He says:Īn audio book, read by someone who's good at it, is an audio book, an experience that's different to, sometimes complementary to, the words on the page. But the voices of Kindle 2 are quite listenable.īut 'quite listenable' is not the same as a real audiobook, as author Neil Gaiman - 'someone who loves audiobooks, records his own audiobooks, makes a not-insignificant portion of his income from audiobooks and has even won awards for bloody audiobooks' - has pointed out. You may be thinking that no automated read-aloud function can compete with the dulcet resonance of Jim Dale reading 'Harry Potter' or of authors, ahem, reading themselves. Income from audio books helps not inconsiderably to keep authors, and publishers, afloat. They are more valuable than e-book rights. Audio rights are not generally packaged with e-book rights. And whereas e-books have yet to win mainstream enthusiasm, audio books are a billion-dollar market, and growing. But 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. True, you can already get software that will read aloud whatever is on your computer.

Kindle read aloud