Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary

Authors’ Guild is peeved about Kindle’s Text to Speech function and the Federation of the Blind is pushing back.
“The National Federation of the Blind supports all technologies that allow blind people to have better access to the printed word, including the ability of devices like the Kindle 2 to read commercial e-books aloud using text-to-speech [...]

AuthorsGuild , an organization designed to promote the best interests of authors, are upset because the text to speech function offered by the Kindle 2.0 may infringe on the author’s derivative right to audio performances. “They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. “That’s [...]

Audio books will no longer be sold on cassette tapes at Hachette due to poor demand. Cassette player sales have dwindled dramatically with sales dropping from 18 million in 1994 to 480,000 in 2007. Frankly, it surprises me more that anyone is still buying a new portable cassette player.
Cassette audio books accounted [...]

Audio book sales were down by 5.7% in February according to the AAP but up overall by 5.6%. Audible is trying to increase its market by reaching out to kids. According to an AP article, 1/3 of all youth have an ipod or some other mp3 player. The goal is to reach [...]

One step forward and two steps back can describe Penguin’s path toward digital media. Last month, eMusic launched a DRM free audiobook program. Penguin Audio was participating to the tune of 150 titles. This month, its withdrawn from the program due to “concerns about digital piracy.” Penguin doesn’t state that there [...]

It seems like every day we get more and more announcements of companies selling digital content without software locks on it. Last week, eMusic announced its intention of selling its audiobooks without DRM and now Simply Audiobooks, the second largest online retailer of digital audiobooks (behind Audible) will be offering DRM free audiobooks with [...]

eMusic is the world’s largest retailer of indie music and the second largest digital music provider after iTunes. Starting today, September 18, eMusic will offer audiobooks in an mp3 format without DRM. The collection will include Blackstone Audio, Hachette, Naxos Audiobooks, Penguin and Random House. The costs are $9.99 for one book [...]