The Kindle Swindle?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It's a ridiculous argument.
Separate revenue streams for audio books is not just a quaint custom in the publishing world, but a consequence of copyright law, which treats text and audio rights as properties that may be licensed separately. He's arguing that his constituents' property is being taken from them without their consent. I think his case is weak, but it's not dumb.
Also, what if you're using it as a "book on tape" in the car, on a road trip through the middle of nowhere? You lose network connection, you lose your book on tape.
tldr: I think it would be better quality, when you could get it, but at some level reliability is more important for this application.
I don't understand what the Author's Guild is trying to do here... Obviously, Amazon's lawyers have considered what the implications of an text-to-speech service are. As far as I can tell, the AG isn't even filing a lawsuit, just a PR complain-campaign. What does that get them?
Conspiracy-hat-interpretation: this is great PR for the Kindle's new text-to-speech features. If it wasn't for the Author's Guild, this would be just another bullet point on the features list. Is this a favor from Roy Blount to Amazon?
What most tech types don't realize is how much risk there is already in the writers profession. These are not fat-cat music executives. They don't have anything like as much chance of becoming rich as a founder of a startup. Heck, most don't even make a living, and have to keep the day job; even once they get published and get advances on later books. And if one book tanks, they're back to square one.
That's why they don't like change. They are already drowning in risk, and people are saying they should take on some more?
I don't buy the idea that text-to-speech is infringement, personally. But it's too easy to say that authors should just 'change their business model'. How?
The first thing to change about the business model is the focus. A lot of people who are enthusiastic about writers know two or three names of writers they follow, and that's it. Everything outside of that is an unknown to them. The first part of the solution is to focus people who are enthusiastic about writing in one place.
The next fix is to let writers release fast, iterate often, similar to hackers, and that means critique. You need to give them a good system for getting lots of feedback fast. The minute they start writing they should have access to feedback, even if they choose to finish a first draft before releasing anything and showing it to people. The better your revision access is, the less of a risk it is.
The final solution is to publish more writers, more incrementally. It means that you sift through a lot of short stories and poems and yes, even novels, if you're a publishing company, and you get back to everybody so that they can figure out how to get better. At the same time, you expand aggressively so that you can handle the incoming people as your model expands outward, and you keep the focus on quality publishing, just more of it.
Also, computer-based vocalization is horrible, and it will never replace audiobooks. I want Steven Colbert reading to me, not my Kindle.
Does your startup have a website yet?
EDIT: Or just drop a line: my email's in my profile.
I have not bought a single newspaper this year - and I have not even looked at online advertisements on newspaper websites.
I think the newspaper industry is going to largely collapse and it is going to burn everyone (worse reporting, no more investigative reporting, etc....)
To put it another way, should we also charge each parent who reads a book to his child? It would make current authors more prosperous, but then it will also attract more people to writing and those new people will be just as miserable as the current crop is today. There will always be some miserable writers, no matter where the goal posts are set.
Can't make a living writing? Don't write. Go do something people would want.
Have you ever looked at the revenues for a best selling author? They very much a have a small chance of hitting it big. They should change their business model by offering interesting things like McSweeney's which uses both online and offline products to attract an audience.
I really don't follow his logic here. I think the fundamental question is "what is a performance?". I just find it hard to see that kindle reading = voice actor reading. Why go to the concert, when you've got a player piano? Is that really a threat?
It's the equivalent of music visualization tools. When I play a CD in my Xbox and it shows me pretty lights, no one considers that copyright infringement. It's the exact same functionality as text-to-speech, but in reverse.
If I suddenly don't need to record myself, because technology reaches a point where a piece of software can read my book just as well as I can, then that's just the way it is.
If a temporary inconvenience creates a business opportunity for you, great. But you can't expect to hold onto that business once the inconvenience is gone.
The content industries need to understand that they can sell "a book" or "a movie", or "a song", but they can't sell music that only plays on certain devices, or DVDs that only play in certain continents, or books that you can read silently but not out loud. It's nonsense.
No audio book is being distributed by Amazon. An ebook is being distributed by Amazon.
I can't take this guy seriously.
I can tell it's generated, but there are bits here and there that sound like a normal speaking voice. This is like CGI in the 90s, where everyone was talking about how it was wooden and clunky and awful but the proponents just kept building better tools and now teenagers can make lightsaber duels with their laptops.
I think e-books give the best chance for print to survive as a medium (in e-ink form, not in paper form). But as always, the captain of the ship fades away, not unlike a frog being slowly boiled to death because the temperature is slowly increasing.
There's something lost from paper to e-ink, and everybody who uses a Kindle will realize that. If e-books become big and cheap, that means book sales are going to benefit, to some degree.
I don't think content creators are dead by any means, but I do think there have to be devices and mediums that enable more than the create and publish model.
When Amazon designed Kindle, they tried to make sure the user experience was as close to a book as possible. When I go on a plane, I would prefer not lugging around 4 books in my suitcase vs just using a Kindle. There is something about the print medium that's very pleasing, but I think e-ink and e-books will co-exist like theater and t.v. Although many can say that the T.V. will cannabilze all theater going activity, there is something unique about the experience that the solo activity cannot capture.
If the digital files on the Kindle contained lots of metadata, added by a human editor, to assist the text-to-speech system, then Blount would have more of a case.
The smart thing to do is restructure his industry following Apple's iTunes model, reducing the power of publishers and negotiating more favorable agreements between authors and ebook distributers.
The stupid thing is to become the next Lars Ulrich, telling people that they're pirates and technology is bad. He has a convenient corporate entity to attack, which is much easier than poor college kids, but he is fighting a futile battle against the tide.
Audio rights are an absurd right to begin with, existing because we drive around so much that some people are willing to splurge on this luxurious derivative. Technology naturally makes things less expensive, and if it isn't the Kindle, it will be another reader, or a reader add-on, that will provide the same functionality.
Do the right thing, Roy, and spend your time optimizing the efficiency of the market for authors.
Or maybe the system of having separate rights for all sorts of uses was crooked from the beginning.
The effect is that you have something akin to a group of old, uninformed, frightened people, who are all very bright but very ignorant regarding some things, and some of those people think technology means books have to die, and if that was the case then they'd be right in that something powerful and valuable was being lost. So I understand why they're so fearful, even if I wish they could comprehend how things have been moving forward.
The established players seek to maintain the status quo in which they exist as "established." This leads them to fight change. I for one, hope they lose that fight, but it's only because I'm not one of those established in this fight, so I will benefit from progressive methods to access media.
It's also worth mentioning that you'll find very few undiscovered/unpublished writers that would have a problem with someone buying their book and listening to it on a Kindle.
They see it as protecting themselves. They inflict harm in the process, but they don't see it as that, and that's why I feel sympathy for them: they don't entirely understand what's going on.
The established players seek to maintain the status quo in which they exist as "established." This leads them to fight change.
They think that the physical form of the book is an important part of literature. I agree with them, but unlike them I think the book is stronger and more lasting than they think. If the book was in danger, then I don't care what solution was being proposed, I would fight to keep the novel afloat for as long as possible. It's too valuable to risk losing.
It's also worth mentioning that you'll find very few undiscovered/unpublished writers that would have a problem with someone buying their book and listening to it on a Kindle.
Most of those writers aren't as dedicated as the published one. A few are, and they're the people who are worth reaching out to, but writing takes an incredible amount of dedication. It attracts an odd bunch of people.
I think this could be good for both audio books and ebooks as well as when considering the implications for educational books (such as language books or religious study materials).
The unboxing video is really annoying but I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the text-to-speech. The voice even has intonation which I've never heard in automated speech before.
The audiobook is a performance and as a performance, deserves additional rights and royalties.
Yes, that's ridiculous - but that's as far as your 'basic rights' go...
What is? This is the salient point:
running it through the reading software at my home certainly is not illegal.
I totally agree that it should be, but I disagree that this has been established in any legal sense. Personally I think the evidence points in the direction of "it has never been considered legally".