Comments on: Amazon customer decries loss of TTS

By: Joseph Gray

Joseph Gray — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:07:53 +0000

I seriously doubt that anyone is going to routinely use TTS in place of audiobooks. Even the best TTS available to the public is a far cry from a human reader. While current TTS voices are much improved over the robotic voices of yesterday, they are still not capable of the inflection, pacing and emotion of a human. Not to mention the strange pronunciations caused by homonyms and semantic context differences.

I have some recordings of an old radio show called “X Minus One” (you can find this on archive.org). One of the episodes is based on “A Pail of Air” by Fritz Leiber. I very much enjoyed the radio adaptation. Would I like to hear a TTS-voiced version of the same short story? Not by a long shot.

TTS on a Kindle is simply a convenience feature. It is content shifting. Few will actually make use of it, but I don’t think that it should be disabled. The choice to use it or not should be mine, not anyone else’s.

By: Greg M.

Greg M. — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:55:02 +0000

Well, as a member of Audible for for a few years, I can say that the Kindle 2’s TTS will not cause me to purchase less audiobooks, and I think that will be true for many of their customers. Opinions may differ; however, if correct, that TTS will reduce sales, then that is a argumentative point in favor of disabling the feature.

As for the legal version being too expensive: the burden of proof is upon the file sharers who take without paying because of that claim. Too expensive for a poor student? Too expensive for a policeman? Too expensive for a computer programer? Too expensive any other employed or unemployed person. Who would get to decide what is the right price? The fact that Audible is a successful business with paying customers indicates that it is not too expensive for everyone. What evidence is there that they are too expensive? Are there reports of lavish bonus pay to executives in the audiobook companies?

If people think audiobooks cost too much, then don’t buy, it is not a justification to download an illegal copy. The “good alternative” is patronizing publishers or vendors who price their for goods for free or at a lessor rate. For example: http://audiobooksforfree.com/ or http://librivox.org/ or the public library.

By: Robbie Clarken

Robbie Clarken — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:58:06 +0000

I think that TTS would definitely reduce audio sales since Kindle books are usually half the price of audible.com books.

Greg, remember that many people don’t consider sharing information “stealing”. For us, a ‘pirated’ version of an audiobook is a good alternative if the legal version is too expensive. Amazon and the publishers need to recognise this.

By: Logan Kennelly

Logan Kennelly — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:50:42 +0000

You are correct: the threat of going to an illegal competitor is not a great argument. But it is a realistic perspective that should be taken into account.

By: Greg M.

Greg M. — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:42:56 +0000

While I agree that TTS should remain enabled on the Kindle 2 for all books, to help those with poor vision, or for anybody who needs or wants it, I don’t personally use it. With a little time and thought, I could come with a few solid reasons for keeping it, but the first that comes to mind is that TTS probably will not lessen the sales of audio versions.

More disturbing, however, is the implied threat of patronizing illegal file sharing sites. It is a very poor form of argumentatiom. In essence it is saying, “If I don’t like your terms of sale, I just going to steal it.” Not really convincing. If you don’t like the terms of sale, don’t buy. Go to Google for one of those 500,000 public domain books.