On Friday evening, Amazon quietly announced that they will offer an option for publishers to turn off the text-to-speech function that was criticized by the Authors Guild for ignoring audio book rights.
In February, the Authors Guild issued an alert and an op-ed against Amazon Kindle’s newest feature: a friendly, robotic voice that reads any digital book out-loud. At the same time, author Cory Doctorow (in video above) defended the feature along with a number of authors. One week later, Dr. Marc Maurer criticized the Authors Guild for opposing this new feature.
In a statement published in the NY Times, Amazon explained why they will offer publishers the choice of turning off the audio feature. Here’s more: “we are modifying our systems so that rights holders can decide on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for any particular title. We have already begun to work on the technical changes required to give authors and publishers that choice. With this new level of control, publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled.”
