Culture | Tok of the town英文部分选自经济学人20230923期文化板块
Culture | Tok of the town
文化︱抖上热门
TikTok is changing the way books are recommended and sold
TikTok正在改变图书推荐和销售方式
This represents a profound shift for readers, authors and publishers
对读者、作者和出版商来说，这意味着巨大的变化
First the camera pans across eight books arrayed with hundreds of sticky tabs, flaunting that they have been closely read and meticulously annotated. Next a description runs across the screen: “Books I would sell my soul to read again for the first time”. The music crescendoes, and a manicured hand reveals the books’ covers in time with the beat, featuring authors including Simone de Beauvoir, Elena Ferrante and Sally Rooney.首先，镜头扫过八本书，书里贴着几百张标签，暗戳戳炫耀着每本书都是仔细读过还做了细致的批注。紧接着，屏幕上出现一行文字：“第一次让我愿意用灵魂去换取重读机会的书”。音乐渐强，一只指甲修得整整齐齐的手踩着点展示着每一本书的封面，亮出作者，有西蒙·德·波伏娃（Simone de Beauvoir）、埃琳娜·费兰特（Elena Ferrante）、 萨莉·鲁尼（Sally Rooney）等知名作家。
The user, who is called “buryme.withmybooks”, does not say why she likes them, but that does not matter. On TikTok hyperbole is the name of the social-media game. Around 9.3m people have watched the video and almost 400,000 people have saved it for future reference.这个Up的账号是“buryme.withmybooks”（溺死在书海里），她没有提及喜欢这些书的原因，但这好不影响（视频的受欢迎程度）。在TikTok上，要的就是语不惊人死不休。大约930万人观看过这条视频，几乎40万用户收藏起来留待日后重温。
TikTok, which has more than 1bn regular users, is making a mark on the world of publishing. Much of this is done through BookTok, the app’s community of users who comment on books. It is among the largest communities on the app; videos with this tag have been viewed 179bn times, more than twice as many as BeautyTok (beauty enthusiasts splinter into various groups). Adding #reading, #books and #literature pushes views to more than 240bn. Whoever said books are dead has not spent much time on TikTok, nor in bookstores, which now have whole displays touting titles “as seen on TikTok”.
TikTok有超过10亿活跃用户，对出版业有很大的影响，最主要的影响渠道是BookTok。BookTok是Tiktok上最大的社群之一，社群的用户主要发布书籍评论内容，带有书籍标签的视频播放量总计超过1790亿次，比BeautyTok（美妆爱好者的内容社群，细分为多个群组）的两倍还多。添加#阅读#、#书#和#文学#标签能助力观看量超过2400亿次。说“书籍已死”的人，显然既不了解线上的TikTok也不了解线下的书店。书店现在都会用“TikTok有推送”这种吸人眼球的标题。
Last year in Britain one in four book buyers used TikTok. The slice of sales directly attributable to the app is still small. Video platforms like TikTok and YouTube drove only around 3% of sales in 2022 in Britain, according to Nielsen, a research firm. But TikTok’s influence is significant and growing. The largest group of book buyers—women aged 54 and younger—are more likely to use the app than their male peers. TikTok recommendations influence their purchases, creating new literary stars and unearthing unlikely past ones, too.
去年英国有四分之一的购书者是TikTok用户。但是由TikTok直接引流销售的数量占比仍然较小。据研究公司Nielsen的统计，2022年英国仅有3%的书籍销售是由像TikTok和YouTube这样的视频平台带动的。但是TikTok有着持续增长的巨大影响力。购书者中占比最大的群体是年龄54岁及以下的女性，她们使用TikTok的可能性比同龄男性用户更高。TikTok的推荐会影响她们的购买决策，既能捧出文坛新星，也能让过去被埋没的作家重获追捧。
TikTok is not the first online platform to alter the publishing landscape. Wattpad, a self-publishing firm founded in 2006, helped writers publish stories and reach readers online. For years Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (now X) have allowed authors to connect with readers—and sometimes score a book deal in the first place.
TikTok不是第一个改变出版领域的线上平台。Wattpad，一家成立于2006年的自出版公司，就曾经帮助作者在线上发表故事、联通读者。多年来，Facebook、Instagram和Twitter（现名为X）让作者能够与读者交流，有时还能直接取得书籍出版合约。However, TikTok functions slightly differently. One way to think about BookTok is as a book club for the internet age. Just as stars like Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama can cause copies to fly off bookstore shelves by updating their lists of recommended reads, BookTok does something similar. However, the tastemakers are not usually celebrities but attractive #bookgirlies doing #readingchallenges, often in artfully lit bedrooms. (Although Ms Winfrey’s book club is now on TikTok, too.)但TikTok的运作模式稍有不同。BookTok话题可以理解为互联网时代的读书会。奧普拉·温弗里（Oprah Winfrey）和巴拉克·奥巴马（Barack Obama）等名人只需更新他们的推荐阅读书单，图书便会被抢购一空。BookTok的模式与之类似，但阅读领域的KOL通常不是名人（尽管奧普拉·温弗里的读书会目前也在TikTok上），而是进行#读书挑战#的有吸睛能力的#读书少女#，通常视频都在一间充满艺术光影的房间里。
tastemaker: one who sets the standards of what is currently popular or fashionable创造时髦风尚的人In many ways BookTok has become a new artistic genre, where emoting about characters and plots is glorified, even required. (Unlike those buttoned-up professional literary critics, who do not tend to write about how books make them cry.)
在许多方面，BookTok已经成为一种新的艺术形式，在这里，尽情抒发对角色和情节的看法得到大力吹捧，甚至必不可少。不像那些（对个人好恶）守口如瓶的专业文学评论家，他们（写的是专业客观评论）往往不会写作品为什么会让自己自己感动。Some old-fashioned bibliophiles may suspect that BookTok is less about books than about people seeking attention by promoting them. But BookTokers are already swaying bestseller lists. Novels categorised as “romance” have enjoyed the biggest boost, as happened with previous technological shifts, including the rise of e-books. Colleen Hoover’s “It Ends With Us” went viral on TikTok in early 2022 and has sold over 1m paperback copies in Britain. Six of the ten bestselling titles in America last year were written by her, too. They pick up similar themes, such as women lusting after hard-to-get men and “trauma bonding”, subjects that fare well on the video-sharing app.
一些老派的读书爱好者可能会怀疑BookTok推广书籍已经不太关乎书籍本身，而成为更多人博眼球的手段。然而，BookTok用户的选择已经开始影响畅销书榜单。正如之前技术的变革带来的电子书的流行一样，言情小说是BookTok的最大受益者。2022年初，科琳·胡佛（Colleen Hoover）的《莉莉的选择》（It Ends With Us）火爆TikTok，纸质书销量在英国已突破100万册。去年，全美十大畅销书中，有六本为她所著。它们主题类似，包括女人垂涎难以得到的男人、“创伤性联结”等，这些主题在TikTok上引发广泛关注。
注释：
1.bibliophile n.a person who collects or has a great love of books藏书家，爱书者
2.Trauma bonding happens when a person is strongly bonded to—and sometimes even idealizes—a partner in a physically, emotionally, or sexually abusive relationship.
fare
3.If you say that someone or something fares well or badly, you are referring to the degree of success they achieve in a particular situation or activity.
4.《莉莉的选择》 作者: [美]科琳·胡佛 / [美] 科林·胡佛；出版社: 中信出版社；出品方: 楚尘文化；原作名: It Ends with Us；译者: 孙依静
But BookTok favourites are often older releases, with some, including Ms Hoover’s most popular, written before the app was invented. For example, an aesthetic known as “dark academia”, which glamorises gothic-style universities, tweed and classic literature, has brought attention to a 544-page novel published in 1992 called “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt.
但BookTok青睐的往往是已经出版的旧书，有些甚至在这款App问世之前就已经发表，包括胡佛最受欢迎的作品。比如，“黑暗学院派”美学（哥特式大学、粗花呢和古典文学的审美风格），让人们开始重新关注起544页的长篇小说《校园秘史》（The Secret History）。该书由唐娜·塔特（Donna Tartt）所著，于1992年出版。
注释：黑暗学院派Dark Academia is a popular (and the original) academic aesthetic that revolves around classic literature, the pursuit of self-discovery, and a general passion for knowledge and learning.The popular Netflix show “Bridgerton”—big on colourful costumes, light on substance—created new fans of period romance and, in turn, inspired young readers to rediscover classic books such as “Pride and Prejudice”. In August Jane Austen’s novel won “Best BookTok Revival” at TikTok’s inaugural book awards. (How Austen would have felt about this honour is another question.)
网飞（Netflix）热剧《布里奇顿》（Bridgerton）（服装五颜六色，内容干瘪乏味）让又一批人爱上了特定时期的爱情故事，并让年轻读者重新翻开《傲慢与偏见》等经典著作。八月，在TikTok首届图书奖中，简·奥斯汀（Jane Austen）的小说斩获“最佳BookTok复兴”奖。至于简·奥斯汀本人对获此殊荣会有何感想，那就是另一回事了。
Because TikTok is so visual, the app has an outsize impact on sales of physical books in particular. E-books do not make such attractive visual props. According to a survey by Nielsen, 80% of Brits aged 14-25 prefer print. BookTokers show off annotations and flick through pages. Filming themselves finishing a book in a single day against a backdrop of hundreds of them on shelves is all part of the performance, and viewers will be extra impressed if the book looks thick.TikTok主要靠的是视觉传达，因此对纸质书籍销售的影响力尤其大，而电子书就不会有这么有吸引力的视觉效果。Nielsen的一项调查表明，80%的14-25岁英国人更倾向于阅读纸质书。BookToker们一边炫耀着书中的注解，一边快速翻阅着。用书架上摆放着的几百本书籍作为背景，一天看完一本，拍成视频，这些都是表演的一部分。如果书看起来很厚，观众的印象就会更加深刻。
Many authors remain puzzled by the app. Ms Hoover does not have a TikTok account, and neither do many of her other bestselling peers. Publishers, happy for new sales, are also a bit perplexed; their official TikTok accounts are unpopular by comparison. The challenge is how to keep up. It is not as simple as commissioning more books that make people cry, squirm or shudder and then hoping that people film themselves doing so. Although some editors are doing that anyway.许多作家仍然搞不太懂TikTok。胡佛本人没有TikTok账号，许多其他畅销书的作者也没有。出版商们对销售量的提升感到高兴，但也对此感到有些困惑；相比之下，他们的TikTok官方账号并不怎么受欢迎。出版商们面临的挑战是如何维持。这并不是简单地找人写更多能让人哭泣、不安或颤抖的书，然后希望人们将这些感受拍成视频。虽然有些编辑就是这么做的。Some enterprising publishers keep an eye out for gushing videos about forthcoming books and then snap up the rights in other territories. Others are making the most of momentum on BookTok. When Sarah Benton, a former executive at Orion, heard that “The Silent Patient”, a two-year-old thriller that the firm had published, was unexpectedly gaining traction, Orion tweaked its marketing and told booksellers to emphasise success on BookTok. Such tricks are rapidly becoming the norm.一些有进取心的出版商时刻留意着涌出的那些有关即将出版的书籍的视频，然后抢购它们在其他领域的版权。其他一些出版商则充分利用这些书在BookTok上的势头。比如萨拉·本顿（Sarah Benton），她是奥立龙出版社（Orion）的前总裁，当她听说出版社两年前发行的惊悚小说《沉默的病人》（The Silent Patient）意外走红时，调整了营销策略，通知书店突显该书在BookTok上的流行。这些技巧正在迅速成为出版业的基本操作。
Jack Jan，实践出真知
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zy，没啥新鲜的，想做一个好译员
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