Grasping for the Wind

Peter V. Brett responds to negative review of The Warded Man

Dec 24th, 2009
by John Ottinger III.

If you have been reading this blog for the past month or so, you may remember my long essay where I opined on the subject of authors responding to book reviews.

Well, Peter V. Brett author of the The Warded Man, and someone whom I respect a great deal as a writer and friendly author (one who responds often to his fans – this is a subject for another essay), has had to respond to a negative review he received on Amazon, which has sparked quite a bit of conversation.

The reviewer, who goes by the pseudonym “BookReviewer”, stated in his review of the Kindle version:

[The Warded Man] is a fine fantasy.

However, the publisher disabled text to speech. I will not buy such books, but failed to notice that the publisher had disabled the function. So congratulations, Del Rey – you got me and my money.

Mr. Brett, I am sorry to give your book a negative review, but perhaps you could put some pressure on the publisher yourself to allow your readers the occasional convenience of text-to-speech as many of your competitors do

To which Brett responded: (I have picked out the relevant bits, there is more commentary here.)

When a publisher buys a book, they generally buy print rights only, and the audio/film/theatrical rights are retained by the author. These rights, audio in particular, are an industry in themselves, and many authors, myself included, make additional income by licensing these rights. This is not a frivolous thing. Writing is not a particularly lucrative business, and that income can be vital to an author’s ability to make ends meet.

When Amazon added the text-to-speech feature to the Kindle, they did so without acquiring the legal right to present those books in audio format, something that in most cases the publisher does not have the right to grant in any event, and which the author may already have sold elsewhere. The author is not compensated in any way for the audio representation of their work.

I’m not in any way suggesting that this wonderful technology be repressed, only that the author be compensated in a real way for this new usage of their copywritten material, which is often the result of hundreds or even thousands of hours of hard work.

I’d like to comment on two things in this debate.

One, I find this to be a particularly fine example of an author responding to a misconception on the part of a reader. The reviewer mistakenly believed that Del Rey disabled the text to speech feature when in fact it was a carefully calculated move on the part of Del Rey. Del Rey was protecting its author and so rather than being vilified, ought to be applauded for protecting an author’s rights.

Second, I want to say I agree with Brett’s comment about Amazon’s erroneous decision to supersede an author’s rights to her/his work. In Brett’s case this is very important, because he only has two books in print (The Warded Man and a collection of short stories from Subterranean Press) with a third The Desert Spear to be released in a couple of months. All of his income is derived from these few works, as he left a paying job to write full-time. He has family to support on this income, and he should be given every opportunity to earn income from the licensing of his works.

If he is unable to do so, then a fine voice in epic fantasy could be lost for no other reason than a simple lack of funds – a stupid reason. After all, it took Brett 10 YEARS to write The Warded Man, one of the finest epic fantasies ever – partly because he was working full-time – and I would hate to have to wait ten years for each sequel to come out. He’d never finish, and we already have enough of that going around.

I’d like to hear your thoughts.

1. Is Amazon’s text to speech a violation of the author’s rights?

2. What is your opinion of Brett’s response? Should he have responded at all? When should an author respond to a misconception and when should s/he let it go with no comment?

Related posts:

  1. Read a 63 page extract of The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett
  2. Book Review: The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett
  3. Suvudu’s Author Chat with Peter V. Brett and Robert V. S. Redick
  4. Some Useful Real Estate Calculations
  5. Book Review: The Druids by Peter Berresford Ellis

Posted in: Essays.
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  • Josh
    I think copyright law and DRM has gotten out of control. Would Brett consider it a copyright violation if the owner of the book read it out loud to himself or a blind friend? That is what this robotic voice reading is, a legitimate use of the book that someone paid for. As an author Brett wants to make money off his work, so it is logical for him in that context to try to sell the same book to the same people as many times as possible. So while Brett's stand is logical and, for now, legal, it might do him more harm than good if there are many like the original reviewer who will not accept DRM-riddled products. The bad thing is that so called electronic book have set the stage for the sellers of books to make book buyers "licensees" instead of "owners".

    Doctorow has some things to say on the use of DRM to limit the rights of readers http://thevarsity.ca/articles/23855
  • Hi John,

    Thanks for bringing this up. I listen to many audiobooks each year (I've got the platinum Audible subscription) and just received a Kindle for Christmas. I was impressed with its TTS feature and I agree with Mr. Brett on all accounts -- as things stand now, it does seem to be a violation of his rights and I think the TTS technology will get better and better, perhaps making this a big issue.

    I usually think it's "low" for an author to respond to negative reviews, but if I'd have done the same thing in this situation. Readers need to be educated about this issue.

    Kat
  • John,

    First, solid issue to cover and great post.

    1. I would say amazon's TTS is a violation of the author's rights if they've not contracted, and paid, for those rights.

    2. In the vast majority of cases, nothing good can come of the author responding to a negative review. In fact, I was reading a rather funny, if heavily sarcastic, post about this issue over on author S.A. Swann's site. In this case, however, Brett was right on and kudos for standing up for himself regardless of what the 'conventional wisdom' is on authorial response to review.

    PW
  • Peter,

    That still doesn't change the fact that it is stupid to reduce your sales and future earnings now by disabling something that is worth little, because of what might happen in 10 years.

    In 10 years we may all have quantum computing tools that mean that no corporation anywhere can disable any feature of any software, ever. Which means that what you are advocating now would be completely pointless.

    It is rather amusing that the media, who have proved themselves to be one of the most technologically challenged industries there is--keep providing PR foot-in-mouth disease examples because of their prognostications about future technologies. That is, they are about the least qualified people to make predictions, here.
  • >>>Is Amazon’s text to speech a violation of the author’s rights?

    No. As others have pointed out, it's a tech feature and cannot be compared to a human performance.
  • I won't comment on the legality of what Amazon did since I've no knowledge of the subject. However, regarding this statement:

    "All of his income is derived from these few works, as he left a paying job to write full-time. He has family to support on this income, and he should be given every opportunity to earn income from the licensing of his works."

    I think you're ignoring a very important fact: the reviewer wants to buy ebooks only if they have the text-to-speech option. And he's not alone in this. I'm only interested in ebooks that I can use the text-to-speech option with. I'll never buy an ebook that I can't listen to using text-to-speech---that's the only feature about ebooks, for me, that makes then worth choosing over a paper book.

    I suspect that Amazon's action in including text-to-speech, will bring money to the author that he wouldn't otherwise get rather than preventing sales a struggling author needs.
  • Thanks for calling some attention to this. I think it's an important issue, and while both sides of the argument have strong and valid points, I think only very few people know the whole story.

    The issue as I see it is not one of today, but looking toward tomorrow. The text-to-speech gimmick is just that at the moment, but if Amazon and other e-book providers are allowed to circumvent an author's copyright and present their books in audio without permission now, what will happen 5 or 10 years from now when the technology is much better, and actually IS competitive with professionally produced audio books?

    People say that text-to-speech will never reach that level, but they also said things like google translate would never work. If you look at where technology was 10 years ago and where it is now, I don't see how anyone can doubt that text to speech will soon be an extremely valuable feature.

    The proper rights need to be established NOW, so that these technologies don't allow the author to get cut out of the profits of their own work. I hate as much as anyone that this corporate arm-wrestling inconveniences consumers, but I don't think it's fair to expect authors to just give up their legal rights to their own intellectual property without a fuss.

    That said, I'm just an observer in all this, like everyone else, and am excited to see how it all shakes out. eBooks are the future, and the future is bright.
  • From a book reviews standpoint, the underlying issue here is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to review a book without some consideration for the medium in which it's presented. I mostly "read" and review audiobooks, and run into this issue all the time. I try to review audiobooks on two distinct layers: the actual "text" itself, and the audio quality, narrator's performance, etc.

    I often see reviewers of audiobooks and other forms of "new" media conflating these layers, and I think that's the case here. Amazon, Audible, and other sites that sell books or otherwise solicit user reviews need to implement some sort of system for allowing the reviewer to rate, and possibly even review, the content and presentation separately.

    I realize that in a lot of cases these lines can become blurred. It just saddens me that a great book like Brett's receives lower marks for something that's a publishing rights issue rather than a content issue.
  • SMD
    "1. Is Amazon’s text to speech a violation of the author’s rights?"

    Yes and no.

    For one, it's not illegal to make software that turns text into speech. It's not illegal to own such software either. With that in mind, the inclusion of text-to-speech on the Kindle is only putting two and two together, taking away the step someone might have to do if they wanted to do this.

    Second, audiobooks are prohibitively expensive. I don't buy them because they're not worth the money for me. A lot of these things are twice the cost of a hardcover, and often it's not for a great production, but just for an adequate production. If every audiobook included a full cast of actors (or at least a damned good voice actor) w/ music and what not, then yeah, it might be worth $40. But most aren't.

    Third, the text-to-speech software on the Kindle isn't remotely the same quality that a mediocre audiobook provides. It's a robotic voice. People who want this feature probably have good reasons for wanting to use the software. Maybe they don't have good eyesight, for example, but are not blind (or maybe they are blind). I understand why someone with a vision deficiency would want this software: it makes it possible for every book to be read to them, so they don't have to wait for the audiobook, and they don't have to pay absurd amounts of money just to be able to read what everyone else is reading (again, audiobooks are not cheap and, as Cory Doctorow says, a writer's worst enemy is obscurity).

    At the same time, I understand the arguments about audio rights and the like. So, on the one hand it makes sense from a rights standpoint, but it also makes sense from a "it doesn't really matter" standpoint. Personally, I would never use the feature. The only reason I listen to audiobooks is because I'm too busy doing something else to be able to read...so having someone read to me is convenient. But I also don't like robot voices...

    "2. What is your opinion of Brett’s response? Should he have responded at all? When should an author respond to a misconception and when should s/he let it go with no comment?"

    In this case, absolutely. He didn't attack the reviewer. In fact, it seemed like he understood where the reviewer was coming from. Brett happens to know more about the inner workings that most of his readers, and so when he gets a comment like that and wants to explain why things are the way they are, things that have nothing whatsoever to do with his actual writing (he's not talking about his book, but the production of it), all he's doing is providing information. He is arguing against the position, but only because it's a negative review for something that really is stupid anyway (you're going to ding the writer for something the publisher did, well that's cute).

    That said, I do agree with Brett that maybe it should cost another $1 or something in order to get a Kindle eBook with the text-to-speech turned on. Maybe publishers should write something else into their contracts for that so that authors get a good chunk of the money, or something. I don't know.

    I think it's more important to ask when a reviewer shouldn't respond. The answer is: most of the time. Maybe that will be a blog post from me in the near future...
  • If they want to see what TTS is worth, then try selling a computer generated voice version of the book, and see what people will pay. This has not been done for any books I am aware of. Presumably if they thought these rights were worth anything much, they would do so. Or, put up or shut up, to express it bluntly. Any agents out there tried to sell TTS rights? That would be fun to know. :) Brett says 'many authors have done this'. My opinion of what people would think such book versions would be worth would be from zero to very little for most people. Some would find them useful - sight impaired etc., others if it was cheap enough, or actually like Microsoft Mike, that sort of thing.

    Therefore, it is yet another case of publishers reducing sales of books for no reason. And, of course, in this case people have the free option for downloading these, which you can TTS however you like.

    As for the unrelated quality question: I think he has written some twee stuff that will quickly be forgotten, so on that point of view, don't care if he never writes another word. (Not read any short stories, though, maybe some of those are good, and he is more versatile than just a run of the mill yet another purveyor of trilogies.)

    Can he make a career out of it? Quite possibly, as writers of this sort of thing do, but would not be the way I'd bet.

    Parroting chunks of the party line I don't think is going to win you too many supporters - it will lose you some, though, speaking of careers.

    Oh, and the Australian Copyright Act explicitly allows format shifting of text material , therefore what he says when applied to us is wrong, when talking about TTS. So, attempting to remove a fair dealing right from a consumer. This makes the material worth less, of course. Again, reduced sales, reduced fanbase - all bad for those with professional aspirations.

    I think Amazon lets you return books, in this case the reviewer should do so, has a good reason.
  • 1. Is Amazon’s text to speech a violation of the author’s rights?

    This is the hard question. I think Amazon's text-to-speech feature is just that, a feature. It is by no means a performance that can be compared to Jim Dale or Todd McLaren reading the same book. And I think that's the spirit behind what authors, publishers, and readers/listeners react to when they discuss audio versions and formats.

    In other words, I think the text-to-speech feature should be a part of the contract between author and publisher when it comes to the written word. The audio performance would be a separate contract since it is a performance, not a computer reading words. Should the author get extra money for the text-to-speech? Sure, why not. Authors don't make much money, so a few extra dollars would help. Should they make even more money for an audio book performance? Absolutely. Should there be some sort of scale or clearly defined levels of performance? I think that would be great. The monotone-computer-voice at the bottom, the London-accent-not-so-computerized-voice in the middle, and Todd McLaren or some other real performer at the top.

    Will this happen? Maybe. But I think some heavy-hitting authors will need to stand up to (or with) the publishers and plan these things out. Technology grows exponentially, so we know it will need to be adjusted down the road. But ignoring the problem won't make it go away.

    2. What is your opinion of Brett’s response? Should he have responded at all? When should an author respond to a misconception and when should s/he let it go with no comment?

    This is the easy question. I think Brett's response was fair, well thought out, and actually very polite. I'm sure other authors would have taken a less-than-nice attitude about things and flamed the reviewer. So Brett's polite explanation of the situation was actually a very nice thing for him to do.
  • jasonsanford
    @johnottinger While it is usually not appropriate for authors to respond to negative reviews, in this case it was justified and done well.
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