I completely agree that the person who put hrs and hrs and hrs of work into creating a product getting appropriately paid, and if that requires renegotiating contracts to do so then do it.

I’m just not sure that it should be done in a way that restricts the accessiblity of the product. My concern is that if authors are given the option to NOT allow TTS to read their book (for fear of human nature) then many people will loose out. And lets face it, there has yet to be a security coding that someone hasn’t eventually broken. Give the hackers a challange and they’ll find a way to break the restriction eventually.

I’m not sure WHAT would be the right way to handle it. Maybe a tax or fee attached to all TTS software (or hardware, such as the Kindle, that have it as a built in option) that is handed over to some authority to dispense to authors in some form (the Authors Guild maybe?), course then you have the authors who aren’t part of the guild who ought to get something. Canada has (or at least used to) a similer type fee attached to the purchase of blank media such as CDs that goes to artists. And doesn’t radio do something similer too for the music they play?

I don’t see where it’s in the middle. Ebooks are already cheap and reliable; audio rights for authors would not make a huge difference in their cost. The two things–accessibility and author rights–are not mutually exclusive, and I don’t think they should be presented as such.

On the one hand I can totally understand the concern that once (if ever? god I hope….) the TTS voices get decent enough to sound human someone’s going to find away to copy that audio and pirate it. That is generally how humanity works at any rate. It totally makes sense to make sure contracts and codings are done NOW to ensure thats less of an issue later.

On the other hand…I have a friend who’s been going slowly blind since she was 17 (or at least thats when it was diagnosed). In the last two years enough of her vision is finally gone to make reading a print book, even a large print book, downright impossible. She was an avid reader till her sight got so bad but I didn’t realize how much it upset her till we were discussing some books one day and she admitted to being extreamly upset at not being able to read the latest book in a series by a fav author. To which I blurted out “but they have it as an ebook!” She totally didn’t see the connection, so I sat her down at her husbands computer and I used my account at Fictionwise to download a book for her and helped her set up her screen reading software to read it. She cried. It was the first new book she’d been able to “read” in over a year. No TTS is in no way the same as a good audio book, but it DOES give the visually impaired a chance to read and explore new books that they may never otherwise have had a chance to even think were out there. True, many of the blind are like my friend, where money is an issue and chances are good something like the Kindle is competely out of their budget. But when I heard that the Kindle 2 was going to have the TTS feature I made a point of telling her husband that if he could come up with half the cost of the Kindle, I’d put up the other half. Its going to be her birthday present, and before I give it to her I’m going to load it up with as many books as I can afford. Cause its totally worth it.

I think it ultimately depends on how it’s worked out. No ‘buts’ this time, I promise. Of course an author should be paid (I’d certainly want to be) – I just think the cost of that should be included as a matter of course with e-book rights. As in, writers may need to just be paid a bigger slice of pie for e-books in general *because* the TTS function exists. Trying to separate TTS rights from e-book rights when the TTS function is right there as part of the technology is logistically difficult. It would be like trying to charge someone who loans their books to friends. How are you going to track that without following them home? Why not just take into account that it’s possible and ask for a bigger cut in the original deal?

The issue I have is it sort of sounds like, by making TTS a separate set of rights, you’re saying that maybe someone’s going to say “No, Kindle, you can’t use TTS with my book.” And the only way that’s going to be possible is DRM. And history has proven that DRM does not prevent piracy. Determined people are still going to crack DRM and reverse-engineer things and steal – because they are jerks. It’s the honest people who’ve purchased the product and then had a system crash or a hardware change that suffer.

So, in summary, DRM for e-books = BAD. Authors getting another X% in their e-book contracts because TTS is now possible = GOOD. Personally, I’m sticking with my hard copies. At least until the Kindle comes out with a “Text to Smell” function.

“Getting more sales” due to TTS features on the Kindle–if your original point in the first paragraph (commuters getting their morning news) holds, this point in the third doesn’t. And it is only a matter of time before someone cracks the Kindle and starts torrenting the TTS. It’s happened with every other kind of media.

Authors getting monopolistic copyrights is fairly recent. I do not see where this is a bad thing–it helps the author get paid enough so they can concentrate on producing more. Your tone here suggests that because this copyright is new, the author is already getting more than enough. This is not so–and writers need to be vigilant about these new means of transmitting their work, which was Blount’s point.

Were the TTS feature used in a public performance, additional fees would be due the writer (just as reading from a book would incur such fees). But using TTS on a book for which the writer has been paid should not be an issue (it won’t compete with audiobooks, other than in price – and there the extra costs go, not to the author, but to the narrator and production company). You wrote a novel, the consumer purchased a copy and then consumes it using the electronic hardware purchased from Amazon. One device, one copy; only the interface (eyes vs ears) changes. And has been noted, most books won’t ever get an audiobook; for those who cannot read the printed page, they have no other option (of course, for this group, they already have a clear exception under copyright law, allowing them to break DRM in order to enable TTS, if the medium in which they purchase the work has TTS disabled. A similar exception, but greyer in language, is there for those needing font size adjustments or a different display due to sight issues).

I suspect most authors will find that they are simply getting more sales due to TTS features on the Kindle – not sabotaging their audiobook sales. And with the Kindle, once the original consumer reads or listens to the book, they can’t pass it along – unlike the hard copy paper books or cassette/CD audiobooks that many purchase, which can be used by many consumers, but for which the author is only paid once (a trade-off for which the author and estate receives their current monopolistic copyrights for publication for a good number of years, something not enjoyed by authors until recent decades).

Most people have simply no idea how much sweat a writer puts into a book.

And most people haven’t a clue how modest the payments are for nearly all published books, nor that audio rights, translation rights etc can often be so important in helping to keep writers financially afloat.

There is more than misconception involved here, which is why it is so hard to get the message across. The public clings tightly to its legends about the writing profession: i) that writing a book is a great way to get rich quick ii) that all you need is a good idea, and the book will somehow write itself.

I also believe that some of the publicity and promotion that some sections of the publishing industry puts out – stuff about huge advances and so on – exploits this fantasy, and reinforces it.