Amazon misread book sector on speech feature
Amazon chose to keep secret from much of the publishing sector the text-to-speech feature built into the Kindle 2.
Instead, Amazon sprung the feature on publishers and the retailer is now taking public-relations hits that it might have avoided if it hadn’t been so tight lipped.
Following the debut of the Kindle 2, the 9,000-member Authors Guild claimed text-to-speech created a derivative work and violated copyright. Paul Aiken, the guild’s president said many publishers were also angered over the speech function, adding that Amazon never consulted beforehand with either of those groups. Amazon responded Friday by handing publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech feature on any title they choose.
iRex to release full-page e-reader
Netherlands-based iRex, manufacturers of one of the first e-readers in the iLiad, will launch the jumbo E Ink 1000 next week, on the 22 September.
Trumping the 8.1-inch iLiad with a 10.2-inch screen, the new e-reader will offer full page PDF viewing, as well as HTML, e-book and Word documents.
Higher-priced versions will also pack the ability to write on the page with the bundled stylus, so the user can write notes or just doodle on the works of Shakespeare or Austen.
Will bookworms get their teeth into the Sony Reader?
Outside the British Library the slim volume in my hands could mark the beginning of the end for slim volumes. It is the Sony Reader, the electronic book that hits the British market this week – and the gadget that, if the publicity is to be believed, could kill off the book as we know it.
All this will be of some interest to the British Library, which houses 30 million books and counting (adding an extra 300,000 every year).
If the Sony Reader represents the future of books – slim and sleek and rather beautiful in a geeky, gadgety kind of way – the British Library represents the past and present of books, old and dusty and possibly somewhat dog-eared. They’re not really going to get on.