Quote:
Originally Posted by Barcey
He's absolutely correct that when computerized text to speech becomes good enough it will kill the market for audio books. Who cares? How many people are buying the same book as both an ebook and an audio book? If they are do the authors really think they should be collecting royalties for both sales? I'm paying for the content/story not for the technology method that is used to present it to me.
He should be embracing this new technology. Anything to help sell books. Authors are competing for entertainment dollars and should make it as attractive as possible. Amazon is doing them a favour by making it easier for the customer to enjoy the book. The Author's Guild should be working with the TTS developer's to make the experience better. Maybe they can add markup to the text to indicate inflection or indicate if it's a male or female speaking.
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As an ebook enthusiast, I instinctively share the sentiment about making ebooks more attractive. But...
You can't pretend that a thousand, or a million, legally binding contracts don't exist. And if the Guild did what you suggest, they would be aiding in an increasingly unambiguous violation of those contracts.
I don't think the answer to this question is simple at all.
(Purely as an aside, I'll note that most writers make little to nothing on ebook sales right now, and most don't even
get audiobook contracts. So when people start talking about "greedy" authors, as some have at times during this discussion, I can only shake my head. The vast majority of writers can't earn anything even remotely approaching a living wage from their books, so there is an ongoing tension between trying to use new technologies to promote sales of their work and remaining vigilant to avoid being screwed out of their share of the money that does get earned.)