Kindle 2 Text-To-Speech

OK, so the Kindle 2 has this feature where a robo-voice will read your book to you.

The Author’s Guild is up in arms because, generally, authors sell the audio-book rights for a fee that goes some way to making up for the pitiful amount most authors are payed in advances and royalties (they are not all JK Rowling). It’s easy to mock the Author’s Guild for this, because the robo voice is, currently, so inadequate especially compared with a talented voice actor.

I feel some sympathy for the Guild, until I remember how stupid they’re being by fighting this.

Jamais Cascio has a really great article on the topic, which sums up the situation in a way that had me nodding vigorously :

The reason that [The Authors' Guild's] Blount’s wrong is that he’s just trying to hold back the tide, fighting a battle that was lost long ago. The reason that the 21st century digital writers [who mock the robovoice] are wrong is that they’ve forgotten the Space Invaders rule: Aim at where your target will be, not at where it is.

(thanks to WWDN:In Exile for this link)

He goes on to make some very realistic proposals about where the technology might go that would realise the Authors’ Guild’s fears. And then he points out that it doesn’t matter. You can fight it all you like (the record industry did), it’s going to happen and you should, instead, be expending your energy on figuring out a way to work with the approaching technology.

I think we are a very, very long way from the technology ever truly replacing a great reading. But quite apart from that, the fact remains that most people don’t listen to audio books. And why? Because they are phenomenally expensive.

Let’s look at the New York Times bestsellers list: James Patterson’s latest novel is up there. In hardback its list price is $27.99. The audio book is $39.99! For a novel. For a novel that will, in a few months come out in paperback and be sold at Walmart for under $10.

Add to that, a lot of audio books are read by mediocre readers.

But all is not lost.

The Author’s Guild should consider that as the text-to-speech technology advances, it might just be that it gets people MORE used to listening to their books, and increases demand for high quality audio books. ( I, for one, will never be able to resist hearing my favourite authors read their own works — well, those that are good at it. Neil Gaiman and Douglas Adams spring to mind).

Think of wine-drinkers. How many people would risk a day’s pay on an expensive bottle of wine the first time they drink it? Precious few. But offer them a tasty $6 bottle and you let them edge their way into the market. They’ll keep drinking $6 bottles of wine or they’ll work their way up to Dom Perignon, or stay somewhere in the middle. But they’re drinking wine and taking it to other people’s houses and now they are in your wine-making world where you, as a wine-maker, can reach them.

I love my Kindle, and I understand that it might eventually put some mediocre actors out of business. And it might decrease sales for some audio books (mostly in non-fiction, according to my personal crystal ball). And I love the fact that desktop publishing and digital printing has made it faster, easier and cheaper to publish books, even though I understand that all the make-up men at the publishers have been out of their jobs for 20 years.

But yesterday I spend $18 on a pack of six greetings cards that were hand-fed in to a vintage letterpress machine by a boutique printing firm. And I’m really, really excited about seeing them (and touching them) when they arrive.

There will always be a market for a high quality product, as long as that product is relevant. And when it’s not? Well, telegraph operators are pretty much out of luck these days, and I’m not sure that any amount of lawsuits is going to do them any good.

More:

These are two very good posts from the trenches: Neil Gaiman has a conversation with his agent, and the agent discovers she might have some more thinking to do.)

Wil Wheaton does a side-by-side comparison: reading from his latest book “Sunken Treasure” and allowing the Text-To-Speech technology to do it too. For a true comparnison, here is my Kindle 2 reading the same passage (recorded with a microphone, so you can hear the speaker quality too!)

(On a related note, Wil recently released this book in print and then offered a PDF download on the ‘please don’t be a jerk and forward it to all your friends’ license. Sales skyrocketed, but every time the digital download threatened to outpace the print book, he saw a jump in print sales too. His conclusion was that people were reading the PDF, then deciding they wanted a nice hard copy. This matches Neil Gaiman’s experience giving away ‘American Gods’.)

Update: Neil Gaiman has just posted a reminder about Lenny Henry’s audiobook version of Anansi Boys, which I love. It adds so much that I can’t imagine ever reading the printed book. It adds so much that it should kill this argument stone dead. Seriously. Have a listen…

<3

Kindle 2 Has Arrived

Yay!

I’ve been checking the doorstep all morning and, at last, the UPS guy turned up and unceremoniously dumped my expensive new gadget outside the gate, under the leaky guttering above the garage, and ran away without so much as approaching my doorstep. (Good thing I was stalking him).

Nice Touch!

So I opened all the packaging, and now have my mucky mitts on a new Kindle. Here are my inital impressions, as an established Kindle 1 user, complete with rating scale:

  Not A Good Thing

  No Strong Feelings

  A Good Thing

A Very Good Thing

Kindle 2 on the left, in the shadow of the thicker, angular Kindle 1

USB CONNECTION/POWER CORD 

UpdatedI had a rant in here about how Amazon used a @#$%# proprietary cable…and then I discovered I was wrong and that those kids today have invented a new thing called a Micro-USB, which is a slimmer, squashed port I hadn’t seen before. Apparently it’s big with the skinny phones and PDAs and, well, eBook readers.
So I’ve taken back the frowny face I originally posted for this and have replaced it with a smiley face because:
The cable combines a USB socket and a sleek little plug that doesn’t take up more than one slot (you know the way they can). Apparently it’s a universal plug, so it manages the power in different countries too. All in this little package. It’s very neat.

LACK OF COVER 

It’s sleek and slim and light. And doesn’t come with a cover. I understand that the nice leather one is $30, but some kind of slip (felt? Nylon? Something?) would have been nice. I feel scared carrying this thing around the house with me, never mind anywhere else! The Kindle 1 came with a really nice leather case. The thing slipped out of it all the time but still…I should have a cover by tomorrow.

THE BUTTONS

Universally panned in the first edition, the buttons were too easy to accidentally nudge. No more! And it’s not just a matter of making them smaller. The designers have done quite an ingenious thing, that is going to take my old Kindle-1-trained fingers a few pages to adjust to.  The smart thing is where they have placed the hinge-point, if I can call it that. In the Kindle 1, the buttons hinged at the inside of the device, so the outside edge of the button was most sensitive. Good for easy page turning. Also good for accidental and frustrating page turning every time you looked at the d*mned thing the wrong way. The Kindle 2’s buttons are hinged at the outside: the outside edge of the buttons is almost completely unresponsive, and you have to touch closer to the inside of the button, to turn a page. I understand why they tried the original design, but this works much, much better.

SCREEN 
The screen looks marginally narrower but that’s OK, since reading narrow columns is my preference anyway and it’s not too narrow. The text is still fine.

eINK REFRESH 
They said the refresh rate was faster and it is. It is still something you could hate if you had a mind to, but paging through docs will take less time. You can see a grainy version of me turning pages here.

THE TEXT

As someone who has worked in publishing and shared a very small room with an opinionated graphic designer (is there any other kind?), my sensibilities were a bit offended by the spacing and leading in the display on Kindle 1. There seemed to be too much space in between letters and between lines. I’m no expert but there was something just a tiny bit off about the formatting that made it look a little less than book-like. I got over it really quickly and stopped seeing it. I am, however, happy to see that they seem to have changed the formatting for Kindle 2. it definitely looks more book-like.

The text is noticeably sharper than ever, although the background looks slightly darker than before.

WIRELESS 

The wireless is automatically set to ‘on’ when you receive the Kindle and, instead of being a hardware switch, is an option within the software if you want to switch it off.

FIVE-WAY NAVIGATION NUBBIN

Hmm, I liked the scrolly wheel but the five-way nubbin seems to have added functionality. Now you can scroll up to a line and then across the line to a word you want. Previously, to highlight a section you had to do it by whole lines. Now I can higlight more relevant sections or single words. Nice addition.

NEW SHAPE 

I liked the crazy old pointy shape, I’ll be honest. This one is sleeker and colder (with its brushed steel back) but lighter and easier to hold (thanks to the new buttons). Because it is taller, it’s center of gravity is different. I find it a little trickier to use the navigation system (in this case: the nubbin) one-handed, but it’s possible I’ll adjust. And yes, lefties are still going to be able to gripe that the world is right-centric because the nagivation nubbin is on the right.

NEW KEYBOARD 

I’ll be honest, I liked the split keyboard, because it was easier to see what letters I was going for, but the new keyboard is fine. They’ve done away with the “@” key, which I had liked, and maybe I’m a little too attached to my commas, because I really wonder why that’s still hidden under the ’symbol’ menu, but that’s just me. it’s as easy to use as these things ever are, I suspect.

POWER BUTTON 

The power button is now no longer a fixed slider, but one of those ’slide me and I’ll spring back’ kind of buttons. A quick slide puts the Kindle to sleep, or wakes it up. Hold the button to the side for four seconds and the Kindle turns off.

TEXT TO SPEECH 

Once again the publishing industry has done a Shoot-First-Ask-Questions-Later act on this one. (In case you’ve missed it, they’ve started waving lawyers around at the prospect of this thing violating the audio book rights.).

Believe me, they have nothing to fear.

This is a nice feature, but it is read by a robo-voice and there is no way anyone is going to use this for more than a ‘oo, I have to make dinner now but I want to keep reading my dry non-fiction title at the same time’ kind of thing. OK, one day the robo-voice technology might be able to replace talented actors, but we’re a long way from there and I think the Author’s Guild and the lawyers need to chill.

This is a nice feature, kind of fun, kind of silly, kind of useful.

IN SHORT
All my happy faces relate to stuff that Make It Easy To Read, and my frowns are for The Small Stuff. They’ve made it easy to use, and it should fulfill it’s design specs of ‘getting out of the way, and letting you read books’. Like many others, I’d argue this is Kindle 1.2 rather than Kindle 2.0 but I think there are going to be lots of things about it that really grow on me. Watch this space.

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Calibre eBook Management Software

Oo, I’ve been using Mobipocket to convert my ebooks, but I’ve just discovered Calibre and I think I love it.

It is a little program that helps you manage your ebook library, much the way programs like MusicMatch Jukebox (used to) and iTunes (allegedly) help you organize your music.

It converts files to the right format for your reader (with you in control at all times), it has a nice Graphical User Interface (GUI), and it is stripped down, non-bloaty (I’m looking at you, iTunes) and seems to work really well.

Adding Books From My Library | Plugging In Your Reader | Other Thoughts

Create Your Own Kindle eBooks

If you’re lucky enough to have a Kindle (or one of the new Kindle 2s that come out tomorrow), there is no need to go spending good money to put your own content on there.

If you have PDFs, HTML docs, word processor documents that you’d like to carry around on your Kindle, you can either pay 10c a doc to have Amazon convert and email them to your Kindle OR you can use this handy, free method.

STEP 1
Download the free Mobipocket eBook Creator software. Install it and fire it up. (Update 1: Txvoodoo, in the comments, suggests downloading the Publisher version rather than the Home Version. That’s the one I used. It gives you more options, and of course a little more complexity, but it’s still simple to use. Update 2: Just discovered  calibre for ebook conversion and library management. I like it. Read my thoughts on Calibre).

STEP 2

Select the file type of your original document (Word, PDF etc.) from the top right group ["Import File Type"].

Browse to the file on your computer, then click on ‘Import’,

Mobipocket imports the file but you’re not quite done yet.

STEP3

After importing, you should arrive at a screen like this:

Your publication’s title appears in the main pane. In the left sidebar are links to things you can change about the ebook: you can add a cover image, table of contents, and metadata (that is, information that is not printed in the book, but will show up in libraries and on readers, such as publisher, author, publication date, etc). You should modify as much or as little as this as you need. If yours is a document for your own use, and this is your first time through,  just make sure it has the right title and author in the ‘metadata’ settings and move on.

STEP 4

On the same screen as Step 3, click on “Build” in the top tool bar. The program will  give you this screen:

You can choose more or less compression and you can choose to encrypt or password protect your book if you want. First timers/Personal users: just use the default settings and click “build”.

STEP 5

All going well, you should end up at a screen like this.

Make sure “Open folder containing eBook” is selected and click “OK”.

In that folder you’ll find various versions of the file. The one you need for the Kindle is the one with the PRC extension.

Make note of where this folder is (so you can find it again), plug in your Kindle and drag the PRC file from this folder over to the ‘documents’ folder on your Kindle.

NOTES

I’ve found some odd formatting issues occasionally– page breaks not observed, justifications changed — but it’s nothing that bothers me as a casual user. If I was publishing for profit I’d have to figure out the optimal settings, and maybe I will some day. For now, though, I’m just happily converting, dragging and reading.

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Spoiled — A Rant

When I was a kid (back in the dim, dark days of the 1970s) a birthday party was the highlight of the social calendar.

There weren’t very many of them, certainly not one for every child in the class, and I don’t think they started before age 7 or 8, or whatever age parents then thought kids could be trusted to be left without one-to-one supervision.

The girls donned floor-length party gowns (mine, I think, was green and velveteen) and bows in our hair, and the boys wore smart shirts and possibly ties, certainly real trousers and shiny shoes. Then we sat cross-legged on the floor and played Pass the Parcel, or were blindfolded for Pin The Tail on the Donkey, or Blind Man’s Buff. All very Victorian and charming. Then there were little triangular sandwiches made from white bread (crusts off, hoorah!), filled with salmon paste or egg mayonnaise. There might be fizzy drinks and paper straws (straws? It MUST be a special occasion!). A round birthday cake encased in a paper fringe, with the appropriate number of candles on top rounded things out. There was usually jelly and ice cream to eat while the cake was cut, wrapped in a napkin and stuffed into your party bag to take home, where you would whine to be allowed to eat it, be told ‘It’s nearly dinner time!” and when you did eventually get it, you’d spend most of your time sucking the icign out of the soggy napkin. The party bag might even have been attached to a helium filled balloon, if the hosts had gone all-out.

It was heady stuff and only death or German Measles could stop you getting to a Birthday Party.

My eldest is turning six this week. We invited a few of the children from his class over to our house for a party. We don’t have a huge house so it wasn’t the whole class, just his favourite few. I’m a little nervous, but not about the prospect of having a house full of children: no, I’m nervous that they might all be too busy to come.

I managed to shoe-horn A’s party into a weekend in between two other birthday party weekends from his class, but I still wasn’t sure if people would come. So far I’ve only heard from a few people: one kid can’t come because he has a football (American) game. One can’t come because she has a skating lesson. Our favourite family friends might not make it because their son has a basketball playoff match.

Did I mention that these kids are six?

I know people who spend two hours two nights a week sitting by the pool at the Y while their eight year olds trains for the swimming team. I know six year olds who are on three or four sports teams (American football, baseball, basketball, soccer or icehockey). They also go to Karate classes. Then there’s the Cub Scouts and Brownies.

My children go to swimming lessons once a week (if I remember to take them) and the little one has a knock-about ’sport’ class one morning a week when he’s not at pre-school and I think that’s extravagant! We play board games and video games and maybe they watch a little too much TV on Saturday mornings. We probably spend a bit too much time in toy stores. We kick a ball around the garden and try to learn to get along. We read. We make up stories. I’m grateful that I can’t imagine my eldest volunteering to do anything that would take him away from his toys yet, if ever.

And I just can’t believe that we’re wrong: that we’re somehow putting our kids at a disadvantage because they don’t yet know how to dribble and pass and be a “team player”. I don’t believe that having extra-curricular activities to run to every day after school and every weekend does much for a six year old’s health or disposition. I worry about what it does to the family dynamic when the parents have no time for themselves and become slaves to their children’s schedules. I wonder when these children have time to think and to dream and to become curious. I secretly suspect that they don’t. I strongly suspect that this constant stimulation shuts down their brains and breeds incurious adults who need to be busy but never really question anything and swallow whatever the ad-makers put on the mass media brain-suckling-tube. I foresee a hideous, dystopian future — a brave new world, if you will — all caused and created by childhood over-scheduling. (I have also been accused of over-thinking things.)

Or maybe I’m just ticked because I’m scared no-one will turn up for my boy’s party!,

I (Heart) Faces Blog

This is an interesting blog.

It is called I (Heart) Faces and is dedicated to the art of photographing faces.

Each week they host a contest on a particular theme. People post pictures on their own blogs, then submit a link to the I (Heart) Faces website (usually between Monday and Wednesday).

I also like their “Fix It Friday” feature, where photographers show how to take a so-so portrait and make it striking. This is a great way to learn how to fix your own pics.

Check out the site for some really gorgeous faces.

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Triskaidekaphobia

This word is floating around a lot today, because the fear of the number 13 is built into our history, and that is the definition of that lovely word.

I first became aware of this word about 14 years ago. I was living in Somerville MA, and walking through Harvard Yard most days (to eat, to catch the subway, to meet my new husband) but only once did I take advantage of any of the events on that campus. On a whim I went to listen to a reading by a poet named John Hollander. I went because I had read his excellent book “Rhyme’s Reason” while at university. It was the only time I’d really come across any explanation of the structure of poetry (beyond someone once mentioning that Shakespeare’s sonnets mostly had 14 lines, with this kind of rhyme scheme and that kind of rhythm). Hollander’s little book was written in verse, as living breathing, often humorous examples of what he was trying to teach.

I’ve always like poetry but usually the stuff that rhymed and had rhythm, like a song lyric. I had never heard a poet read his words, live. Hollander, who was something big at Yale at the time, stood in the dusty classroom on a sunny day, in front of 20-30 young folk and read,

The Mad Potter.
Now at the turn of the year this coil of clay
Bites its own tail…

It was like nothing I’d experienced before. By the end of the poem I was on the edge of my seat, excited by the language, the slow, precise reading, the words, the ideas, the beautiful way he had crafted them. I was beyond surprised.

He read a few more things and talked about one of his books, called “Thirteen”. It is made up of sonnets of 13 lines each. There area 169 of them (13 x 13), and sonnets 156-168 (thirteen of them) are called “Thirteen”. “Thirteen” begins:

Triskaidekaphobia across the centuries
Kept us seating one more at the table, even when
The extra one was silly or redundant or gross.
Moreover, the new arrangements — the sexes paired off,
The doubled sevens, the mysteries of ten and four –
Masqueraded as reason, hiding always our fear
Of dangerous and pungent oddments behind the bright
and interesting arrangements that terror had us make.
Like grown-ups now, allowing the black cats to amble
Across our shadows in the forenoon without alarm,
We can at least, in a poor time for discourse, invite
Exactly whom we please, whom we need: it will be right
In a new shape, finished beyond the old comparisons.

It goes on to cover other thirteens and other thoughts and is really worth finding and reading. You can find it in Selected Poetry

In the meantime, enjoy your Friday the Thirteenth.

Transcending

This is a bit of a tear-jerker, but in a good way.

A Little Bit Of Politics

When I was young, I puzzled over this expression:

“You have to have money to make money.”

I knew that the expression was supposed to express the irony of inequality in the system. Being young I ignored irony and resignation and simply thought,

“Well, that’s not fair.”

Apparently I was a born socialist, because it seemed to me that if you had extra money that you could put away then you didn’t really need it and that really you ought to share it with someone poor instead.

I know, I know. It is, allegedly, more complicated than that.

But what if I’m standing in the school yard with my friend, and I’m tucking into three delicious cookies?

Sooner or later my friend is bound to say,

“Oi, give me a cookie.”

To which I say,

“I’m sorry, these are my cookies. My parents worked hard to earn the money to buy these cookies. But I tell you what I will do. I will eat them quickly and ask my mother for more. That way, she’ll have to buy more, which will put more money into the hands of the cookie factory’s owner and, seeing that demand is increasing, he will plough that money into expanding the factory. Then your mother can get a second job at the cookie factory thereby making up the shortfall between the paltry wage she earns doing necessary work repairing cars and the astronomical wages my parents earn thanks to the genetic lottery and socio-educational advantages that pushed them towards higher degrees and careers in the banking industry, where they make imaginary money and cream off a lot for themselves. Then we can both bring our cookies to school and eat them together.”

In the first place: huh?
In the second, wouldn’t your teachers simply have walked up behind you, whacked you upside the head and barked,
“Share!”

I was listening to a politician on the radio today who doesn’t want to give money to projects that employ people, in case that should become permanent policy. [pause while my mind boggles]. He thinks that we should instead introduce tax cuts. Because all those unemployed people are suffering under such a terrible tax burden. (Let’s see, 30% of nothing is…um…)

Let’s imagine those school friends all grown up and running the country:

“But my honourable colleague fails to note that without the ability to own astronomical amounts of cookies without the cookie-tax that forces me to give up some of my cookies, we cookie-rich will be unable to stimulate the cookie economy and create jobs for those who wish to buy their own cookies.”

“But the cookie-less are hungry now.”

“Well, allowing me to keep more cookies now will ensure that there are more cookies to go around.”

“But…YOU have all the cookies.”

“Ah yes, but there are more of them.” [satisfied smile]

—

I tell you, the world will be a better place when we implement my plan to populate government entirely with kindergarten teachers, who will be conscripted for a term of no more than four years, to ensure they never get too isolated from the world of the school yard.