出版与作家生涯2014nytimes.com
随着 900 名作家与亚马逊争斗，情节变得更加复杂
Plot Thickens as 900 Writers Battle Amazon
导读
2014 年，900 位作家（多为"作者公会"成员）联署公开信，抗议亚马逊在与阿歇特的合同战中用延迟发货、取消预订按钮等手段施压。HN 讨论把"作家大战亚马逊"这个叙事拆成几个更真实的问题：出版社是否还是必要的守门人、谁才真正代表作者、以及利害最大的人为何反而没有谈判席位。对写作者来说，这是一堂关于利益结构、信源选择与报道立场的写作课。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
写冲突时先问"谁承担最大后果却没有发言权"——这种错位往往比表面的正邪对立更有叙事张力。
- 02
引用"代表某群体"的组织时，追问它实际代表谁、代表多少人，别把机构立场写成群体共识。
- 03
关键证据放在哪里本身就是立场：如果最有力的事实被埋在文末，读者就该警惕作者的取舍。
- 04
想区分报道与评论，看事实密度与形象塑造的比例——浪漫化的人物描写常常是立场在说话。
HN 评论精选
把出版商视为多余的守门人：无限货架让筛选失去必要，亚马逊并未排斥作者，媒体在制造"针对作者"的叙事。
出版商是正在消亡的物种。线上零售商的货架空间无限，可以上架任何书，不需要某个"增值中间人"来筛选、确保只有最可能成功的书才成为书。这件事上我支持亚马逊。很多作者被出版商拒之门外，连上架机会都没有；亚马逊没有这么做，这也不是针对某个作者的人身攻击——不管媒体怎么渲染这个故事。
Elessar查看英文原文
Publishers are a dying species. With infinite shelf-space, online retailers can stock any and all books. They do not need to be curated by some value-added middleman in order to ensure only the likeliest successes will become books. I'm a big supporter for Amazon on this one. There are plenty of authors that the publisher will deny the opportunity to even put a book on the shelf. Amazon is not doing that, and it is not a personal attack on any author despite what media spin they might try to put on this story.
别把"作者公会"当成全体作者的代言：它代表的是少数顶级作者的利益，要多找不同立场的信源。
与此同时，成千上万的作者站在亚马逊一边，他们不只质疑阿歇特，也质疑"作者公会"——它只保护那 1% 超级富有的作者（而这些人恰好大多是 Preston 公开信的支持者）。想看不同视角，可以看 Barry Eisler 和 JA Konrath 多年来对这个议题的持续报道。
brianstorms查看英文原文
Meanwhile, thousands of authors support Amazon, and question not only Hachette but the "Authors Guild" which only protects the 1% of super-rich authors (who, coincidentally, are mostly signers of the Preston letter.) For a different viewpoint on all this, see the posts of Barry Eisler and JA Konrath who've been covering this issue for YEARS. http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
把争端写成"谁利害最大却不在谈判桌上"的结构，并指出 NYT 把最关键的证据埋在了文末。
我是全职的非虚构作者，过去和大型出版社合作过、效果很好，新项目也拿到过大出版社的多个报价，但已确定未来会自出版。早年我在一家大型消费品公司工作，和沃尔玛这类零售商谈过判。我一直密切关注这件事——虽然（目前）还没被波及，但这是为将来如何出版收集信息的好机会。从多数方面看，这就是一次标准的供应商与零售商谈判；这类争端大多不公开、也不会拖这么久，但一直在发生，双方都在用各自的筹码争取最好的条件，这很正常。不寻常的是：在这场谈判里，作者是利害最大的一方，却没有谈判席位——他们直接受争端影响，却零筹码、零话语权，遭受的损失也无处追偿。说白了，受影响的作者就是阿歇特在这场争端中唯一的真实筹码，而阿歇特正在把他们用到极致。NYT 报道里最让我在意的一段，被埋在接近文末的位置："（Preston 的）书大约一半销量曾来自亚马逊。但自从这家零售商开始……"
joshkaufman查看英文原文
I'm a full-time working non-fiction author. I've worked with major publishers on past projects with excellent results, have received multiple major offers from major publishers for my upcoming projects, and have firm plans to self-publish new projects in the near future. Early in my career, I also spent time negotiating with retailers like Walmart at a large consumer goods manufacturer. I've been following this situation closely. I'm not personally affected (yet), but it's an opportunity to collect information in the interest of making better decisions about how to publish future projects. In most ways, this is a pretty standard supplier/retailer negotiation. Most of these disputes don't go public, and don't last this long, but they happen all the time. Both sides are trying to use whatever leverage they have to negotiate the best possible deal. That's normal. What's atypical about this particular negotiation is that authors are the counterparty that have the most at stake, but have no seat at the negotiating table. They're directly affected by the dispute, but have zero leverage, zero input, and zero recourse for losses incurred in the dispute. The affected authors are, quite simply, the only real leverage Hachette has in this dispute, and Hachette is using them for all they're worth. Here's the part of the NYT story that stuck out to me. It's buried close to the bottom: "About half [of Preston's] book sales used to come from Amazon. But since the retailer started discouraging orders, his paperback sales are down 61 percent and his e-book sales are down 62 percent." Hachette failed to come to mutually agreeable terms with their largest retail partner by dollar and unit volume. That's their most important job as a publisher, and they blew it, to the tune of permanently costing their authors 50-60%+ of sales they'll never recover. Shipping books into retail distribution in a timely manner to minimize out-of-stocks is a publisher's second most important job. Production and distribution of physical finished goods inventory into retail is a hard problem, and most publishers are reasonably well equipped to handle it at scale. When Hachette's contract with Amazon expired, Amazon (rightfully) stopped ordering advance inventory for stocking, but continued taking orders for available titles and transmitted those orders to Hachette as they arrived. From there, it's Hachette's responsibility to deliver the orders to an Amazon distribution center. Once the books arrive, Amazon packs & ships them to purchasing customers as normal. That's why, when Hachette's contract expired, all of their books were listed as "Out of stock: ships in 1 to 6 weeks" - that's how long it takes Hachette to deliver stock. That's slow as hell. Amazon didn't "boycott" or "drop" or "betray" authors or "discourage" readers from buying their books - it ceased offering retail inventory management services to a supplier whose contract had expired, and made a rational and defensible business decision when it became clear that the supplier was not negotiating in good faith to establish a new agreement. Preston has a right to be pissed off, but not at Amazon.
报道与评论的界线要靠事实而非形象塑造；当叙述者自身处境可疑时，其评判权威也会被读者打折。
在这个话题上，很难分辨 NYT 的文章是报道还是社论。讽刺的是，他们把内容创作者描绘成在小屋里辛勤笔耕的浪漫形象（其实他们相当富有），而他们自己作为报纸都还没搞清楚怎么长期存活下去。泄露的内部文件显示他们在数字化策略上惊人地脱离技术现实，可我们似乎还是该相信他们有资格评判自由市场如何被颠覆性创新影响。
WhitneyLand查看英文原文
On this subject it's hard to tell if the NYT pieces are reporting or editorial. It's ironic they are painting romantic pictures of content creators toiling in sheds (who are actually wealthy) when they haven't even figured out how to secure their own long term existence as newspapers struggle. The leaked documents about their digital efforts and strategies show they are shockingly out of touch with technology, yet apparently we should assume they have the credibility to arbitrate how free markets are affected by disruptive innovation.
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