Amazon-owned Audible sued by major book publishers over controversial text-to-speech feaure - GeekWire

Panzer was fueling up the Panzermobile when the radio started crackling and squealing. Adjusting the channel, our careful kitty pilot discovered the GeekWire site was causing all the noise. Traveling over to the site, he found a post about Audible's new Captions feature. Panzer has posted about the Captions feature several times over the last few days.

Is Captions worth the hype?

According to the post by Nat Levy, Amazon's Audible is being sued by seven major book publishers. The publishers are suing for copyright infringement. The lawsuit claims Audible's new Captions feature is not part of Audible's licensing agreement with the publishers.

Panzer says, "Hmm ... This little kitty wonders if anybody at Audible did read the license agreement."

Note: This is a short post. Bring a cup of tea for today's reading selection. If you plan to read Panzer's most recent previous post about Captions (which contains links to four other posts), bring two gallons of tea and three dozen muffins.

To read the post tootle over to Audible sued

To read the previous post tootle over to Audible Captions

Amazon launches a TTS Plugin for Wordpress That Turns Blog Posts Into Podcasts - The Digital Reader

Today's trip into the Catosphere took Panzer to The Digital Reader site. There our intrepid kitty traveler found a post about Amazon's new Wordpress plugin.

According to The Digital Reader site owner Nate Hoffelder, Amazon has introduced its new TTS (Text-To-Speech) plugin for Wordpress. Named Polly the plugin allows blog posts to be changed into audio files and then a podcast. Amazon Polly has actually been around since December 2016, but the Wordpress plugin has added features. Polly can now whisper and speaks additional languages the original didn't. There's a link included in the post to the Tech Crunch post announcing the plugin and containing more information about it.

Polly ...  Can you translate Meow?

Panzer says, "This little kitty wants to know if one of the languages Polly speaks is Cat."

Note: This is a medium post. Bring a cup of tea and a muffin for today's reading selection. If you plan to read the Tech Crunch post as well, bring an extra cup of tea and another muffin.

To read the post tootle over to Amazon Wordpress plugin

Amazon Brings Feature For Bllind Readers to Kindle - GalleyCat

Panzer was tootling around in the Catosphere when he stopped in at the GalleyCAT site. There he found an interesting post about Amazon.

The post by Dianna Dilworth is about a recent press release from Amazon. According to the announcement, Amazon has added VoiceView to the Kindle Paperwhite. The text-to-speech program VoiceView will read the ebooks on the Paperwhite to visually impaired Kindle owners. There's a link to the original press release included in the post.

Took them long enough.

Panzer says, "It's about time. It's been on the tablets for a while now."

Note: This is a short post. A cup of tea should be enough for today's reading selection.

To read the post, tootle over to Amazon

Clarissa Draper: The Future of Publishing: Make Your Own Audiobook...

 Like me, have you been wondering about how to go about turning your ebook into an audiobook?

And are you also like me and hesitant about reading your own work to turn it into an audiobook?

Well, we're not alone.


Author Clarissa Draper has been wondering about making audiobooks, too. And just like you and me, she's hesitant about recording them herself. Her post today (and another to follow later) deal with using text-to-speech programs to accomplish the recording aspect.

She has her recommendations for free text-to-speech programs today at Clarissa Draper: The Future of Publishing: Make Your Own Audiobook...:.

She also begins to discuss hiring an agency to do the recording in this post and will continue in Part 2 later.

So, are you ready to do that audiobook?