John Henry was an Audiobook-Readin’ Man

You might remember the story of old John Henry. He built rail lines, and could work harder and faster than any man alive. When the company brought in a steam-driven rail driving machine, though, they announced that they were going to fire all of the human rail workers. John Henry stepped up and challenged that machine.

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Posted by Roy Blount Jr.  on  03/02  at  04:05 PM

The Guild is not trying to "fight book-reading systems." The Guild is trying to do what you say the music companies learned to do: find a way to charge for audio rights. As you put it, "a dollar more than the plain e-book."

Posted by Dave McWhorter  on  03/02  at  06:07 PM

Mr Blount,
I guess I would have no problem with this as long as two versions were offered; one with Text-to-speech enabled and one without. I don't feel the current technology is even worth one dollar.

Now, when it sounds like your silvery voice!!

Posted by Ivan  on  03/02  at  06:18 PM

The part of this argument being overlooked is that a given person using text-to-speech has already purchased the book. Do you know if there are any studies looking at the percentage of consumers who invest in both a print version and an audio version of a book? For me, I usually purchase one or the other, not both.

Posted by Julia Taylor  on  03/02  at  06:49 PM

As long as people have the right to read books aloud, then it is preposterous to deny those same people usage of a mechanical voice to imitate the experience.

I, for one, will boycott any Kindle book which disables the text to speech feature. I've only toyed with the feature; I don't envision ever relying on it. But I will not contribute to the coffers of anyone who would seek to deny me fair usage of purchased media.

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