China: Return of the Wang

Or King, according to the title of Wang Xiaofeng‘s January 10 post which brings with it the news that the eighties and nineties badboy of Chinese literature and one-time “spiritual pollutant” Wang Shuo will be on the cover of the next issue of Life Week magazine, for which Wang (Xiaofeng) works.

So if Wang Shuo's back, what's he up to? Wang Xiaofeng‘s not telling, not even in his follow-up post today, in which he may or may not have interviewed eight hours and thirteen thousand characters worth of Wang Shuo's cohorts from his heyday almost a decade ago.

According to Wang Shuo's Wikipedia entry, he's written five screenplays since his last novel was published in 2000, and not much else. Wang Shuo was mentioned on journalist-blogger Zhao Mu's Bullog space late last month, with the news that the writer has plans to open a pay-per-view blog, making him the first mainstream blogger to do so. Wang Shuo had a Sina celebrity blog, but hasn't updated it since March last year. He currently has a blog of sorts at Flower Village, where he posts only his latest works piece-by-piece. Open since November 17 last year, it's currently free for the reading.

A few interviews with Wang Shuo can be found at Chinese video sharing site 6Rooms, and collections of his previous works can be found at XYS (blocked in China) and Wensou.

Back to Zhao Mu's post, dated December 28, 2006:

December 28

昨天见到顽主王朔。尚无博客的王朔说,他将在徐静蕾的”鲜花村 >> 村”开博,不过是那种付费阅读的。他还说道,将来他的小说会考虑不由传统的出版社出版,而是直接上传到博客里,而且还可以根据用户的需要印制成书。因为少了传统出版发行的所有中间环节,所以他认为书的价格会比传统的出版物便宜很多。

I met bad boy Wang Shuo yesterday. The still blogless Wang Shuo says he's about to open a blog on Xu Jinglei's ‘Flower Village‘, but that it's going to be the pay-per-read kind. He even says he's considering not publishing his novels by traditional means, but posting them straight to his blog, and will print books according to users needs. He feels that without the distribution middle links of traditional publishing, the prices of books can be much lower than those of traditionally published materials.

猜一下:
1、博客的付费式阅读将来是否会成为一种趋势?你会阅读收费博客吗?
2、王朔所描述的这种出版模式(现在已经有了),将来会不会严重冲击传统的出版,甚至取而代之,成为主流模式?
(注:新闻出版管理机构,又有事干了)

I guess that:
1. Will pay-per-read blogs become a trend? Would you read pay-per-read blogs?
2. All the publishing models Wang Shuo describes (which already exist), will they have a serious impact on traditional publishing, or even replace it, and become a mainstream model?
(Note: news and publishing management agencies, they have something to do now)

Reader comments

过客
很好,会有人付费进去看,然后再把他的文章复制下来代为流传,随后王爷的博客读者群就固定了,说白了也就是没几个人看,但一定不会没人看.

Passer-by
Great, Someone will pay the fee to get in, then copy his works and spread them all over, following which grandpa Wang's blog's readers will be set. To be frank, not that many people reading it, but there definitely won't be nobody reading.

rock

呵呵 那王朔的付费博客肯定有一大堆盗版 何必呢!

Hehe…there's bound to be heaps of unauthorized versions of Wang Shuo's pay-blog of his. There's no need!

小黑
操,王朔这老头还真实吊,他自我感觉还真好,以为没有他这个茅坑我们就不能拉屎了,对这种人只想说两个字:我操!

Little black

Fuck, this geezer Wang Shuo is really stuck on himself, his arrogance is great. He thinks that if there wasn't this outhouse him around, we wouldn't be able to shit. For people like this I only have one word: fuck!

罗纷纷
我是不会阅读收费博客的,网上那么多牛逼博客,凭什么花钱读他的啊,三表老师的博客这么牛逼我还没读完呢。
而且,我是学传媒的,我觉得王朔的这种模式根本不可能成功

Luo Fenfen

I'm one of the ones who won't pay for reading a blog. With some many cool blogs on the internet, what's the point of paying to read his? Wang Xiaofeng's blog is so rad, and I still haven't finished reading it.
And, I'm a media student. I think that models like Wang Shuo's here, will never be able to succeed.

mayday
如果对钱无所谓的话那就无所谓成不成功

mayday

If I were unconcerned with money, I'd be unconcerned about succeeding or not as well.

liushu
挺好。
然后有人做一个王朔免费博克镜像,更新的比收费博克还勤快。

Liushu

Great. Then someone will set up a free mirror of Wang Shou's blog, and it will be updated faster than the fee-charging blog.

二公主
难道就是传说中的长尾理论。。。果然长得长啊。
付费的话就不去。
丫只是想吸引固定观众?
比传统出版物便宜很多这件事一直表示怀疑。毕竟批量印刷跟定制印刷的成本计算的话,差很多吧。丫肯定还是要依附于某个商业实体。丫不可能自己在家捣鼓台打印机就开印了。

Second Princess

As if this is the legendary long-tailed theorem…and it really is long!
If you have to pay it won't last long.
Is he just thinking to acquire a fixed audience?
I've always doubted whether or not this would be cheaper than traditional publications. After all, the costs for batch printing, compared to those for custom printing, are very different. He probably just wants to leech off some commercial entity. There's no way he's print it all off with his home printer.

mona
只看economist的付费文章
王锁是谁

mona

I only pay to read the Economist
Who's Wang Shou?

alva
现在很多的站点不就是在做这个事情吗?在论坛里面写文章,然后读者付费阅读,比如起点站,启明中文,只不过写手的名气还没有那么大而已!没有采用博客的形式!虽然盗版比较多,但人家生意还不错!

alva

Aren't a lot of websites doing this now? You write a piece on a forum, then readers have to pay for access, like .CMFU [ http://www.cmfu.com/] or QMZW [http://www.qmzw.com/], only the writers’ reputations aren't that big! They haven't tried the blog form! Although there are lots of pirated version, their business isn't bad!

fishabc0
道理上没错,但是操作上不现实。网络文字,互相ctrlV一下就都出来了,谁也不愿意做花钱的,网络上产权意识和法规都还没那么强。再说别人都在免费也不乏各种牛人,他一个特立独行收费会遭来人们本能反感,虽然理论上做的没错,但是比较之后人们还是不会买账

fishabco0

It works in theory, but it's not realistic in practice. Internet writing, keep Ctrl-V'ing each other, and it all comes out. Nobody's willing to spend money. Awareness of online property rights and and legislation still isn't that strong. What's more, everyone else is free, and there's no lack of talent out there. His being the one single fee-charging blog will turn people off. Although it's right in theory, most people won't go for it.


2、王朔所描述的这种出版模式(现在已经有了),将来会不会严重冲击传统的出版,甚至取而代之,成为主流模式?
人家会告你非法出版的。

Caution

“2. All the publishing models Wang Shuo describes (which already exist), will they have a serious impact on traditional publishing, or even replace it, and become a mainstream model?”
-They'll sue you for illegal publishing

mjollnir
我是学传媒的,我觉得王朔的这种模式根本不可能成功
这么说话很傻逼

mjollnir

I study media, and I feel that models like Wang's will never succeed
How could he talk so stupidly?

ashang
王朔如果真的开收费博客,我是心甘情愿掏钱的,惦记丫多少年了,有好东西看,钱算什么。网上博客虽多,有几人能够上老王的档次啊。

ashang

If Wang Shuo really opens a fee-charge blog, I'd be willing to fish out the money. We've been watching him for so many years, there's good stuff to see, what's money add up to?
Though there's lots of blogs online, there's only a few at Old Wang's level…

安静
就是,盗版太容易了。
付费博客我不看。因为不敢保证质量。
觉得根本不可行。

Silence

Right, pirating is just too easy.
I don't read pay-per-view blogs. Because they can't guarantee quality.
I think it'll never work.

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