Kindle 2 - Audio rights
I can see some of the argument from both sides. Authors, any creative artist for that fact, should be paid for their work. I want to become an author, I don’t want to see a system by which creative artists make a living get reduced to the point where the only ones who can survive are the ones on the tippy top. So author rights need to be protected. Much like the writer’s strike from last year where writers wanted to be paid for use of their materials online, authors should be paid for ebook and audiorights and they’re not the same thing.
But it’s a recession…things should be cheap and we all like free, right? Yeah, right. I do like free, but the old saying “You get what you paid for” runs very true as well. Fanfic is fun, most fanfic is free, 95% of fanfic is BAAAAAD and if good authors can’t be paid for their work how long before the quality of what we’re getting tanks? My problem here is the pricing which gets passed to the consumer can be an issue. I like the idea of ebooks. I don’t like the idea of paying 23.00 for an ebook, the same as a hardback. Many of the costs of the book don’t exist in the same way once you’ve gone electronic, so why aren’t the savings passed on as well?…though that’s another rant.
So coming back to this one. Yes, there needs to be a way for people who need the reading help to have it. No, parents should not be penalized for reading to their kids at night. But…all in all…
Authors need to be paid for their rights, audio, printed and ebooks.
Is there a common ground? I hope so. Anyway I’m interested to see where the discussion goes.
~Jana
State of the art text to speech is far better than the old “How a-bout a nice game of chess?” But it’s still got a ways to go. You can see how good it’s become with sites like this that have a demo app you can type into.
http://www.naturalreaders.com/
I bet you can really confuse it with a few well chosen homonyms, and Dramatic Reading it ain’t. I see it as a non-issue for at least the next decade since computers will not be able to identify where to use inflection to insert feeling, and all those other nice things that come with a real audio book.
It is, however, one of those landmines that we stumble upon by combining technology A (e-book) with technology B (text to speech) and coming up with something that was not anticpated by intellectual property contract writers. It’s just like all those other rights that used to not be part of a typical book publishing contract because nobody thought you could do the weird things as we consider common now.
John
You are very very professional.I dream i could do such a great job as you do.