There's nothing like book publishers to make the recording industry look positively glowing in comparison.

I'm just confused by the picture of a Bengal kitten on this article.

I'll just use this as a guide to decide on which author's works not to buy.

Neil Gaiman, best author EVER, wrote this in his journal back in Janurary about the TTS Kindle feature. He always makes so much sense:

Just found myself having a long argument/discussion with my agent over the Amazon Kindle text-to-speech capability. I'm going to summarise it here.

Her point of view: The Kindle reading you the book-you-just-bought infringes the copyright (or at least, the rights) to the audiobook. We've sold audiobook rights and print book rights as separate things. We must stop this.

My point of view: When you buy a book, you're also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one's going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors' societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what's good about them with it.

@NickIQ: That kitten is annoyed because he cannot hear the book he bought for his Kindle.

@NickIQ: Ben and Meg did a study, and it found that pictures of cats were needed on the site, even more than cowbell.

I give it 3 days before software that strips the "no TTS" flags starts floating around.

I'm one of those numb nuts who bought the electronic version of Stephen King's 'Riding the Bullet' back in about 2000. It was a PDF document protected by DRM. Recently I tried to open it, but of course the book I purchased back then is only blank white pages now...

Nope - it infringes on the third party's right to sell an audio reading of the book. Having the computer monotonously read it, complying with the ADA (by the way), is not violative.

Vision impaired customers should be allowed to return the kindle for a full refund.

@edrebber:

Why? This was known before the Kindle 2 came out that authors/publishers would be able to decide whether they wanted to allow TTS.

I am so distressed by this action by King, Morrison, et. al. This text-to-speech disabling is absolutely evil. I wonder if their attitudes would change if their own eyesight failed them. This action has to be against the ADA-somebody needs to fight this.

@henwy: You might want to check your timeline. The TTS controversy started AFTER the Kindle 2 went up for sale.

The only problem with adding the tag is that if they ever change their mind and allow it, getting the tag off can be rather difficult. It has to be voted down enough times. The $9.99 boycott people tagged a lot of stuff. Oftentimes books are posted to the store at a little more than $9.99 and then Amazon lowers the price. It can take a couple days. In the meanwhile, the $9.99 people tag it a couple dozen times. Then you have an incorrectly tagged book that is $9.99. A year later when it's in paperback and even lower, it will likely still have that tag on it unless enough people go back and check. That's unlikely to happen.

@edrebber: Vision impaired? Are we so PC that blind is derogatory?

@HIV 2 Elway: Not everyone with a vision issue that prevents them from reading with ease is totally blind.

@jdmba: I HIGHLY doubt there are any ADA issues here. A bookseller is not required to make available an audio version of their book any more than an musician is required to put their lyrics down on paper.

@Ben Miner: Oops I meant to say author not bookseller.

@HIV 2 Elway: Not everyone vision-impaired and needing adaptive reading technology is blind. :)

@edrebber: Yeah, they also should try to steal my Ex, but they do. Lousy cane swingers.

@PartOfIMAXConspiracy_GitEmSteveDave: to NOT* steal. Bitterness affects my typing.

Kitteh is sad because his picture is only on the main Consumerist page and not leading this article.
Don't make sad Kitteh into angry Kitteh. You won't like him when he's angry.

(scurrying off to my machine with PhotoShop and oodles and oodles of the color green)

@NickIQ: He's very clearly thinking, "I can't hear my book!" in the alt-text (great that we're using it, by the way!)

@Eldritch:

That's a great explanation.

@mgy: That's going a bit far there. RIAA is still the most evil. Then the MPAA. Book publishers are a pretty distant third.

@wickedpixel: Yes, there is a new assignment for those people who figured out how to jailbreak iphones.

I would rewrite this headline to read "Amazon begins selling broken Kindles" because that's what they are. Bleep you Stephen King.

@tbax929: Comment of the month. Even if it's a quote.

I love Niel Gaiman more and more every day.

@mgy: actually it's not the publishers doing this, it's the writer guild that started this whole TTS debacle

@Eldritch: That makes no sense - audiobooks should be sold separately because there are extra costs associated with them. With the Kindle's TTS however, it is not an audiobook. There is no extra per-work effort and you cannot compare in quality the text to speech feature of the Kindle with a genuine audiobook.

Oh, and, it's been previously ruled that machines cannot create copyrightable work; in other words, the procedural algorithm used by the Kindle cannot infringe on the copyright. However, as Amazon's platform is unproven they opted not to challenge the dubious claims of the author's guild as Amazon had far much more to lose.

@Megalomania: You're argueing with Neil Gaiman? :D

What I wonder if, how many people buy both a paper copy of a book AND an audio book? This is the ONLY potential revenue that TTS loses them.

Surely, the number of people who do this is much less than the number of people who won't buy a book just because of the author's "Fuck You" attitude. I guess they just don't like money. Maybe they want to become monks and think that money will entice them. Or they're dumpster diving gutter punks. Now we know Steven King's secret.

@PartOfIMAXConspiracy_GitEmSteveDave: That's why one should always carry a fresh t-bone in a ziplock baggie.
Unzip, one strong pitch, and one hurtling seeing-eye dog attached to a rocketing sight-impaired paramour later, your wife-stealing problems: solved!

@Eldritch: Yeah, definitely should not. He has connections with Gods, Amanda Palmer and Jonathan Coulton. Definitely not a man to mess with. :)

@Trai_Dep: In Islamic culture, dogs are considered dirty, so there was one blind girl in Michigan who was just offered a seeing eye pony. How do you plan on taking care of that? Carrots?

@edrebber: I think everyone who bought one before this decision was made should be able to return it.

Like all of those posts about how changes to cell phone rates mean you can cancel without an ETF: it doesn't matter how often you use it; they're still changing a major feature.

@Eldritch: Very smart man, and what I'm sure many would agree is a common-sense viewpoint.

I work with TTS systems and I've got a word for Stephen King, et al: Prosody.

There is just no way a Kindle can take a random text and read it with the proper intonation, rhythm, stress, etc that is an inherent part of reading aloud.

At best, the reading will sound like the National Weather Service automated voice.

There's also the fun that comes from abbreviations. For example - Verizon's automated system called to confirm my FiOS installation. I live on Elm Drive (well it's not really "Elm" but that's not important right now). So in Verizon's system, that's stored as "Elm Dr." The TTS call happily told me that the installer would be showing up at 123 Elm Doctor. And that's a system that should have the ability to add some context tags to the text before converting it to speech. How is the Kindle going to know if that "St." mean Saint or Street? I've also seen TTS struggle with acronyms - a person can see ACLU and know to say "ay see ell you", while a system is liable to say "akloo".

If the complaint is that TTS will cut in to audiobook sales, then that's just stupid. On the other hand, if these authors don't want their creations read by the NWS guy, well, that's almost understandable. But I can't see how it harms them.

Why do Stephen King and Toni Morrison hate blind people?

Simple solution, don't buy books with TTS disabled.

@mgy: I think that this calls for sending your favourite author some fan mail. If they don't disable this feature, thank them. If they do, tell them that you're done reading them.

"to help other customers quickly identify which authors are disabling this functionality."

I think it's probably the book publishers rather than the authors that make this call.

And TTS is bad imo. No where near as good to a real audiobook. But I can see how blind people would be up in arms over this.

@frari489:

nvm, looks like I'm wrong. Should have had my morning coffee before commenting.

I am really surprised at Stephen King. He's usually so logical :( Bad, King, BAD!

But I do think it's probably the publishers.

@nakedscience: or maybe not. EITHER WAY BAD.

The blind thank them for setting the world back 20 years. Next up: no more wheelchair ramps.

@NickIQ: This LOLKitteh's comments have been disabled, because he's so F'in mad about the TTS-disabling. That is why his LOL comment cannot be seen, which would have linked him to this article.

Tenuous at best, I know, but I love that Kitteh Picture.

@Rectilinear Propagation: How about at least providing text to speach for an additional charge, or just raising the price of the knindle book. Instead Amazon allows the publisher to turn off the funcitonality with no way for the customer to obtain it through the Kindle.