Not everyone wants to listen to the Kindle 2
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When the Kindle 2 was announced earlier this week, Amazon head Jeff Bezos held it up, pressed a button, and let the audience hear it deliver the beginning of the Gettysburg Address. Our reporter described the Kindle 2 as having ‘crisp, staccato enunciation,’ with which, Bezos declared, ‘Any book, blog, magazine, personal document could be read aloud to you.’
Or maybe not.
‘They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,’ Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, told the Wall Street Journal. ‘That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.’
The remark led some to assume that reading a book aloud would also violate these audio rights. Not so, the Authors Guild explained on its website. ‘The remarks have been interpreted by some as suggesting that the Guild believes that private out-loud reading is protected by copyright. It isn’t, unless the reading is being done by a machine.’ They’ll even provide an exception to this rule: ‘And even out-loud reading by a machine is fine, of course, if it’s from an authorized audio copy.’
Engadget explains it this way: ‘You absolutely have the right to read a book out loud -- but you’re not allowed to make recordings of yourself and sell them. That’s something only authors are allowed to do, and it’s hard to have a problem with that.’
Authors get paid for each different format of their work. Between audiobooks and e-books, audiobook sales are where the money is, the Authors Guild says: They totaled more than $1 billion in 2007. One estimate puts 2008 e-book sales at about $114 million, which would mean that e-book sales are about one-tenth the level of audiobook sales.
An author will, with any luck, make money from the sale of his printed work, some more money from the audio rights and a bit more for the e-book rights. But as e-books are part of a smaller market, the rights are cheaper. Until the details of the Kindle 2’s new read-aloud feature are worked out, the Guild notes,
Amazon may be undermining your audio market as it exploits your e-books. Bundling e-books and audio books has been discussed for a long time in the industry. It’s a good idea, but it shouldn’t be accomplished by fiat by an e-book distributor.
The Authors Guild is trying to make sure its authors gets paid. And its assertion that Amazon shouldn’t be able to restructure rights because it’s got a tool that can read aloud is certainly valid. But stoppering technology so artists can get paid hasn’t worked in the recent past -- just ask the record industry.
The missing part of the equation here is publishers. Did Amazon really not discuss this pending development with major publishers before showing off the new audio component of its e-book reader? What do the publishers think of it, anyway?
-- Carolyn Kellogg
