If you liked the idea of being able to use your new kindle to listen to the books you buy, I have some bad news for you. Although YOU PAID for the ‘text-to-speech’ feature, Amazon have caved in to the Authors Guild and authors will now have the right to block the audio feature being used on their books.
It seems the Author’s Guild have learnt nothing from the record companies, judging by the short-sighted way they are attempting to protect the sales of audio books. If the Authors Guild think that listening to the kindle’s robot voice reading, is equal to listening to a talented voice artiste or author reading a book, they have clearly never done either.
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There certainly seems to be no distinction in their eyes between audio capability and audio performance. Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times demonstrated this feature on last week’s MacBreak Weekly podcast and your right, while it worked, it was robotic at best and had no inflection. I can’t imagine trying to listen to that for the hours that it takes to finish an audio book.
This doesn’t mean I totally buy in to the prices of audio books mind you, but there is a difference worth paying for.
But you’ve got a week to UN-buy a book with blocked read-aloud. Then you can decide if you want to buy the Audible.com version (which Amazon owns, btw)
Bob,
The feature was added (apparently) so that people could finish a chapter / page when their eyes were tired. Not as a replacement for audio books.