双语阅读｜中国最大在线出版商吸引投资者与读者
WHENEVER Xu Jie goes to the cinema to watch mystery and detective films, she leaves disappointed: to help stamp out superstition, China’s censors excise ghosts and zombies from the screens. So for her fill of phantoms, she turns to the flourishing online-literature scene. There, authors are allowed to take liberties from which most of China’s state-owned publishing houses would recoil. Homophones stand in for forbidden words. Danmei, a new online class of homoerotic story, is especially popular among young women. Readers can choose from over 200 established genres such as xianxia, a fantasy world of deities and martial arts.
徐洁每次去电影院看推理和探案片时，她都会失望而归。为了有利于消除迷信，中国的审查机构禁止播放有鬼怪和僵尸的电影。于是，为了满足自己的幻想，她转向了蓬勃发展的网络文学领域。在网上，写手们可以自由发挥，而中国大多数国有出版社却止步不前。禁忌语由同音异义词代替。耽美是一种新兴的网络同性小说体裁，在年轻女性中特别受欢迎。读者可以从200多种不同的分类中选择，如仙侠——一个由仙人和功夫组成的幻想世界。
The corporate prince of this virtual realm is China Literature, a spin-off from Tencent, a gaming and social-media giant. The four-year-old online publisher listed on Hong Kong’s stock exchange on November 8th, raising just over $1bn. The offering was a huge success; at the end of its first day of trading, China Literature reached almost $12bn in market capitalisation, nearly 2,700 times its earnings of $4.5m in 2016 (it lost money in 2015).
这个虚拟领域的“王者”就是游戏和社交媒体巨头腾讯旗下的阅文集团。这家成立四年的在线出版商11月8日在香港证交所上市，融资额超过10亿美元。此次上市获得了巨大的成功；在首日收盘时，掌阅的市值几近达到120亿美元，是其2016年450万美元收入的近2700倍（2015年亏损）。
Investors are spellbound chiefly by its link to Tencent, which on November 20th became Asia’s first firm to be valued at over $500bn and which still owns just over 50% of China Literature. Retail investors—particularly those who missed out on the giant’s own IPO in 2004—may be hoping China Literature is the next Tencent. As the latter expands its entertainment empire into films and TV dramas, China Literature’s library offers a trove of intellectual property; local analysts have nicknamed it “Tencent’s natural son”.
投资者因阅文与腾讯的关联而吸引。腾讯于11月20日成为亚洲第一家估值超过5000亿美元企业，目前仍手握阅文50%的股份。个人投资者——尤其是那些在2004年错过了腾讯自己的IPO的投资者——希望掌阅将成为下一个腾讯。随着阅文将娱乐帝国扩展到电影和电视剧领域，其书库可提供大量的知识产权；中国本土的分析人士也将其戏称为“腾讯的亲生儿子”。
China’s book market (fiction and nonfiction) is the biggest in the world by number of new publications. Of total written fictional output, online storytelling, which is mainly read on smartphones, is thought to make up 11%. Within the next three years that share is expected to double. To capture more bookworms, Tencent combines tentacular reach—over 960m monthly users alone on WeChat, its mobile-messaging app—with a host of algorithms that push appealing content to customers. China Literature’s dominance has helped it to attract 6m authors to its platform, representing 88% of all those writing online books, according to a study by Frost & Sullivan, a consultancy. Hit writers are among them. Of the country’s ten bestselling authors in 2016, six were online-literature writers.
中国是全球出版物物数量最多的图书市场（小说和非小说）。在虚构小说的出品数量中占比11%，主要通过在智能手机上阅读的。在未来三年内，这一比例预计将翻一番。为了吸引更多的读者，腾讯将触手可及的领域——仅手机通讯应用微信，每月就有超过9.6亿的用户使用——通过一系列算法，向用户推送感兴趣的内容。咨询机构Frost & Sullivan的一项研究显示，掌阅的主导地位吸引了600万作者到其平台上，占总数的88%。其中有很多热门作家。在2016年全国十大畅销作家中，有六人是网络文学作家。
Many of the authors are amateurs, though two-fifths write full-time, and they are young, with an average age of 28. China Literature’s repository—close to 10m works in genres from fantasy to sci-fi, mystery to romance—attracts close to 200m readers a month across its web and mobile platforms, and half of China’s total daily online-literature fans. China Literature is home to 72% of all original online works; Alibaba Literature and Baidu Literature, owned by China’s two other tech giants, came later to the field and have just 5% of the virtual library between them.
许多写手都是业余作家，不过却有五分之二的写手是全职的，很年轻，平均年龄最小的人8岁。阅文的图书资源约有1000万部，从奇幻到科幻，从神秘到浪漫，每月吸引近2亿读者通过网络和移动平台在线阅读，占中国每日网络文学爱好者总数的一半。72%的原创网络作品来自阅文。后来进入该领域的阿里巴巴文学和百度文学，这两家中国科技巨头仅拥有5%的网络内容占比。
About four-fifths of China Literature’s revenues come from charging, on some books, a small fee to read on after sample chapters (proceeds are shared with authors). Most are serialised. Readers are enticed to pay per 1,000 Chinese characters or subscribe for 18 yuan ($2.70) a month. For now, only 5% of its customers are paying readers. But Morgan Stanley, a bank, expects that share to grow to 8% within the next two years. As their incomes rise, young Chinese are spending more on higher-quality entertainment. There is room for growth: Ms Xu says she is still spending far less on online books than on mobile games, for example. Mobile wallets, including WeChat Pay, which is owned by Tencent, have made paying a cinch.
在阅文的收入中，有五分之四来自于图书付费阅读，即对部分书籍阅读样本章节之后的内容收取少量的费用（收益与作者共享）。大部分作品是连载的，为吸引读者按千字收费或18元（2.7美元）包月。目前，只有5%的用户为付费用户。不过，摩根士丹利银行预计，在未来两年内，这一比例将增长到8%。随着收入的增长，中国年轻人在质量更高的娱乐项目上的花费也会增加。因此，阅文还有上升空间：例如，徐洁表示，她在电子书上的花费仍然比在手机游戏上的花费要少得多。包括腾讯旗下微信支付在内的移动钱包，让阅文赚了一笔。
The remaining share of the company’s revenue is from owning the rights to stories that are adapted for film, television, games and so on, and from licensing them to other producers. Investors expect that this income stream will grow quickly, says Nelson Cheung of Formula Growth, a Canadian investment firm that owns shares in China Literature.
阅文的其它收入来自于作品改编成电影、电视、游戏以及向其他制作方发放许可证权。拥有阅文股份的加拿大Formula Growth公司的纳尔逊·张表示：投资者预计，这种收入流将迅速增长。
Wu Wenhui, one of China Literature’s bosses, says he aspires to be “China’s version of Marvel Comics”, the American creator of Spider-Man and the X-Men, and corporate sibling to Marvel Studios. Tencent is the “perfect incubator” for those ambitions, says Wang Chen of TF Securities, a brokerage: China Literature is already co-operating with Tencent Penguin Pictures, a newish film-making arm, and Tencent Games, the largest gaming company in the world by revenue. In 2016, 15 of the 20 most popular TV dramas and video games adapted from online works were licensed from China Literature.
阅文的高管之一吴文辉表示，他渴望阅文成为“中国版的漫威漫画”。美国漫威漫画是蜘蛛侠和X战警的创造者，也是漫威影业旗下公司。TF证券经纪人王晨表示，腾讯是这些雄心壮志的“完美孵化器”。阅文和新成立不久的电影制作公司腾讯影业以及全球营收最高的游戏公司腾讯游戏合作。2016年，在20部最受欢迎的电视剧和电子游戏中，有15部改编自获得阅文许可的网络作品。
Twists are possible. Copyright protections are weak. China Literature reported in its filing document that pirated online content led to a loss in revenue of 11bn yuan for the market in 2016. Tighter regulation or new censorship rules could upset the narrative. Drafts are reviewed before publication by editors at China Literature, but the firm knows the value of the relative creative freedom that its online realm allows. Its own story is testament to that.
道路曲折是在所难免的。中国的版权保护很薄弱。阅文在其报告中称，2016年，网络盗版内容导在中国市场的收入损失110亿元。更为严格的监管或新的审查制度可能会改善这一现状。阅文的编辑会在出版前对草稿进行审阅，不过，该公司明白在线领域所允许的相对创造性自由的价值。它自己的故事就证明了这一点。
编译：杨思涵
编辑：翻吧君
来源：经济学人（November 30, 2017）