Well done to the Authors Guild! Amazon revealed last night that the text-to-speech feature in the Kindle 2 will now be optional for publishers. The guild had been tenaciously fighting this feature, arguing that it had the potential to turn the Kindle 2 into a de-facto audiobook player. Right or wrong, Amazon has caved, and now publishers will be able to dictate whether or not the Kindle 2 is able to read aloud their books.
It seems to me that the Authors Guild should be thankful to Amazon for creating another viable place for its members’ books to be read—I’d consider buying a Kindle, but I tend to read a lot of university-published books (mainly esoteric history stuff) that simply aren’t available on Kindle. What really concerns me is that the guild was able to argue that the Kindle 2 had the potential to damage it vis-à-vis becoming an audiobook player; that’s something right out of Minority Report, no? I mean, I have the potential to become an astronaut, but we don’t see that happening, now do we?
As it stands, I say we cut the Authors Guild a little slack before freaking out and teasing them, “LOL THEY DON’T GET TECHNOLOGY”: these guys have been in the business of publishing books, true-to-life books, and I’m sure all this Kindle business is a little frightening to them. Give ‘em a little time to situate themselves.
This is the same as Amazon saying accessibility for blind people doesn’t matter any more. How terrible. Amazon shouldn’t have anything to fear if they kept the feature on for every book, as text-to-speech has been around for decades (or something along those lines) and the Authors Guild hasn’t complained about any of them until this one in the Kindle 2.
This test is an example.
Unbelivable!
Now, you have again a good reason to get a pirated copy instead of purchasing the original, where you get punished with some sort of protection, which hinders the Kindle to reach its full potential.
This is actually a horrible decision on Amazon’s part. This sets a precedent for future text-to-speech applications and puts an unfair restriction on them.
That is a good point. The Author’s Guild, by killing this feature, is actually guiding people to piracy. With the Kindle, people are purchasing a copy of the book. If they want to TTS their book, however, they’ll have to torrent or IRC it. That’s a problem for authors, who won’t receive their royalties, as they would with a typical Kindle download. The Author’s Guild should really rethink this.
waste of money
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Before I lost most of my sight I was an avid reader (3-4 books a month). Now large print books are a chore and I tend to “wander off” when listening to an audiobook. I was excited to get a Kindle and thought the TTS combined with large print would make reading for pleasure a part of my life again. I made time this weekend to learn how to navigate my new, relatively expensive toy and was looking forward to purchasing my first new book in about fifteen years. Instead I packed it away to return to Amazon and I’ll spend my time writing whiny comments to blog posts. Thanks, Authors Guild.
Elijah Grey said it perfectly! The Author’s Guild is wrong.
No worries, I’ll just keep stealing audiobooks from the internet.
There are plenty of organizations that represent those with disabilities, including the blind. They should hit back and sue the Writers Guild AND Amazon to have this feature restored. This effectively makes this device useless for the vision impaired.
Wow, thanks for the dbag post, Nicholas. The Authors Guild is a sycophantic institution that does nothing to promote authors themselves. That’s not my words, that’s the author that I had beers with last week talking about this issue.
That ad hominem attack out of the way, this is madness. Will the Authors Guild go after teachers who read books out loud in their classrooms? What about babysitters who read to the kids they are watching? Or what about that guy who hired an Indian to read a story over the phone to his kid?
When you buy a book, you are also buying the right to hear it read out loud to you. When you buy an audiobook, you are buying that specific narrator’s reading. It doesn’t make a whit if the reader is a father reading to his kids, a caretaker reading to someone with failing sight, or a robot reading to his master.
Okay, I’M the douchebag, since I only read Nick’s comments in the RSS feed before I commented. My apologies for my retarded criticism.
All my hating on the Authors Guild remains.
“Right or wrong, Amazon has caved”
Wrong. Yet another reason to embrace mobile readers with text to speech on iPhone and Android instead of kindle.
I’m with Bill and I hope those congratulations were sarcasm.
As usual any form of DRM (even optional) is a lost cause. In this case its plainly a reaction to a circumstance they unilaterally deem infringing, calculated to elevate a non-existent ‘potential’ problem into a biblio-weapon-of-mass-piracy.
How does this serve the authors?
Author’s Guild just doesn’t get it. Also publishers/authors are going for a higher profit margin while providing less value; lower costs and they feel they are entitled to more. When you have chief executives at major pubs (i.e. Reidy @ Simon & Schuster) contending that ebooks should be the same price as printed books, we can see how clueless they really are.
I don’t think anyone could stand listening to anything more than a few sentences this way…try it on Hamlet:
http://theopenend.com/2009/02/27/amazon-kindle-to-render-voice-actors-obsolete/
I’m glad to see Amazon continuining to innovate with products like the Kindle. I’ll be picking one very soon.
Boris
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nO!
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At first I was shocked, but this is a smart move for Amazon. The Author’s Guild now has a greater length of rope with which to hang themselves.
Any publisher stupid enough to turn off text-to-speech is going to get roasted and possibly sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
I had the exact same reaction: shocked at first, but then realized that this was actually a clever move from Amazon, I have written about it here: http://fczuardi.tumblr.com/post/82326150/amazon-backs-off-text-to-speech-feature-in-kindle
As much as I would love to see Amazon going to court against the Author’s Guild and winning (because that’s nothing illegal in what Kindle was doing). I understand that what they announced can be much more effective in sending the consumer’s message across.
There is no doubt in my mind that few authors (the announcement Amazon made says that right-owners will be able to opt-out, so not necessarily in the hands of publishers, but the writers) will choose to enable this restriction.
And those few authors that fear the competition of a robot-voice reading their books and choose to go with this stupid restriction will certainly receive a flood of bad reviews, remember that this is Amazon we are talking about here, consumers do have a great feedback channel there and are not afraid to use the power of “1 star” reviews to show disapproval (Spore backlash on the DRM fiasco anyone?)
So, Amazon avoided a direct conflict with possible legal hassles and at the same time will let the Author’s Guild be portraited as they are: a stupid organization that does not represent his members interests.
Amazon repeatedly deleting bad rewies, anyone?
Wait a second. What is wrong with writers’ wanting preserve what little income they get? Just like with music, they get a very small portion of every sale, the majority going to the publisher.
And with Amazon knocking down the price of a new ebook to $9.99, when the average hardcover is $25 and audiobook much more, how much do you think an author gets?
Real easy to jump on the bandwagon when its not your ox being gored! (Nice mixed metaphor, eh?)
Nothing, except that instead of arguing that authors should share in the higher margins of ebooks, they came up with some spurious argument that allowing a computer generated voice on a device some how makes the ebook ‘different’ then it is on one without.
Authors have not been well served by the guild in this case and Amazon are only serving themselves in caving.
I applaud Amazon. The right to choose how the media is delivered belongs with the publisher and no one else.
Square/Enix just made me pay $5.99 for this Arkanoid game
http://picasaweb.google.com/chriswebshare/Tc#5308039019439331218
There’s NO WAY to change the resolution. NONE. No settings what so ever.
This is the single biggest waste of screenspace I have ever seen. I feel like I’m back on my Motorolla RAZR, except worse. This is SUCH bad game design for mobile devices.
I want my money back but I know there is no way to get it back.
I wish Crunch gear would out some of these questionable game implementations.
Could they make the game play area any smaller?
Why not reduce the game play area to microscopic size and sell a microscope as a game accessory on the complementary website ???
I’m disappointed – this is going backwards again. I understand that people are concerned about this – and yes, I absolutely agree that within a couple of years, it probably will be possible to have a machine read any book text-to-speech in almost audiobook-like format quality.
But don’t they see that getting in the way of progress won’t help them? Any time those unnecessary barriers are set up by “the Big Old” some new guy enters town and takes the whole game over.
If at least they could strike a deal like: Text only book for $10, text-to-speech function book for $15 or something like that.
I think Neil Gaiman sums it up pretty well in this post http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/02/end-of-audiobook-argument.html – as an author who makes a reasonable income from audio books it’s interesting to hear his take
LOL, sounds like a factory worker that’s just been replaced by automation.
I think this device doesn’t need text-to-speech function at all.
Let Kindle stays there as ebook reader alone.
Kindle Text2Speech = SpeakNSpell.
That is incorrect. The correct spelling of asshole is A U T H O R S G U I L D.
what a bunch of douches the authors guild is. they’ve hobbled this device in order to protect, what? audiobook sales? most books don’t ever come out in audiobook format! Let the damn computer turn it into an audiobook – expand your readership automatically, you short sighted monkeys!
screw you authors guild. you have just turned yourself into the RIAA of books.
So, they’re trying to make sure that people continue to buy both the book and the audiobook? Has anyone here ever done that?
stay focus. kindle meant for ebook. not audiobook.
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You can read more detail about kindle 2 at : http://www.knockprice.com/index.php?c=Electronics&n=493964&i=B00154JDAI&x=Kindle_2_Amazons_New_Wireless_Reading_Device_Latest_Generation
I support Authors Guild’s views that Kindle should only be an ebook reader. Precisely the same it is intended to be.
Let’s start a boycott of Author’s Guild authors until they relent on this ridiculous position.
I wager the guild would, in fact, welcome a boycott from a horde of freeloaders. They have only ear and eye pollution to lose.
Perhaps while boycotting the guild these freeloaders could work on improving their dumpster-diving skills.
Most American corporations and associations behave like savages and would kill for food.
That’s a bad news for me…I’m not a native English speaker and the text-to-speak feature is a terrific tool for learning pronunciation (although it’s not perfect, this feature helps a lot).
Why don’t people/companies update their business model to take advantage of the technology, contrary to fight it ?
Disabling a “pre-existing” feature that’s useful to the sight-challenged (several of whom have commented here) is an invitation for ridicule and bad PR that IMHO should hot have been worth pursuing by the Authors Guild.
Separately, this is like any other dying industry trying to hold on to the last branches before it goes off a cliff. I 100% understand it. But you have to pick your battles and this was not a good one.
The Authors Guild are just a bunch of cocks.