阅读数字化，Kindle更普及、书店在消失——数字阅读时代已经来临。未来，人类的阅读将发生怎样的转变？科技将如何影响文明？欢迎关注本期慢读。

1 [再见，早餐桌上的报刊]

散发着新鲜油墨味的报纸曾陪伴了数代人的早餐，但这份墨香味的佐餐调料不久或将"变味"。出版业迎来了姗姗来迟的数字时代，正在经历翻天覆地的激变。

For many generations, the ink smell of a freshly printed newspaper has been the table salt in the morning that accompanied most of their breakfasts. But it may soon be no longer, as the print industry braces for a late entry into the digital party, marching at a furious pace.

拿美国最知名的报纸《纽约时报》来说，纸质版的日发行量继续下跌，而数字用户持续增长。今年第2季度，《纽约时报》的付费数字用户超过了73.8万，同比增长了40%。

Take America's best-known newspaper, The New York Times, as an example. While its daily print circulation continues to decline, its digital subscriber base kept growing. In Q2, NYT's paid digital subscribers grew by 40% year-on-year to over 738,000.

今年上半年，美国报刊亭的杂志销量也下滑了10%，但电子版杂志的销量激增了89%，达到了1020万。

Magazine newsstand sales in the US also dropped by 10% in the first half of 2013 while sales of the digital replica editions surged 89% to 10.2m.

全球范围内，已有300多家出版商在过去2年中设立了各式各样的网络付费墙，用以弥补纸质版发行量缩减带来的利润损失。

Around the globe, more than 300 publishers having erected different versions of paywalls in the past 2 years to offset revenue lost from declines in print circulation.

[电子书受到青睐]

在图书市场方面，尽管纸质书拥趸众多，廉价便利的电子书正在逐渐占据市场。

As regard to the book market, although printed books have many die-hard fans, the e-book is gradually gaining market share with its convenience and bargain price.

美国出版协会的一份报告称，2011年，美国电子书销量暴增252%，2012年继续增长27%。去年，电子书阅读器和平板的持有率也从18%增至33%。电子书销售目前占据美国图书市场1/4的份额。

A report from the Association of American Publishers says sales of e-books jumped a whopping 252% in 2011 and grew 27% in 2012 in the US. Those owning an e-book device or tablet jumped from 18% to 33% last year. E-books now represent 25% of total book sales in the US.

据普华永道公司预计，电子书的销售额将在2017年超过纸质书达到82亿美元，而纸质书的销售额在这几年中将减少一半以上。

PwC estimates that trade e-books will drive $8.2b in sales by 2017 - surpassing projected print book sales, which it thinks will shrink by more than half during that period.

2 [纸版瘦身]

纸版没有穷途末路。数据显示，电子书销量今年第一季度仅增长了5%，与前几年相比，增速大大降低。发行量流向数字版本不可避免，但若将纸版想象成一只超重的野兽，发行量的减少即意味着甩掉赘肉。瘦身以后，纸版将更洗练、更明晰、也更耐看。当读者向数字版转移后，纸质出版物将会越来越具有价值。

Print is not dying. Data shows sales of e-books rose just 5% in the year ending in the first quarter of 2013, a big slip in growth compared with years before. A circulation flow toward digital edition is inevitable, but think of print like an overweight beast, and the circulation decrease as shedding excess weight. The result is a leaner, more defined, more beautiful creature. What we buy in print will be increasingly valuable as readers shift to the digital realm.

信息类的很多纸质出版物将变得非常次要，它们太慢太笨重。主要报刊杂志及大多数批量生产的书都将出现越来越少的纸质版，但剩下的那部分将会保留纸质出版，而它们将扮演的角色是艺术品。

Print, for many types of information, will become far less important. It's too slow and too clunky. Major newspapers and magazines, and most mass-produced books will continue to see diminishing print runs, but the rest will survive to play the role of art.

[纸书，艺术的存在]

美国不少精品出版社都出版手工书籍，往往以新小说或诗歌为载体。这些出版物多半是创意阶层出于兴趣自我发挥的产物，他们不考虑目前这些盈利模式，所用的也都是数字时代以前的"原始技术"。

Many fine presses around the US put out handcrafted products, often featuring new fiction or poetry. These publications are often labors of love, driven more by an ascendant (优越的) creative-class interest in pre-digital technologies than any existing profit model.

当纸书变得越来越少见，有些人将会为了收藏而购买，有些则仅仅为了满足一种高级的感官体验。包含荣格本人手迹和自绘插图的复写版《红书》定价195美元，但2010年在美国仍然大卖。当读者认为一本书本身作为一个物品具有特殊性，他们就会愿意掏钱。

As paper books become more unusual, some will continue to buy them as collectors' items, others for the superior sensory experience they afford. Carl Jung's Red Book, in a facsimile edition featuring hand-painted text and illustrations, sold well in America in 2010 despite its $195 price tag. When readers believe that a book is special in itself, as an object, they can be persuaded to pay more.

书架同样不会消失。下一代纸书将会在书架上与墙上的绘画就美学品味、价位和韵味一决高下。

Bookshelves will survive too. The next generation of paper books on the shelves will likely rival the art hanging beside them on the walls for beauty, expense, and "aura".

3 [阅读:从孤独到社交]

在纸书时代，阅读是一件更孤独的事。一本实体书一次只能由一个人默默地读完。读完以后，合上书页，一个人享受寂静。没有聊天窗口和提示弹出，纷扰我们内心的思考。

With print, reading is a more solitary pursuit. A physical book is a solitary experience that can only be enjoyed by one person at a time. When we finish a book, we close the cover and are left in peace. No chat windows or alerts attempt to distract us from our internal thinking processes.

但Kindle、iPad等各类平板电脑和电子阅读器让阅读变得更社交。许多设备为电子书阅读提供了社交功能或应用，读书的同时你可以评注、分享或讨论。这为寻找圈子提供了便利，但却挤压了独立思考的空间。

Thanks to Kindle, iPad and other tablets and e-readers, reading now becomes more social. Many devices offer social features or apps that allow us to annotate, share and discuss with people at the same time we read e-books. It's a good way to find circles, but it also give readers few opportunities of independent thinking.

[深度阅读丢失]

塔夫斯大学教授玛莉安·沃夫哀叹"深度阅读"丢失。电子阅读器使得长篇阅读易受同时进行的多个任务干扰。用iPad读书，这种形式注定了阅读要分心。英语教授称，当今学生都读不下去长篇大论的19世纪小说，或者根本不愿去读。

Tufts University child development professor Maryanne Wolf laments the loss of what she calls "deep reading." E-readers is making long-form reading become subject to the same multitasking options. Read a book on an iPad and the distractions are embedded in the physical form itself. English professors report that today's students are unable or unwilling to read lengthy 19th-century novels.

许多新研究还强调，不但是电子设备使人们对纸书的专注力下降，而且人们在对着电子屏幕时首先自己就不那么用心。很多人就潜意识中就认为在平板上读书不如读纸书更严肃。圣何塞州立大学的一项研究得出结论称，与读纸书相比，读电子书时人们更喜欢走捷径，他们将更多时间花在浏览和搜寻关键词上，而且他们更可能把文章只读一遍。

An emerging collection of studies emphasizes that in addition to screens possibly taxing people's attention more than paper, people do not always bring as much mental effort to screens in the first place. Subconsciously, many people may think of reading on a computer or tablet as a less serious affair than reading on paper. A study from San Jose State University concluded that people reading on screens take a lot of shortcuts - they spend more time browsing, scanning and hunting for keywords compared with people reading on paper, and are more likely to read a document once, and only once.

4 [你也可以出书]

在数字时代，出版不再需要专业技术，任何人都能出版自己想出的书，并用它来卖钱。下载亚马逊的CreateSpace等应用，你就可以出版自己的电子书，或者加上自己的理解重新编排其他书。未来的阅读将是链接、翻译、共同创造和发现。

In the digital age, it doesn't take professional skills to be publishers. Anyone can publish books as they like and sell them to make profits. Using apps such as Amazon's CreateSpace, you can publish your own e-book or you can remix other books in your interpretation. The future of reading will be the linking, translating, co-creating, and discovering.

DIY出版在美国已经蓬勃发展，而且，DIY出版的电子书甚至在今年前4个月4次登上了电子书销量榜的榜首。

Self-publishing is already thriving in the US. A self-published title was the top e-book seller 4 times in the first 4 months this year.

[书不再是'书']

过去，书被定义为装订在两个封皮之间的出版物。如今，书的纸页在消失，只留下了一个概念性的结构——需要一定时间体验完成的一堆有主题的文本。

In the past a book was defined as anything printed between two covers. Today the paper pages of a book are disappearing. What is left in their place is the conceptual structure of a book - a bunch of text united by a theme into an experience that takes a while to complete.

当出版商千方百计地将多媒体内容融进数字出版，读者也不会仅仅停留于分享书中某个段落，他们还会分享插图、表格，以及电影、动画等丰富的内容。这就会导致一个问题：到底什么才是真正的书？无论是从多媒体的内容属性，还是"读者"能不能分享的角度，"书"和"杂志"不久即将在很大程度上几乎等同于内容丰富的网站。

As publishers grapple with the multimedia issues inherent in digital publishing, readers won't just share passages from books, but illustrations, charts, and rich content such as movies and animations. And this will lead to the question: What really is a book, really is anyway? "Books" and "magazines" will soon, in large part, become indistinguishable from the richest of websites, both in terms of multimedia content, and "readers'" ability to share that content.

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