Stephen King’s “‘Salem’s Lot” is TTS Disabled!!!
By Paul Biba
Received this email from John Hagewood and thought it well worth posting. John provided the links and I provided the picture
:
Today I got in my car after work, anxious to resume my “reading” of the Stephen King book “‘Salem’s Lot” which I started on the Kindle last night. Using the TTS in the car in the afternoons had become a real “habit” for me. I get through books quicker since my 1 hour commute time isn’t wasted, and hence I buy more books (publishers/authors, are you listening….HENCE I BUY MORE BOOKS!)
Well much to my dismay and surprise, the book was TTS DISABLED. I don’t remember seeing that when I bought it, and I usually remember to check (perhaps this time I didn’t). Anyway, to make sure (and to tag it for other readers), I went to my history page to check out the listing and the book is no longer available in Kindle format at all. The page for it returns a 404 error. Perhaps they have taken it down in order to put up a TTS ENABLED version? One can hope.
What really ticks me off is that this is Stephen King we are talking about. The fellow who stood up on stage with Jeff Bezos for the launch the Kindle2, and even wrote a Kindle-only novella…about a possessed, future-predicting, pink Kindle. Some ebook proponent he turned out to be (or else his publisher isn’t on the same page as he is).
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Not to mention him being a guy with eyesight problems?
I doubt it is his doing, but again, arseclown authors and publishers.
I am sure we can find you a TTS usable version of Salem’s lot, too.
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:34 am
His publisher pulled all his books (along with titles from other authors) maybe a month ago and recently put most of them up again with TTS disabled (Salem’s Lot isn’t back up). I doubt King himself has any idea that it’s been done. Most authors have no clue about something like this, it’s the publisher’s doing.
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:51 am
Ok, well that narrows the arseclownery down from guilds to publisher, then, most likely.
I’d be extremely disappointed if it was the man himself.
There are loons out there as we know, but I wouldn’t think he’d want Paul to stop being one of his ‘constant readers’ in this manner?
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:53 pm
So ask for a refund from Amazon. If you bought it less than 7 days ago they will give you a refund, if past that all you can do is ask. We vote with our dollars, folks.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Or it could be that the audio rights were already sold to someone else and, therefore, they were legally obligated to disable this.
I’m guessing, but sometimes these decisions are not as arbitrary as they might appear.
June 23rd, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Anyone want to show me a contract that has TTS rights separated out? Only crazy people would pay for that, as every PC in the world does this.
All turning this off does is make people create their own. Encourage them to download it from elsewhere, too, if they don’t know how to get to the Kindle content.
In other words it shows a complete lack of understanding of technology, and the same for their customers.
What we’d like to know is the person or persons that made this decision, so their readers can thank them er.. personally.
July 1st, 2009 at 6:08 am
I forgot to mention before that this book also had a formatting issue (justification is “left” and not “full”).
Well, it’s back on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0019LV31E
TTS is still disabled. Formatting issue is still there.
Lest I sound completely negative, I should mention that Amazon’s $7.19 price looks pretty sweet compared to $33.95 at books on board!
http://www.booksonboard.com/index.php?BODY=viewbook&BOOK=231393
Surely that is a mistake….