Author's Guild Executive Director Interview

[Jellby]

the Kindle converts every book that's sold into something other than just an ebook.

Ah... so you should pay additional rights in order to use a paper book as a paperweight, a wedge or to burn it, because that's converting a book into something other than just a book.

[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.

I agree with him that TTS will eventually kill the existing audio book market but I think it's 15 to 25 years out. Fifteen years if the industry embraces it or 25 years if they fight it.

He is treating it as a threat that needs to be controlled and his arguments aren't logical. He's saying that arbitrary rights have been assigned to the exact same electronic text and the world must conform to them. 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. There's absolutely no difference in the content we're selling, these are virtual and arbitrary rights but deal with them. From my viewpoint if the companies signed contracts like this they are worth $0.

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. 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.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Barcey

I agree with him that TTS will eventually kill the existing audio book market but I think it's 15 to 25 years out. Fifteen years if the industry embraces it or 25 years if they fight it.

I completely disagree. That's like saying that all TV programmes which currently use "live" actors will be replaced by CGI. TTS has its place, yes, but to suggest that it will replace a live audiobook "performance" is, I think, an entirely misplaced expectation.

[Barcey]

I understand what you're saying. I don't believe it will ever replace the performance. I believe that it will be good enough that it will shrink the audio book market so that it's too small to justify paying for the voice actor's.

There will probably always be a small market for it for very popular books. There will never be a time when all books are available as an audio book read by a professional voice actor.

[starrigger]

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.

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.

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.

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. )

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Barcey]

Amazon isn't distributing audio they are presenting an audio representation of the electronic text. If they stored and distributed the audio generated from the TTS engine then they have violated copyright and the contract.

Anyone that can read and speak is a text to speech engine so you can't claim the electronic book was sold without TTS rights.

This exact issue is going to come up with language translation. What happens if Amazon implements language translation technology into the Kindle? If you sold the rights to the French language translation edition to a company and then technology is introduced to the Kindle to translate the electronic text sentence by sentence and present the text on the screen in French did that violate your contract? My interpretation is no (unless they stored and distributed the translated text). What if somebody read the electronic book and had to lookup each word in an English to French dictionary. Same thing.

These are all issues that need to be clarified with new technology but IMHO he has too weak of a case for the negative media stir he's generated.

[dschill]

Ive actually met paul aiken one time it was interesting to say the least