The publishers seem too attached to their licensing schemes. Speech-to-text and text-to-speech are here to stay and this is not a surprise for anyone. Publishers should catch up.
Edit: I'm getting downvoted because I think authors should get paid for their work? Wow. Okay, ive been noticing the nature of hn has been going towards entitlement bs, but this is ridiculous. Why dont you clock in to your job and offer not to get paid for that week, and still do the work. Oh no? I wonder why...
That logic is the same as if you bought the digital book and printed it and the publisher suing you because it hurts their physical sales. If you buy a book it should be a license to print, translate, and text-2-speech, or whatever.
But your overall point still stands.