出版商要擴張要做大規模 方能抵禦亞馬遜

Inefficiency is not a quality usually associated with Amazon but Jeff Bezos’s company is behaving as if it is a small, disorganised bookstore that cannot quite control its stock. “You want that book, do you? Very sorry but we have run out. We can order you another copy but they are taking a long time to arrive at the moment. How about buying another title instead?”

“低效”與亞馬遜(Amazon)通常沾不上邊，但傑夫•貝索斯(Jeff Bezos)的這家公司現在卻表現得像一家組織混亂、庫存控制不力的小書店。“你想買那本書是嗎？不好意思，庫存沒貨。我們可以爲您預訂一本，但要花很長時間才能送到。要不買本別的書吧？”

It is a ruse, of course. When Amazon tells its US customers that The Silkworm, the new novel by Robert Galbraith, a pseudonym for JK Rowling, is “currently unavailable”, it is not telling the truth. What it means is that it is not making the book available for preorder because it is published by Hachette, from which Amazon is trying to force discounts.

這當然是騙人。亞馬遜告訴美國顧客，羅伯特•加爾佈雷思（Robert Galbraith，J•K•羅琳(JK Rowling)的筆名）的小說新作《蠶》(The Silkworm)“目前無貨”，說的不是實話。亞馬遜的真實意思是，它不會預售該書，因爲這本書由Hachette出版，而亞馬遜正在試圖迫使該出版社提供折扣。

This is the moment publishers have feared since they lost an antitrust case in the US and Europe last year. “They were concerned that, should Amazon continue to dominate the sale of ebooks to consumers, it would start to demand lower wholesale prices,” wrote Denise Cote, the US district judge. She ruled that the publishers had conspired with Apple to raise book prices in its store.

出版商們自從去年在美國和歐洲輸掉一樁反壟斷官司以來，便對這種場景憂心忡忡。“它們擔心，如果亞馬遜繼續壟斷電子書的銷售，它將開始要求降低批發價格，”美國地區法官丹尼絲•科特(Denise Cote)寫道。她裁定，出版商與蘋果(Apple)合謀提高蘋果商店裏的電子書價格。

By forming a blatant cartel, the “big six” publishers and Apple botched their effort to resist Amazon’s dominance of ebooks with the Kindle. It made the strangest antitrust cases of recent years – the US government and the European Commission rushing to the aid of an emerging monopolist.

因爲組成的同業聯盟太過明目張膽，“六大”出版商和蘋果在抵抗亞馬遜通過Kindle壟斷電子書的鬥爭中馬失前蹄。此案成爲近年來最奇怪的反壟斷案件之一——美國政府和歐盟委員會(European Commission)竟然急着去幫助一家正在崛起的壟斷企業。

Mr Bezos once suggested that Amazon treat small publishers “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle”, wrote Brad Stone in The Everything Store, his corporate biography. Hachette is one of the smaller big five – reduced from six by the Penguin-Random House merger – and is vulnerable.

布拉德•斯通(Brad Stone)在亞馬遜公司傳記《一網打盡》(The Everything Store)中寫道，貝索斯曾提出，亞馬遜應像“獵豹追逐羸弱的瞪羚”那樣對待小出版商。Hachette是“五大”（原本爲六大，因爲企鵝(Penguin)與蘭登書屋(Random House)的合併而減少爲五大）出版商中較小的一家，容易受到亞馬遜的衝擊。

I have mixed feelings about Amazon. Mr Bezos has created a remarkable company whose devotion to pleasing customers and cutting prices puts competitors to shame. It reimagined what retailing should be like, not just by putting it online, but by making it easier.

我對亞馬遜愛恨交加。貝索斯創辦了一家出色的公司，它對滿足顧客和減價的執着令競爭對手汗顏。它重新塑造了零售業，不僅實現了在線零售，還讓零售變得更方便。

He also cut through the fumblings of rivals such as Sony in creating the Kindle. It did not overtake the Sony Reader and the Nook merely because of Amazon’s marketing power and manufacturing efficiency. It is a superior device and is linked to a brilliant (when Mr Bezos lets it work) online store.

貝索斯還打造了Kindle，從索尼(Sony)等競爭對手的笨拙產品中脫穎而出。Kindle之所以超過索尼閱讀器和Nook，不只是因爲亞馬遜的營銷能力和生產效率。Kindle性能優越，並與優秀的在線商店（當貝索斯讓其正常運轉的時候就是優秀的）相連接。

Despite its current tactics, Amazon has been a profitable partner to publishers – bringing innovation to a business of custom and practice. “Amazon is the publishers’ best account. It offers tremendous volume with no returns [of unsold books] and preordering helps them put their books on bestseller lists on day one,” says Mike Shatzkin, a consultant.

雖然目前採取了不友好的策略，但亞馬遜一直能爲出版商創造豐厚的利潤，爲一個以規矩和慣例著稱的行業帶來創新。顧問邁克•沙茨金(Mike Shatzkin)表示：“亞馬遜是出版商的最佳客戶。它銷量巨大，不會退貨（未售出書籍），並且可以通過預售讓出版商的書從第一天就登上暢銷書排行榜。”

But it is disturbingly ruthless, with a hardly disguised ambition to force other suppliers and intermediaries – including publishers and bookstores – out of business. It is a machine for squeezing margins, including its own, to near-zero in order to cut prices.

但亞馬遜的冷酷令人不安，它也毫不掩飾自己的雄心：將其他供應商和中間商——包括出版商和書店——擠出這塊業務。亞馬遜變成了一臺機器，爲了削減價格，將利潤（包括它自己的）擠壓到接近於零的水平。

These margins include not only publishers’ profits but royalties and advances to authors, which have been falling. “This is a punitive, vindictive, vicious anti-culture company,” says Andrew Wylie, the authors’ agent. “If it doesn’t like the way negotiations are going, it punishes the publishers and readers. I don’t understand why this is not subject to legal redress.”

這不僅包括出版商的利潤，還包括作者獲得的版稅和預付金——這些收入也在下降。“亞馬遜是一家苛刻、小氣、惡毒、反文化的公司，”作家經紀人安德魯•威利(Andrew Wylie)表示，“如果它不喜歡談判的走向，便懲罰出版商和讀者。我不理解這種行爲爲何沒有被繩之以法。”

There lies Amazon’s advantage – it need not form a cartel to squeeze its suppliers because it is already large. With a 30 per cent share of the physical book market in the US and more than 60 per cent of ebooks, it clearly has market power in the antitrust sense. But there has never been a case in US competition law of a single company being declared an illegal monopsonist.

這是亞馬遜的優勢所在——它不需要組成同業聯盟來壓榨供應商，因爲它的規模已經夠大。亞馬遜佔據了美國紙質書市場30%的份額和電子書市場逾60%的份額，從反壟斷的角度來說，它無疑具有市場權力。但在美國反壟斷法的歷史上，從未有單獨一家公司被宣佈爲非法買方壟斷者的案例。

“In the US, the simple use by one company of monopsony power to extract lower prices from suppliers is not illegal. There is general intuition that buyer power means lower prices and lower prices are good,” says Jonathan Jacobson, an antitrust lawyer at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati in New York.

“在美國，一家公司利用買方壟斷使供應商降低價格，不構成非法行爲。一般的看法是，買方權力意味着低價，而低價是有利的，”紐約威爾遜•桑西尼•古奇•羅沙迪律師事務所(Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati)反壟斷律師喬納森•雅各布森(Jonathan Jacobson)表示。

Amazon may be breaking the law with a deceptive sales practice – telling its customers that Hachette books in the US (and Bonnier books in Germany, where it is waging a similar campaign) are “unavailable”when they can be bought quickly from its competitors. In terms of antitrust law, however, the biggest force in books is secure.

亞馬遜的欺騙性銷售手段可能違法——它告訴顧客，Hachette的圖書在美國“無貨”（還有邦尼(Bonnier)的圖書在德國也是如此——亞馬遜使用了同樣的手段），但顧客卻能在競爭對手那裏輕而易舉地買到。不過，就反壟斷法而言，亞馬遜這家圖書領域的龍頭企業是安全的。

There is a moral for publishers: get bigger. Penguin has merged with Random House (Pearson, the owner of the Financial Times, holds a 47 per cent stake in Penguin Random House), and HarperCollins has just bought Harlequin, one of the biggest independents, for $415m. The remedy to market power is to bulk up.

出版商吸取的教訓是：要做大規模。企鵝已經與蘭登書屋合併（英國《金融時報》母公司培生(Pearson)擁有企鵝蘭登書屋(Penguin Random House) 47%的股份），哈珀柯林斯(HarperCollins)剛剛以4.15億美元收購最大的獨立出版商之一Harlequin。對付市場權力的解藥是擴張規模。

The question is less who wins the contest between Amazon and publishers than what benefits the reader and author (I am both, having had books published by Penguin Random House), and wider society. Amazon has done some things for the public good – the ability of any writer to self-publish on the Kindle platform aids freedom of expression and the spread of ideas.

主要問題不是誰贏得亞馬遜和出版商之間的較量，而是什麼能讓讀者、作者和全社會受益（我既是讀者又是作者，企鵝蘭登書屋出版過我的書）。亞馬遜爲公共利益做過一些好事——任何作者都可以在Kindle平臺上出版作品，這可以強化言論自由，促進思想傳播。

It is hard, though, to see the public benefit in Amazon treating book publishers as just another bunch of suppliers, like the makers of toys or garden furniture. For now margins on ebooks remain high, offsetting the squeeze on hardbacks, but Amazon’s intent is clear. If it turns publishing into a lossmaking business, the profession of writing will suffer.

然而，亞馬遜將圖書出版商作爲普通供應商（如玩具廠商或花園傢俱廠商）對待，很難說對公共利益有什麼好處。目前，電子書利潤率依然較高，因此彌補了紙質書所受的壓榨，但亞馬遜的意圖是明確的。如果它將出版業變成一種虧損的行當，寫作這個職業就會遭殃。

The irony is that publishers’ efforts to set book prices themselves and treat Amazon as an agent were legal; it was the cartel that undermined them. The solution in US law is to grow into giants themselves. So much for craft industry.

諷刺的是，出版商試圖自行爲圖書定價，將亞馬遜當作代理商對待的努力是合法的；讓它們受損的是同業聯盟。根據美國法律，它們的出路是自己成長爲巨頭。同業聯盟就到此爲止了。