Christopher Buckley, the novelist, wrote a 15,000-word story about two young sailors. The Atlantic Magazine in the past would have couldn’t have run it because of the length; besides, the Atlantic no longer even publishes monthly fiction on paper. And yet the story was too short for a book.
Now, however, thanks to the Atlantic’s deal with Amazon, readers will be able to download short works by Buckley and other well-own writers. Price is $3.99 a story, and the downloads will be available starting Monday. The Atlantic will offer two stories a month this way.
Sounds good, except for my normal reservations about eBabel. What about, say, people with Sony Readers? If this is a K exclusive, they’re SOL.
In fact, yes, the New York Times uses the phrase “exclusively available on the Kindle.” Normally shorts are available in PDF, HTML and, via e-mail, TXT. But the NYT piece says: “Although the authors may at some point obtain the rights to republish the stories as part of a collection or in another magazine, the stories cannot appear in any other e-reader format.” Ugly stuff. I hope that the Atlantic reconsiders. Shame on both it and Amazon if the current arrangements arrange. Do we really want to balkanize the short story market? Or standardize on one company’s technology? If the Authors Guild really cares about its members, maybe it should worry less about text to speech and more about this.
wow, chris b. looks just like his dad, amazing!
I don’t see this as something to get terribly upset about. If the stories were published in the magazine itself, they couldn’t be republished in another magazine anyway. If the e-stories themselves aren’t protected by DRM, they can be fairly readily converted to another format by the reader. And the decision about DRM is, as I understand it, made by the publisher rather than Amazon. The positive aspect of all this is the creation of a new market for short fiction.
With respect to Amazon, I still believe they’ll eventually realize they’re primarily in the book business rather than the hardware business and make their ebooks available in any format the consumer desires.
Hi David, I saw your post about Jim Mackrell and emailed him this:
Hi Jim,
I saw your comment on Teleread about how you and your wife wish that your Kindle had Text-to-Speech enabled. Am so sorry to hear about both of your cancers and wish you both a speedy recovery and better quality of life.
Instead of waiting for Amazon to implement Text-to-Speech, do it yourself!
I use TextAloud, a fantastic program that lets you convert any text on your computer into speech. Now my computer can READ ALOUD all my ebooks, websites, and documents (like Word and PDF) to me! I can turn any of my ebooks into MP3 audiobooks. The exception to this is DRM-protected ebooks, but I have figured out a way around that. You need to strip their DRM protection first.
Get TextAloud here:
http://www.nextup.com/
TextAloud also can convert text into MP3 files that you can put onto an iPod or MP3 player, so you can listen to books/documents in your bed/car/gym/train!
Since basic computer voices are horribly robotic, I installed 3 AT&T Natural Voices, which take up about 500 MB each, but give you more naturally sounding voices.
The best AT&T voices are Mike, Crystal, and Audrey (all 16 kHz). The best basic voice is Anna. Another good voice is Emily (by ScanSoft). Different companies sell voices that read aloud in up to 21 languages (Chinese, French, Spanish, German, etc)! Test the AT&T voices yourself on this “text-to-speech” demo site:
http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php
Please tell your ebook friends about TextAloud! No need to wait for the Text-to-Speech feature on the Kindle. Convert your ebooks on your PC and put them on an MP3 player.
I hope this helps!
Raymond
This is something to get upset about. Kindle is destroying bookstores and local reading cultures. Jeff Bezos and Amazon should not have a database of what every customer is reading. Why are respected authors encouraging all that? If Bezos has his way he will control almost all the distribution and advertising of books and formerly printed media. It’s not in his/Amazon’s best interest to promote lesser-known authors who once sold their books thanks to recommendations from independent booksellers. Independent booksellers won’t exist and we’ll all be asked to read crap from Sarah Palin, Dan Brown, and whoever is writing the Twilight series. Buckley, Edna O’Brien, and Curtis Sittenfeld are being thoughtless and naive if they think putting their stories on Kindle is a good idea. O’Brien’s comments in the New York Times make her look like a complete idiot. Does she even think or does she just do whatever is fashionable?
I hope they know that those like me who will not buy a Kindle because I don’t want Big Brother Bezos tracking my every reading purchase certainly will not read their stories. I may just boycott whatever they write in whatever medium it is published.
Let me get this straight. No one else would publish these stories, so Amazon does, and the writers make some money they otherwise couldn’t. And for that you criticize them. Under your philosophy, the record companies never would have signed any acts and no-one would have music on records/CD’s. Ridiculous!!
Why aren’t we celebrating more e-content instead of continuously harping on DRM? Guess what…when the Atlantic or any other magazine contracted for a piece, other magazines weren’t allowed to publish it in their magazines. There has been exclusivity for a very, very long time.
I love this blog, and it would be wonderful if all content was available on all readers, but let’s celebrate how far we have come since Amazon came out with their reader (and I go back to the Rocket eBook). This is a great example of stories that we wouldn’t have had access to now becoming available. It’s kind of like your cable company….they don’t all carry the same channels–there are some differences. Let the consumer pick the medium (ereader) that suits them best.
This DRM thing will eventually fix itself. How about we get on the publishers instead of Sony, Amazon, etc if we want this fixed? That’s where this is coming from.
It’s funny, (and perhaps my perspective is incorrect), but this blog isn’t a big fan of Amazon, but no company has done more for e-reading (and probably for teleread), than Amazon.
Thanks for your thoughts, Mac. We’re VERY big fans of the BETTER side of Amazon. I own a Kindle 2 and love the text to speech, just the ticket for enjoying books while exercising.
BUT there is a Bad Amazon as well a Good Amazon.
The Bad Amazon is the one that doesn’t let consumers own books for real, since their access to books will depend on whether Amazon thinks they’re within the TOS. This is one pushy company. I can remember when it “evicted” Adobe-format books after people had trustingly thought their purchases were safe in the virtual “lockers.”
Like you I’ll celebrate the expansion of good content, period, not just good content in E, since the Atlantic was essentially out of the short story business. But let’s not let either company off the hook so easily.
I won’t bother to recite all the problems with proprietary DRM and proprietary formats; I’ll just remind you that if uppity people on the Net don’t speak up, then Amazon will just keep up its pushy tactics and will keep on inflicting its ways on the rest of us.
Yesterday I spent an hour or so writing an email and talking on the phone with Amazon, TRYING to get the company to take down the DRmed edition of The Solomon Scandals. Neither my little publisher nor I wanted it up there.
Perhaps if Amazon and the other biggies had more competition, then consumers, writers and small publishers wouldn’t be treated this way. But of course our political system is stacked in favor of the Amazons, as shown by the fact that the FTC is apparently too busy worrying about book reviews in blogs (not powerful newspapers) to deal effectively with DRM and eBabel and their costs to consumers.
Again, big thanks for the feedback, and keep reading—we may well agree on other issues.
Thanks,
David
I met Edna O’Brien, a few years ago, at a lecture series at Cornell. She is smart, but she is 78 years old, and not that interested in technology in general. I wonder how she would respond if someone explained David Rothman’s ideas (about this issue) to her. I have a feeling that she would agree very strongly with David.
Katie B.: instead of (or, in addition to) boycotting O’Brien, write a letter to her and explain the situation. I will join you in this project, if you like.
Amazon is no longer the only 900-pound gorilla in the epublishing jungle. (They may be the biggest primate, but they are now not the only one!) The ebook ecosystem has changed for the better in the last 12 months, with more alternatives, more diversity, more devices, and more EPUB.
Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks
Richard: Like you, I welcome more opportunities for writers, but surely Amazon can create them in a more consumer-friendly way. Thanks as usual. I just happen to disagree strongly in this case. David
Thanks David,
As usual, a thoughtful response that reminds me why I read your blog every day.
@Katie — not to defend Amazon here, but everyone tracks what you buy. Almost every major corporation tracks your purchases either through an account with the company (ie target card) or through your credit card. The only way to avoid such database tracking is to use cash or only buy things from mom&pop shops.