Some thoughts about the Kindle 2 and text-to-speech:
I love my Kindle and I have the Kindle 1 that Dale gave me for Christmas. I really love my audio books best from Audible.com, but so many are not yet available that I want to read. Yes, I can purchase books on CDs (or sometimes only tape is available), but it’s such a pain to convert the CDs in iTunes (or any program) into something I can download into my iPod, Kindle or other MP3 player. Thus, I need my Kindle to read what is not yet available for audio download as I can easily enlarge the font size to my comfort. It’s really too much of a pain to try to find books I want to read in large print at the library………thus, my Kindle is one of my most prized possessions. I’ve been looking over the new Kindle 2 and what it has to offer and it sure looks sleek compared to the Kindle 1 I have now.
In looking over what the Kindle 2 has to offer, though, I noticed it now has text-to-speech technology and you can listen to a computer voice read your book to you. I guess this would come in handy for the visually impaired, as this is certainly less expensive than buying CDs or even purchasing an audio download. However, as a lover of audio books for the past several years, I have my favorite narrators and I can’t even imagine listening to my novels being read to me by a computer-generated voice!
The thought of listening to my favorite David Baldacci novels without Ron McLarty, or listening to the Dune novels without Scott Brick and/or Simon Vance, just does not compute. How could a computer-generated voice deliver all those wonderful character voices and accents Jim Dale and Stephen Fry (UK) deliver in the Harry Potter series? The thought of listening to The Hobbit and/or the Lord of the Rings without Rob Inglis telling the 55-hour saga makes me cringe! Listening to the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mysteries, without hearing Johanna Parker’s marvelous voice, would be just awful!
Regardless of the issue of digital management rights, IMHO the audio book listener (for the most part) will continue to have their favorite narrators, consider them in their purchases, and choose not to listen to a computer-generated voice. Listening to a favorite book, with the voice of a favorite narrator in my ear, is like putting on that favorite pair of comfortable shoes, catching up with an old friend, and a computer-generated voice just won’t cut the mustard.