—Authors Guild and audio rights: Roy Blount, Jr., president of the Authors Guild, got some prime real estate in the New York Times (NYSE: NYT), the best-selling Kindle newspaper, to explain why authors oppose Text-to-Speech. The experimental feature allows users to switch on an automated voice that reads text out loud—and Amazon isn’t paying for audio rights. Blount admits software already exists that can do that but argues that this is different: “Kindle 2 is being sold specifically as a new, improved, multimedia version of books — every title is an e-book and an audio book rolled into one. And whereas e-books have yet to win mainstream enthusiasm, audio books are a billion-dollar market, and growing. Audio rights are not generally packaged with e-book rights. They are more valuable than e-book rights. Income from audio books helps not inconsiderably to keep authors, and publishers, afloat.” What the Guild wants: “a right to a fair share of the value that audio adds to Kindle 2’s version of books.” What the Guild will get? A nice piece of real estate in the Times. Maybe Oprah will throw in a Kindle coupon.

—Closed environment: Amazon’s reliance on a DRM-centric frustrates advocates of open e-book standards. While a number of formats can be read on the KIndle, books sold by Amazon are in a proprietary format (.azw). Wired picks up on the real debate: “The issue isn’t about DRM protections on the books themselves, but on Amazon’s decision to create—and now perpetuate—a non-portable format that a) denies readers the ability to read e-books they buy from the company on another device and b) books they might buy from an e-books competitor on the Kindle.” Sharing is limited to six Kindles registered to the same account. Amazon says the choice is up to publishers.

Photo Credit: Joe Shlabotnik