[access-uk] Re: The Kindle and accessible content
- From: "ANDY COLLINS" <Andy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2010 10:32:59 +0100
Hi Neil - I'm hard to please when it comes to books, there's a lot of dross
written in my opinion; what I did was to take a sample of titles I've bought
from Audible, and looked to see if they have tts available from the Kindle
store, and found the vast majority didn't. I only have a single month credit
with Audible, not because I only have time to read one title a month, but
because I'm hard pushed to find more than that I'd truly want to read--I'm the
same with films and TV, so much rubbish I just don't give it my time -
Andy
----- Original Message -----
From: Neil Jarvis
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2010 12:45 AM
Subject: [access-uk] Re: The Kindle and accessible content
Andy,
I wrote to this list recently saying that, like you, I'd done an unscientific
survey of which books had TTS enabled and which didn't. At the time I looked at
around 200 titles and found that about half had TTS enabled. My subsequent
exploration of the Kindle Store has resulted in roughly the same proportion and
not, as one person claimed on this list at around the same time, that most
titles were enabled.
However, even at an approximate 50% hit rate, that's still several hundred
thousand titles I now have access to which I didn't previously. I'll take those
odds any day.
As to which titles are enabled or disabled, its not really about how recent
the titles are so much as who has published them from what I can see. I've
certainly purchased several brand new titles which were fine.
The Authors' Guild approach is based on a complete mis-understanding of what
TTS is as compared to an audio production of the content. Whether that
mis-understanding is intentional or otherwise is, in mhy view, open to debate,
if you get my drift.
All the best,
Neil
----- Original Message -----
From: ANDY COLLINS
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2010 9:50 AM
Subject: [access-uk] The Kindle and accessible content
Hi all -
Out of interest, I've just spent some time searching for 15 ebooks in the
Kindle store of which only 4 had tts enabled!
The titles I deliberately looked for were more recent releases. Given the
results of this piece of research, I have to say I'm very disappointed, so even
if the reader was more accessible, until more authors allow text to speech for
their work, I don't believe the Kindle offers value for money. It looks like
more older titles are available, but even there, most still are not.
I can't understand the thinking of authors who refuse tts access to their
books, I wonder what they are afraid of? -
It is true to say that if one is not too fussy about what one reads, just
wanting to find something for free, or that has tts accessability, then there
may well be enough to go at, but for me, I don't wish to waste my time reading
just for readings sake, there's loads of great material out there, and I for
one, want greater access to it!
Andy
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