Amazon reverses its stance on text-to-speech and will allow publishers to choose to flag the function off:

In a surprising about-face, Amazon has decided to give publishers and authors the choice over whether or not to enable the Kindle 2’s text-to-speech function. The feature allows Kindle e-books to be read aloud and has drawn criticism from the Authors Guild, which maintained that the feature was an unauthorized use of audio rights. In a statement issued Friday, Amazon said that while it believes the text-to-speech feature is legal, it will modify the system “so that rightsholders can decide on a title-by-title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for a particular title.”

Another e-reader to hit the market, just in case you weren’t confused enough by the two choices already available—but this one’s for newspapers… Hey, I’d buy that, if it was any good… oh, wait, no I wouldn’t. I’d just continue reading them all online.

Chindigo focuses on providing “bite-sized chunks”, selling books by the chapter… Somehow this reminds me of the retail equivalent of nutritional information on the sides of “diet” products where they tout 1% fat and 2g of sugar! but then you read closer and find out the portion size wouldn’t fill the mouth of a baby possum. (Aw…)

Faber, the Radiohead of literature, is going pay-what-you-want with a new ebook in a nice marketing tie-in with the title… This is so sexily progressive…. Say, Faber. You doin’ anything later? Wanna get a coffee or something?

Wilson’s examination of the value and meaning of liberty will be available to download on 27 April, six weeks before it is published on paper at £14.99, with readers given the freedom to set their own price, or even download it for free.

It’s a strategy Wilson, whose two previous books were published conventionally by Faber as hardbacks, admits is “a gamble”. When he first heard about the “frightening idea of giving the book away”, his reaction was surprise. “I’ve published before,” he explains, “and you have that excitement of a book in physical form, so that’s what you expect”. But after a while “it clicked together so well with what I wanted to do with the book – the campaigning edge – that it made a lot of sense.”

In the book, Wilson argues that the contemporary assault on civil liberties in the UK follows a decline in the importance and status of ideas of liberty in Britain’s national culture, and that it is only through an understanding of history that we can fashion a liberty fit for the 21st century.