After coming under attack from the US Authors Guild, Amazon has decided to give authors and publishers the option to disable the “Read-To-Me” feature on the Kindle 2. With “Read-To-Me” the Kindle will read the books on your Kindle aloud thus freeing your hands for other things such as knitting or, I dunno, reading another book. The guild argued that this feature will impact the billion-dollar audiobook industry. By giving authors and publishers the option to disable it, Amazon feels that they will feel more in control and will quit complaining.

Marc Acito briefly mentioned this feature when I saw him a few weeks ago and how it isn’t doing any favors to the author who gets paid for the audiobook rights.

As a reader, I can not possibly imagine this feature being useful. Sure we can make it talk, but the reading wont be able to do the slightly different voices for each character, provide tone or dramatic pauses. In my mind it would probably sound like a robot reading to you.

I found this Youtube video which demonstrates this technology. Unfortunately, it’s in a book open room with lots of cameras clicking and is hard to really make out the quality of the reading.

Anybody with a Kindle 2, what are your thoughts on the Read-To-Me feature?

Source:
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/usitinternetkindleamazoncopyright