The Author’s Guild recently objected to Kindle 2’s “text-to-speech” feature, which otherwise would undermine the billion dollar a year audiobook market. Amazon announced that it’ll let publishers decide whether they want the new Kindle e-book device to read their books aloud. While maintaining that the feature is legal, and that it would in fact increase the market for audio books.

Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given. […]We believe text-to-speech will introduce new customers to the convenience of listening to books and thereby grow the professionally narrated audiobooks business.

Full Article