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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”与亚马逊(Amazon)通常沾不上边，但杰夫•贝索斯(Jeff Bezos)的这家公司现在却表现得像一家组织混乱、库存控制不力的小书店。“你想买那本书是吗？不好意思，库存没货。我们可以为您预订一本，但要花很长时间才能送到。要不买本别的书吧？”
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.
这当然是骗人。亚马逊告诉美国顾客，罗伯特•加尔布雷思（Robert Galbraith，J•K•罗琳(JK Rowling)的笔名）的小说新作《蚕》(The Silkworm)“目前无货”，说的不是实话。亚马逊的真实意思是，它不会预售该书，因为这本书由Hachette出版，而亚马逊正在试图迫使该出版社提供折扣。
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.
出版商们自从去年在美国和欧洲输掉一桩反垄断官司以来，便对这种场景忧心忡忡。“它们担心，如果亚马逊继续垄断电子书的销售，它将开始要求降低批发价格，”美国地区法官丹尼丝•科特(Denise Cote)写道。她裁定，出版商与苹果(Apple)合谋提高苹果商店里的电子书价格。
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.
因为组成的同业联盟太过明目张胆，“六大”出版商和苹果在抵抗亚马逊通过Kindle垄断电子书的斗争中马失前蹄。此案成为近年来最奇怪的反垄断案件之一——美国政府和欧盟委员会(European Commission)竟然急着去帮助一家正在崛起的垄断企业。
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)在亚马逊公司传记《一网打尽》(The Everything Store)中写道，贝索斯曾提出，亚马逊应像“猎豹追逐羸弱的瞪羚”那样对待小出版商。Hachette是“五大”（原本为六大，因为企鹅(Penguin)与兰登书屋(Random House)的合并而减少为五大）出版商中较小的一家，容易受到亚马逊的冲击。
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.
我对亚马逊爱恨交加。贝索斯创办了一家出色的公司，它对满足顾客和减价的执着令竞争对手汗颜。它重新塑造了零售业，不仅实现了在线零售，还让零售变得更方便。
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.
贝索斯还打造了Kindle，从索尼(Sony)等竞争对手的笨拙产品中脱颖而出。Kindle之所以超过索尼阅读器和Nook，不只是因为亚马逊的营销能力和生产效率。Kindle性能优越，并与优秀的在线商店（当贝索斯让其正常运转的时候就是优秀的）相连接。
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.
虽然目前采取了不友好的策略，但亚马逊一直能为出版商创造丰厚的利润，为一个以规矩和惯例著称的行业带来创新。顾问迈克•沙茨金(Mike Shatzkin)表示：“亚马逊是出版商的最佳客户。它销量巨大，不会退货（未售出书籍），并且可以通过预售让出版商的书从第一天就登上畅销书排行榜。”
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.
但亚马逊的冷酷令人不安，它也毫不掩饰自己的雄心：将其他供应商和中间商——包括出版商和书店——挤出这块业务。亚马逊变成了一台机器，为了削减价格，将利润（包括它自己的）挤压到接近于零的水平。
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.”
这不仅包括出版商的利润，还包括作者获得的版税和预付金——这些收入也在下降。“亚马逊是一家苛刻、小气、恶毒、反文化的公司，”作家经纪人安德鲁•威利(Andrew Wylie)表示，“如果它不喜欢谈判的走向，便惩罚出版商和读者。我不理解这种行为为何没有被绳之以法。”
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.
这是亚马逊的优势所在——它不需要组成同业联盟来压榨供应商，因为它的规模已经够大。亚马逊占据了美国纸质书市场30%的份额和电子书市场逾60%的份额，从反垄断的角度来说，它无疑具有市场权力。但在美国反垄断法的历史上，从未有单独一家公司被宣布为非法买方垄断者的案例。
“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.
“在美国，一家公司利用买方垄断使供应商降低价格，不构成非法行为。一般的看法是，买方权力意味着低价，而低价是有利的，”纽约威尔逊•桑西尼•古奇•罗沙迪律师事务所(Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati)反垄断律师乔纳森•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.
亚马逊的欺骗性销售手段可能违法——它告诉顾客，Hachette的图书在美国“无货”（还有邦尼(Bonnier)的图书在德国也是如此——亚马逊使用了同样的手段），但顾客却能在竞争对手那里轻而易举地买到。不过，就反垄断法而言，亚马逊这家图书领域的龙头企业是安全的。
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.
出版商吸取的教训是：要做大规模。企鹅已经与兰登书屋合并（英国《金融时报》母公司培生(Pearson)拥有企鹅兰登书屋(Penguin Random House) 47%的股份），哈珀柯林斯(HarperCollins)刚刚以4.15亿美元收购最大的独立出版商之一Harlequin。对付市场权力的解药是扩张规模。
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.
主要问题不是谁赢得亚马逊和出版商之间的较量，而是什么能让读者、作者和全社会受益（我既是读者又是作者，企鹅兰登书屋出版过我的书）。亚马逊为公共利益做过一些好事——任何作者都可以在Kindle平台上出版作品，这可以强化言论自由，促进思想传播。
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，亚马逊将图书出版商作为普通供应商（如玩具厂商或花园家具厂商）对待，很难说对公共利益有什么好处。目前，电子书利润率依然较高，因此弥补了纸质书所受的压榨，但亚马逊的意图是明确的。如果它将出版业变成一种亏损的行当，写作这个职业就会遭殃。
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.
讽刺的是，出版商试图自行为图书定价，将亚马逊当作代理商对待的努力是合法的；让它们受损的是同业联盟。根据美国法律，它们的出路是自己成长为巨头。同业联盟就到此为止了。
