Books

Electronista reports that Random House is has begun to disable the text to speech feature on its electronic books for the Kindle. That means I won't be buying any books from Random House. I have the original Kindle, without the TTS feature, so it doesn't directly impact me, but it is the principle that matters. Random House, you are dead to me. Click here to read the article.

Earlier, I posted about the Authors' Guild protesting the text to speech feature, saying Amazon was robbing them of potential royalties from audiobooks. As a compromise, rather than killing the feature, Amazon decided to give individual publishers control over whether or not the feature would work for their books.

I would love to see some statistics on how many people, after buying a book, go on to buy the audio book. The authors and publishers should just shut up and be happy that Amazon is providing a tool that will increase books sales.

Mysteria is a website that allows the user to enter a search for a Kindle book on Amazon. What? you say. Doesn't Amazon have the same capability on their website? Yes, but what Amazon doesn't yet provide is the capability to reply to you if and when that book does eventually become available in Kindle format.

Writer: Charles Burns Artist: Charles Burns Publisher: Pantheon Price: $18.95

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A few months ago I posted about the CPSIA (The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act) and concerns that it could result in untested books being removed from libraries and destroyed. The law was written to address the concerns of lead contamination in products like toys. It was not intended to include books, but is written in such a way that does include books.

The American Library Association (ALA) is encouraging people to ask their representative to Cosponsor H.R. 1692 - a bill that would clearly exempt books from the CPSIA. To learn more, click here.

About a week before Christmas I watched Charlie Rose interview Malcolm Gladwell about this book. So, when I got my Amazon Kindle, for Christmas, this was one of the first books I purchased. The author asks the question, How do people become extremely successful at what they do? His answer is that it is more nurture than nature. He writes that "The successful are those who have been given opportunities and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them."

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