 02
签约时别只看版税比例，要确认能否拿到及时、完整的销量与发货/库存报告，否则你无法判断作品真实表现。
- 03
选择渠道时权衡“集中平台的曝光”与“自有渠道的控制和分成”，不要只因为不愿被抽成而放弃读者习惯。
- 04
做电子书可考虑无 DRM 加水印：既方便读者使用和跨平台阅读，又保留追踪与威慑盗版的手段。
HN 评论精选
作者拿不到销量数据是常见痛点，罗琳的直销带来实时数据与收益控制。
我很兴奋，尤其因为她声称网站上还有另外 18,000 字内容（我的极客自我为此欢呼！）。这像是 Stones 或 U2 因为拥有自己的旧作版权而想怎么做就怎么做，所以某种程度上没那么大不了，小人物很难复制。但另一方面，我喜欢看到去中介化，也真心喜欢听出版商对此类事情的抱怨。写作时最容易吃亏、却很少被讨论的一点是：你根本没法知道自己的书卖了多少。我曾为一位与大出版商合作的作者工作，我们真的拿不到报告——卖了多少、发了多少、书店里还有多少，什么都没有。如果你觉得这很震惊、是我们误解了，我做过一些调查：这很普遍。奇怪吧？你按本拿钱，但出版商不能告诉你卖了多少本。真的！这种缺乏报告的情况在音乐行业也存在，经济原因相同。罗琳将能获得实时销售统计；加上拥有 100% 收益，这些统计让她拥有的知识和控制权发生了重大变化。
vessenes查看英文原文
I'm really excited about this, not least because she claims another 18,000 words available through the site. (My nerd self rejoices!) This is the publishing equivalent of the Stones or U2 doing what they want, since they own their own back-catalog, so at some level it's not that big a deal, less replicable by the small-fry. On the other hand, I enjoy seeing disintermediation, and I truly enjoy hearing the whining from publishers about stuff like this. One of the major underdiscussed ways to get screwed writing is just not being able to learn how much you're selling. I worked for an author at one point with a major publisher. We literally could not get reports as to how many books had been sold, were shipped, were in bookstores. Nothing. If you think that's shocking and we misunderstood, I did some research -- it's common. Isn't that strange? You get paid per book, but publishers can't tell you how many books you've sold. Really! This lack of reporting happens in the music industry as well, for the same economic reasons. Rowling is going to have access to realtime statistics of sales; along with owning 100% of proceeds, these statistics are a major change in the amount of knowledge and control she has.
版权与商标可能被拆分出售，作者未必天然拥有角色和名称的全部权利。
我觉得版权和商标信息让人困惑：“Harry Potter and Pottermore Publishing Rights © J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter characters, names and related indicia are trademarks of and © Warners Bros. Ent. All Rights Reserved.” 所以，她拥有《哈利·波特》的出版权，也创造了这个系列的一切（名字、地点、角色），但不知为何华纳兄弟拥有角色和名字的商标及版权？看起来她可能为了拍那些电影不得不放弃（或说出售）很多权利。
coderdude查看英文原文
I find the copyright and trademark information to be confusing: "Harry Potter and Pottermore Publishing Rights © J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter characters, names and related indicia are trademarks of and © Warners Bros. Ent. All Rights Reserved." So she owns the publishing rights to Harry Potter and she created everything about the series (names, places, characters) but somehow Warner Bros. owns the trademarks and copyright for the characters and names? Seems like she may have had to relinquish (or sell, rather) a lot of rights to get those movies made.
自发行不等于自出版，绕开集中商店会牺牲普通读者的发现与购买便利。
人们总把出版和发行混为一谈。她是在自发行，不是自出版。事实上，她在英国和美国的出版商仍从 Pottermore 销售中抽成。用户不能通过亚马逊和 iBooks 商店下载，而必须去 Pottermore 直接下载（大概是 ePub）电子书，这是她自发行的结果。而这是个糟糕主意。用户喜欢能一次搜索找到所有内容的集中商店，大多数用户除了这些商店从没接触过 epub。如果在亚马逊或 iBooks 上搜不到，对普通用户来说就等于不存在。唯一有说服力的自发行理由就是避开亚马逊或苹果抽走的 30%。她把这说成是无 DRM 举措，但在自己网站提供无 DRM 电子书，并不意味着也要从集中商店下架。关心 DRM 的人可以从你这里拿，其他人从商店买。
eridius查看英文原文
People keep confusing publishing with distribution. She's self-distributing, not self-publishing. In fact, her publishers in the UK and the US are getting a cut of the Pottermore sales. The fact that users won't be able to download the books via the Amazon and iBooks stores but have to go to Pottermore and download the (presumably ePub) ebook directly are a consequence of her self-distribution. And it's a terrible idea. Users love centralized stores where they can find all their content with a single search, and most users have never run across an epub outside of these stores. If you can't search for it on Amazon or iBooks, it might as well not exists as far as these casual users are concerned. Yes, obviously the popularity of Harry Potter is going to do a lot to teach casual users about the ability to get eBooks via other mechanisms than the centralized stores. But it's akin to trying to sell the physical books using a small independent bookstore (that just happens to be in everybody's town) but not stocking it in the big chains such as Borders. And really, it just strikes me as greedy. The only compelling reason to try and self-distribute is to avoid the 30% cut that Amazon or Apple would take. She's couching this as being a DRM-Free maneuver, but providing DRM-free ebooks on your site doesn't mean you have to take them off of the centralized stores too. Anybody who cares about the DRM issue can get it from you, and everyone else can get it from the store. And it may surprise you to realize that the DRM-laden books from the iBookstore are far more convenient for consumers than DRM-free epubs. I can buy a book on my iPad, then re-download it later on my iPhone without having to remember where I got the original epub or without having to manually sync it on to the device. And I can easily delete it when I'm done reading it and then re-download it again if I want it back for whatever reason. And I believe Amazon's Kindle app has a very similar experience. J.K. Rowling, I love your books, but don't you think you're rich enough already? Give up that 30% and let me have my convenience back.
无 DRM 加水印可在开放使用与版权保护之间取得平衡。
无 DRM 加水印，绝对是让诚实的人保持诚实、同时保证内容互操作性和可用性的好办法。这对读者来说听起来是好消息。
r00fus查看英文原文
DRM-free and watermarked is definitely a great way to keep the honest folks honest while allowing interoperability and usability of the content. This sounds like great news for readers.
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