Amazon’s retreat on text-to-speech: The Audible factor
By Michael Cairns, former President, Bowker
No one believes Amazon’s text-to-speech retreat has anything to do with Audible?
So Amazon’s people gear up to fight the legal battle that will let the company do T-T-S on the Kindle. And then they find that they’ve has cut out one of the key foundations for a business just bought for $300 million? Perhaps the Audible people were as surprised as all of the industry and have only just been able to navigate though the booming laughter to make their points. I’m very skeptical that Amazon is doing this in the interests of the publishing community. It’s a stupid battle to fight, and made more so by Amazon’s ownership of a large audio book "publisher."
I am sad since I was all set to go into the neoprene armband business so people could strap these puppies to their arms and use them biking or on the treadmill—just like an IPod. Dammit!
(Slightly edited version of a post Michael made to the Reading 2.0 list. Reproduced with permission.)
Related: Chris Meadows’ commentary. Also see Engadget’s interview with Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild.
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