Amazon’s newly released Kindle 2 eBook reading device has been under fire during the past few days. The Authors Guild voiced out their complaints that the device could pose a threat to the audiobook market because of its text-to-speech feature to read books to you out loud.

Amazon has raised its white flag and will leave the decisions entirely to the publishers, as to whether or not they want to include text-to-speech with their title offerings.

In my opinion, the current technology or algorithms used Amazon’s Kindle 2 does not really pose a threat to the audiobook industry since the text-to-speech feature is quite monotonous. Listening to the clip below already gave me a slight headache.

More information elsewhere:

• Authors Guild, Roy Blount Jr. still fighting against robo-speech (CrunchGear)
• Authors Guild successfully kills Kindle 2 text-to-speech feature, it’s now optional for publishers (CrunchGear)
• Amazon Gives Back Audio Rights (Literary License)
• Amazon Backs Off Text-to-Speech Feature in Kindle (New York Times)
• Amazon.com Caves In On Kindle 2’s Read-to-Me Feature (Tech-Ex)