Bruce S. Woodcock has alerted us to a MobileRead Forum notice by KarlB that Random House (Knopf) has begun disabling the Kindle-2 text-to-speech feature, which is computerized speech that has almost no appropriate affect, often mispronounces words, and doesn't pause between paragraphs, headings, or chapters on its Kindle books - and it's unclear whether or not the author gets a choice in this disabling.The above link takes you to Bruce's announcement and the forum discussions on this. While forum members are a small percentage of Kindle owners, they tend to know other Kindle owners and there has been a resulting resistance to Random House's policy, in the form of plans to not buy Random House Kindle books while they are doing this. They also proposed using the Amazon tagging system to add a "No tts" tag to alert other customers to an author who chose disabling this feature.
The disabling of TTS on a book hurts the disabled most, since most Kindle owners use the computerized voice only for brief periods (while cooking or commuting in the car) and they don't buy the book to 'listen' to it, especially not via a monotone voice.
Does Random House appreciate the fact that the Kindle owner has purchased the book to read? Do people who buy hardcopy books to read THEN go buy the audiobook ? Where is their loss on this? Kindle owners can't share their Kindle books except with someone ON their account, so just what is the problem for Authors Guild and Random House?
There is a Kindle book titled The Disabled Deserve to Read: The Controversy Over the Amazon Kindle's Voice, by Bufo Calvin, for 80 cents.
The product description says: "The author's proceeds will go towards purchasing Kindles to donate to non-profit organizations."
From what I remember, the Authors Guild has proposed tests they will put disabled people through to see if they 'qualify' for getting a computerized voice reading to them. To me, there's something quite dark about that.
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Related blog article on "Tom," the Kindle-2 voice
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