Don't be Silly - The Kindle 2 is No Threat to Audiobooks
A few weeks ago, just after the introduction of the new Kindle 2, the Authors Guild complained that Amazon's eBook reader had a text-to-speech function. According to Paul Aitken, the Guild's executive director, this meant that Amazon would have to pay for audio rights for every book downloaded onto the device. Today, Roy Blount Jr., the Guild's president, echoed this sentiment in an op-ed piece in the New York Times.
This somewhat odd piece by Blount opens with a comment about how the author's father died because he was the president of too many 'well-meaning organizations.' While it is not clear that this has anything to do with the Kindle 2, it is surely meant to set the mood for the rest of the article.
Blount argues that the Kindle is sold and marketed as a "new, improved, multimedia version of books." That is a strange statement, given that Amazon barely mentions the text-to-speech functionality on its own site (though, granted, Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos does mention it whenever he talks about the Kindle 2 in public).
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My daughter wants a Kindle, which I think is interesting, because she’s fairly technologically illiterate and she loves the feel and experience of books. But a Kindle is not in the budget in any case. However, I have to tout a new kind of audio book I just came across — an audio movie. A.J. Scudiere published her book “Resonance,” (geologists dealing with a possible end of the world scenario — lots of fun and a good read) in e-book form, yes, but also traditional paperback and in audiobook/audiomovie form. It’s a very well done audio-book — simply amazed me.