audiobook

Authors Guild President: What, Then, of the Playing and Talking Machines?

John Paczkowski in News on February 25, 2009 at 12:00 pm PT

The idea of derivative rights and royalties for text-to-speech “audiobooks” like those provided by Amazon’s Kindle 2 might seem ludicrous now, but will that be the case in a few years when the device’s grating text-to-speech voice has been inevitably humanized? A reasonable question, and one that Roy Blount Jr., president of the Authors Guild, poses in an Op Ed in the New York Times today.

Authors Guild to Kindle: Shut Up When You're Talking to Me

John Paczkowski in News on February 13, 2009 at 9:58 am PT

The Authors Guild, a trade group that once maligned Amazon for its ”notorious used-book service,” is at it again–this time taking issue with the text-to-speech feature of the retailer’s new Kindle 2 e-book reader. Seems it feels the device oversteps its bounds by creating rudimentary audiobooks for which it doesn’t own the rights. But as author Neil Gaiman notes, the idea of derivative rights and royalties for text-to-speech just seems silly.

Authors Guild to Kindle: Shut Up When You’re Talking to Me

John Paczkowski in News on February 13, 2009 at 9:58 am PT

The Authors Guild, a trade group that once maligned Amazon for its ”notorious used-book service,” is at it again–this time taking issue with the text-to-speech feature of the retailer’s new Kindle 2 e-book reader. Seems it feels the device oversteps its bounds by creating rudimentary audiobooks for which it doesn’t own the rights. But as author Neil Gaiman notes, the idea of derivative rights and royalties for text-to-speech just seems silly.