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Originally Posted by Barcey
His approach has been very damaging public relations for the Author's Guild. The industry is finally going through a major technology transformation and the authors need the public on their side. It comes down to treating the new technology as a threat that needs to be controlled or an opportunity to embrace.
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I agree that the Guild has taken a PR hit as a result of this. But I don't think the Guild is
actually treating the technology as a threat--although they sometimes came off seeming that way--but rather are saying, look, there are existing contractual rights that have to be respected.
Look at it this way. Suppose I have an exclusive contract with Somnolent Audio to distribute my books in any available audio technology existing or to be developed. (This is really the kind of wording you see in contracts.) Then the K2 comes along and kills that, by producing ephemeral--but instantly reproducible--audio reproduction of my books. I might not object--I might even like it--but Somnolent Audio might see it differently. And they could legitimately come after
me for having allowed another company to infringe on their rights.
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From my viewpoint he might as well be saying that they signed contracts for the rights to the font sizes 8, 12 and 16 to Company A and the right to 6, 10, 14 to Company B so now your technology has to accommodate that. Oh and by the way in some case we signed contracts to the odd sized fonts to Company C.
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I don't really think that's a valid comparison. The distinction between print reproduction and other media has been around for a long time, and is well accepted. (Or was, until now.
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If he treated it as an opportunity he would talk to the TTS vendors to find out how the authors could work with them to make the technology better.
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You could also say, why didn't Amazon talk to
them ahead of time, to find out what the rights issues were and see what could be done to work around any problems? I think the Guild would much rather have worked
with them. I think Amazon decided it was easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.
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As I said earlier they could jointly develop a standard to markup the text so the TTS technology can understand how the author expected the text to be presented. Things like who is speaking, were they angry, how angry were they, were they being naive or sarcastic. These are all things that the author knows but is very difficult for the technology to interpret. I suspect there are already proposed standards for this I'm just not aware of them.
If they jointly developed a standard for marking up the text with these properties and worked with the software tool vendors to add it to the author's tools then they can develop new rich text content with "enhanced real aloud technology" or something. Now they've developed new content, added value and have something that can justifiably be sold for a higher price. I think that it would be fairly easy to experiment with a simple set of attributes.
The consumer gets a better listening experience, the author's don't lose anything when the technology replaces the audiobooks and it's potentially more revenue.
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I think these are great ideas,
if done in a way that respects existing rights.
We haven't seen the end of this yet. I think what we're hearing now is just the opening maneuvers, and that some arrangement will be made. I hope it's sooner rather than later.
For my own books, I plan to ask for the TTS to be enabled.