[nabs-l] Dealing With the Author's Guild?

Kaiti Shelton crazy4clarinet104 at gmail.com
Mon Jan 7 05:38:04 UTC 2013


Hi Brandon,

I see what Kirt is saying and odds are the bookworm trait is totally
separate from vision vs no vision, but an argument you could try would
be to bring up how many people use services such as Bookshare, Reading
Ally, and even Web Braille for accessible books.  Every one of those
people is a consumer that the Amazon company is missing out on simply
because they don't have TTS, which is really a dumb reason to exclude
a good-sized chunk of people like that.  I guess Amazon is such a big
company that they may not care about the business they are not getting
since they already get so much, but it's an argument that might fit,
and if it will get us one more option for reading then why not try it?

That would be an interesting study though.  Through high school I was
the same way, although since I've started college I've been pretty
much all course-reading and very little fun reading, which is really
sad considering how much I used to read on a yearly basis.

On 1/6/13, Kirt <kirt.crazydude at gmail.com> wrote:
> Brandon,
> I know plenty of blind people who are lucky to read five books a year.
> Z Conversely, I know plenty of sighted people who read just about as much,
> or more, then you do. I don't think blind people, on average, read more than
> the average person who can see. If anything, I would say that, because a lot
> of my blind acquaintances don't know braille very well, or at all, they
> probably read a below-average amount of books per month, or year, or
> whatever. So, by my reckoning, you are going to have a very hard time
> convincing the authors Guild that blind people are, by nature, these avid
> readers who Reedway more than their sighted friends. Even if, by some
> miracle of statistics, you were able to find what you were looking for… It
> wouldn't be enough to convince them. Unfortunately, I think that history has
> shown us this will only resolve itself in the courts. But, for what it's
> worth, I hope I'm wrong.
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jan 6, 2013, at 3:16 PM, "Brandon Keith Biggs"
> <brandonkeithbiggs at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>> I've been reading up on why the Kindle device has not dived completely
>> into tts and I'm wondering if anyone has ever told the authors' guild how
>> many books they read a week?
>> I've talked to many of my friends and by far, those who are blind read
>> more than those who are sighted.
>> Just for kicks, how many books does everyone on here read each month? I
>> read at least 12 books a month, and I tend to stay away from the 350-400
>> pagers as they don't develop as well as the 900-1200 page books in my
>> opinion. I read about 4 1000 page books a week and that is my lowest
>> number.
>> I'm a full-time music student and don't even spend time devoted to
>> reading. If I was a literature or librarian student, I'm sure my reading
>> would be quite more. I wouldn't consider myself an avid reader except when
>> looking at this website:
>> http://library.blogs.delaware.gov/2012/08/05/q-how-many-books-does-the-average-american-read-a-year/
>>
>> I see that 15 books is how many books the average sighted person reads a
>> year!
>> This must make me some kind of excessive book nerd or something with 144
>> books a year.
>> I know if Kindle became as good as one of the Braille Plusses or something
>> of that nature, I would gladly choose to pay for my books through that
>> rather than going on bookshare. (Although my book reading would probably
>> go down).
>> I am perfectly happy with Bookshare, although I don't really like it when
>> there is book 1, book 2, book 4 and book 5 in the series only. That means
>> I have to go onto Kindle, get the book, convert it to HTML and transfer it
>> onto my unit before I can get book 3, rather than the 1 click thing I have
>> with Bookshare.
>> This actually makes me wonder if pursuing Kindle is worth it? I really
>> like paying $50 a year for bookshare LOL... I am totally out of the loop
>> when it comes to new releases, but there are so many books, I am never
>> nearly out of books.
>> But if the author's guild was told how many books a blind person reads vs
>> a sighted person thanks to TTS, would it make a difference?
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Brandon Keith Biggs
>>
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-- 
Kaiti




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