每日英語跟讀 Ep.988: Trump Books Keep Coming, and Readers Can't Stop Buying
Since it was released in May, the latest book in the Hunger Games series, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” has sold 1.3 million copies, a home run of a bestseller by publishing's standards.
飢餓遊戲系列最新作品「鳴鳥與蛇之歌」自五月發售以來，已賣出130萬冊，以出版品的標準而言，算是暢銷書的全壘打。
Mary Trump's memoir about her uncle, “Too Much and Never Enough,” outsold it in its first week.
瑪麗．川普描寫她叔叔的回憶錄「坐擁一切卻永不滿足」（暫譯），出版首周就打破了前者的銷售量。
Books about politicians and government are not considered surefire commercial hits. But since President Donald Trump entered office, books about his campaign, his administration, his family, his business, his policies, even his golf game have poured out of publishing houses big and small.
就商業眼光而言，關於政客及政府的書並不被看好必然熱賣。但是自從唐納．川普上台後，關於他的競選陣營、他的政府、他的家庭、他的事業、他的政策，甚至他的高爾夫球賽的書，卻從大小出版社傾洩而出。
“No matter what your political position, there's really no doubt that the strong feelings around the Trump administration have pushed book sales in a way we've never seen before in the political arena,” said Kristen McLean, the executive director of business development at NPD Books, a market research firm.
「不論你的政治立場如何，那股對川普政府的強烈感覺，無疑以我們在政治場域從未見過的方式，推動了書籍的銷售。」市場研究公司NPDBooks企業開發執行總監克莉汀．麥林說。
Early on in Trump's presidency came the first big journalistic exposés, starting with Michael Wolff's “Fire and Fury” and then Bob Woodward's “Fear,” which sold more than 2 million copies. Next came the insider accounts of the tumult within the White House from the many officials who resigned or were fired and sought to revive their reputations and fortunes with breathless, often news-making memoirs.
川普就任之初，首波是知名記者的爆料之作，以麥可．沃爾夫的「烈焰與怒火」（暫譯）揭開序幕，接著是鮑伯．伍華德的「恐懼」，賣出超過200萬冊。之後是局內人對於白宮內部騷動的說法，來自許多請辭或被開革的官員，用令人屏息且常成為新聞話題的回憶錄，尋求恢復名譽及財富。
“Political books broadly have worked more or less in proportion to how polarizing the figure that they orbit is, and you don't get more polarizing than Donald J. Trump,” said Eamon Dolan, an executive editor at Simon & Schuster who edited Mary Trump's book.
「總的來說，政治書籍的銷售量多少與主題人物造成分化對立的能力成正比，而沒有人比川普更能讓人們分化對立了。」負責編輯瑪麗川普新書的賽門舒斯特執行編輯伊曼．多倫說。
Real-time political books detailing the inner workings of an administration have been a popular genre for decades, dating to the Eisenhower era. But the volume of titles, and the audience for them, has surged in recent years.
描述政府內部運作細節的即時性政治書籍，數十年來一直是受歡迎的類別，可溯至艾森豪時代。但是出版書籍的種數及其受眾，近年卻急速增加。
The subgenres that have emerged—books that praise the president, books that criticize him, White House memoirs, journalistic narratives—have taken off to an unprecedented degree under Donald Trump, said Jon Meacham, a biographer and the author of books about Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and George H.W. Bush.
曾以湯瑪斯．傑佛遜、安德魯．傑克遜、法蘭克林．羅斯福和喬治．H.W.．布希等總統為主題人物的傳記作家強．馬塞姆說，其中出現的的子類別，像是讚美總統的書，批評他的書，白宮回憶錄以及新聞性敘事，在川普上任後增至前所未見的程度。
In the last four years, there have been more than 1,200 unique titles about Trump, compared with around 500 books about Obama and his administration during Obama's first term, according to an analysis by NPD BookScan.
根據NPD BookScan的分析，過去這四年裡，關於川普的書籍種數超過1200本。而歐巴馬第一任期內與歐巴馬及其政府有關的書，則僅只有500本左右。
Some in the industry credit the soaring sales of political books with lifting the industry overall in recent months, despite the pandemic and economic crisis.
儘管處於疫情和經濟危機之中，出版業近幾個月業績卻獲得支撐而不墜，一些人歸功於政治書籍銷量狂增。
“When Donald Trump recommends a book, it has little impact on sales, but when Trump hates a book, it rockets to No. 1,” said Latimer, the Washington literary agent. “You pray for Trump to hate your book, and you pray for him to tweet about it.”
「川普推薦一本書，對銷售沒什麼影響。但是當川普討厭一本書時，它會衝到排行榜榜首。」華盛頓版權代理人拉特莫說，「你祈禱川普討厭你的書，而且還祈禱他推文講這件事。」
Source article: https://paper.udn.com/udnpaper/POH0067/357229/web/
| 每日英語跟讀Podcast，就在http://www.15mins.today/daily-shadowing 每週Vocab精選詞彙Podcast，就在https://www.15mins.today/vocab 每週In-TENSE文法練習Podcast，就在https://www.15mins.today/in-tense |