Comment by InsideOutSanta

Comment by InsideOutSanta 4 days ago

Kindles used to provide this feature, but publishers and/or the Authors Guild stopped it, because audio rights and text rights are handled differently. In other words, when Amazon sells you a text book, it does not have the right to then also do TTS on that text and let you listen to it.

There's some contemporary discussion of what happened here: https://tidbits.com/2009/03/02/why-the-kindle-2-should-speak...

I think there is still integration with Audible, though. If you buy a book on the Kindle and on Audible, the position will sync, and you can switch between listening and reading without losing your place in the book.

albert_e 4 days ago

Yes the feature is called WhisperSync -- I used it many years ago and it was pretty good.

I tried it while on a treadmill so it allowed me to follow the book with more focus without sacrificing much else.

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thfuran 4 days ago

Isn't whisper sync the current version that relies on owning both the ebook and audiobook?

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hamzakc 4 days ago

I am not sure if this still works, but 2-3 years ago I listened to a kindle book that I bought through my Echo show device. It was pretty good. I listened to it while I was cooking. It even allowed you to carry on where you left off. But I did notice that a few pages were skipped as I had read the book before. I have since packed away my echo show so I can't verify if they have removed this feature or not.

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Brybry 4 days ago

I used that TTS feature semi-regularly on a Kindle 2.

It wasn't a good experience but it was nice to be able to keep 'reading' a book while I was exercising.

It worked for me for over a decade, until I broke the device. I don't know if I never updated the firmware or if the fact I used Calibre to convert books bypassed the feature gate.

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