Big Surprise – The Author’s Guild and Publishers are denouncing Kindle 2.0′s ‘Read to Me’ feature.
The thing is – I’ve been trying for 15 minutes to figure out an argument to say – This is stupid of them. And what that’s made me realize is – perhaps it isn’t, and perhaps changes to Read to Me isn’t what they’re really looking for.
First, I’ll talk about convenience to customers, and then about legal perspectives, and finally about what I think the master plan is.
Kindle 2 Read to Me and Customer Value-Add.
There’s absolutely no doubt this is a great feature (even with the computer voices). Just off the top of my head -
- Have the Kindle 2 read recipes to you in the kitchen.
- Read out books to kids.
- Have books read to you while you lie in bed.
- Books read to you by your Kindle2 while driving.
- Avoid eye strain and just listen to the book on your headphones.
- Listen to a book while doing something that uses both hands. Note: its great that you can read with one hand with the Kindle 2 – However, no hands is always more impressive.
So from the customer’s perspective it’s a total value add. You’d think that the Authors’ Guild would be happy to serve customers – won’t things like Kindle 2′s Read to Me help revive a flagging books industry? I guess they aren’t really looking at the big picture. Moving on to legal concerns -
Read to Me and the Legal Perspective
Paul Aiken of the Author’s Group says -
“They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. “That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”
This is actually uncharted territory as far as I am concerned. Read to Me lies in between the two extremes of -
- Totally legal – reading a book to someone.
- Copyright – rights associated with the audio-book version of a book.
If the Authors’ Guild doesn’t make a hue and cry now, then 2 years down the line with excellent voice synthesizers are available, Read to Me will not only be creating user customizable readings – variable speeds, changeable per person, etc. – they will also be as good as audio books. This is a clip of how it sounds now, and it’s pretty alright -
Personally I think what the Authors’ Guild thinks is irrelevant – they really can’t stop Text to Speech advances. Books will get read using Text To Speech systems (Kindle 2 being just one variant) and there’s nothing they can do about it. Audio Books as an industry will begin to die out or become a very niche market (much more so than they are now).
Here are two more videos of what this sounds like (pardon the shaky video taking) -
- Kindle 2′s Male voice – .
- Kindle 2′s Female Speaking Voice – .
They don’t really have a very strong legal argument to prevent a gradual evolution of technology that destroys the Audio Book industry.
The Real Reason the Authors Guild is pushing this
The Authors’ Guild (along with Association of American Publishers) has just settled with Google and created the ‘Google Book Rights Registry’ agreement (not yet approved by the courts). That gets them something like 67% of profits generated from Google Books. Amazon, on the other hand is asking for 55% to 65% (I’m not sure revenue or profits) with Kindle Edition books – leaving a paltry 35 to 45% for publishers. The Authors’ Guild is hoping to use this rather dodgy legal plank to try to get a larger revenue share from Amazon, and perhaps other benefits like removal of the $9.99 price guideline.
The fundamental cause for this and other similar reactions from publishers is that they are in denial about the changes in the times and in technology. Instead of evolving with the times, they want to preserve their existing business models and philosophies.
Publishers really need to look at all the newspapers going out of business and ask themselves – “Should we fight for the existing models and put our energy there? Perhaps all we’re doing is staving off an eventual death by 1 or 2 years. Is there perhaps a new model we can figure out that lets us survive and thrive as technology evolves?”
By focusing on their short term needs instead of the long term future of Books and value-add for customers, publishers are really missing the whole point – the better job they do for their customers, the better product they release, the more they’ll flourish.
Filed under: publishing | Tagged: kindle 2 text to speech
The EFF did a pretty good legal summary of why the Author’s Guild has no leg to stand on
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/02/does-authors-guild-want-sue-you-reading-aloud-your
I agree that the Author’s Guild is worried about the future not the current, but that doesn’t mean that we should create new rights for current companies to get rid of benefits to consumers. It will be a while before a computer can read as well as a good audiobook, at least 10 years or so, probably longer, but what the Author’s Guild want to do is stiffle innovation.
This is retarded. MS reader had text to read capability FOR YEARS See http://www.microsoft.com/reader/developers/info/tts.aspx
While I don’t particularly care for the text to speech capability this whole thing seems silly.
Since buying my Kindle I have bought far more books at 9.99 than I ever bought at $25.00 at little cost to the publisher..why they can’t see this as a good thing I just can’t understand. I bought books I never would have bought in paper versions.
While I can see some interesting uses for the “Read to Me” function, I sincerely doubt that audiobooks will be threatened by it. No matter how good computer generated voices get, a good actor is going to outdistance them every time.
That 35% figure isn’t for publishers, it’s for authors who self-publish. And it’s 3.5 to 7 times what they’d get from any other publisher (Amazon is the publisher in this case), as 5% to 10% is pretty much industry standard.
The amount paid by Amazon to traditional paper publishers is no doubt just a much a trade secret as the number of Kindles sold.
Karen – I agree that it’s great for self published authors. However I was talking about publishers. And one of the comments on my previous post about publishing had someone leave a comment saying that Amazon was asking one publisher for 55%.
Amazon controls the whole channel.
I’ll tell you that if Kindle let me actually combine a good audio book and the text of the book I’d be all over it! I love a well narrated audio book and I love to read books. I’d pay $14.99 to get both (an audio version and the book version) at the same time. Once again, resistance to change actually depletes the possibility of people making money.
The truth is this, the new read to me function makes reading soooo much more convenient for me. When reading or consuming books becomes more convenient, I’ll do it more. Which means, I’ll buy more books. Case in point; when I learned of the new read to me feature, I knew this meant I could read so much more. So, I’ve purchased 10 books at 9.99 and they are just waiting for my new Kindle to arrive. With “read to me,” I’ll blow through those in less than a month and be ready for the next 10 books that I can’t wait to read. Take away “read to me,” and I’m probably going to take 2 to 3 months to get through those same books. No. I wouldn’t pay 14.99 per book. I would do just like I do at the grocery store. Sigh, and then move on to a different product. It then becomes more practical for me to buy a used copy and consume it the old fashioned way or go to the library. In the mean time, I could consume some of the free public domain books on my Kindle.
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As I get older, I have a hard time just sitting down and reading without tiring my eyes to the point I just drop off to sleep. The read to me feature allows me to alternate beween reading and listening which allows me to get through a book much faster,
I say this because with read to me I go through many more books sometimes reading more than one at a time for variety. What that means is I order many more books than I would buy as paper books. I think read to me is a very positive step and is a positive step for authors to be ready by many more readers.
Get over it! This is a great feature, and authors/publishers demanding that it not be allowed is akin to trying to charge extra if the purchaser of the CONTENT (aka book) wants to read it out loud…or have someone read it to him. This is just plain old GREED going on here. When you buy a book, you’re buying rights to ingest the content. It’s nobody’s business whether you’re doing that through reading the words yourself or having someone (something) read it to you. Windows has had usability features for years that allow it to read content displayed on the screen, and I don’t recall hearing a big skirmish over that.