Comments on: Stephen King’s “‘Salem’s Lot” is TTS Disabled!!!

By: John Hagewood

John Hagewood — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:08:43 +0000

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….

By: Blue Tyson

Blue Tyson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:48:45 +0000

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.

By: Tassia

Tassia — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:10:43 +0000

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.

By: Al

Al — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:53:50 +0000

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.

By: Blue Tyson

Blue Tyson — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:51:09 +0000

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?

By: ~Brian

~Brian — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:34:02 +0000

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.

By: Blue Tyson

Blue Tyson — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:15:20 +0000

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.