Current copyrighted novels by established authors do not have close substitutes. But there are other portions of the market:
Public domain novels (like most the classics we read in school) do have substitutes. Text-to-speech could make the difference in this portion of the market.
New authors who are just breaking into the market are not necessarily targeted reads. When looking for something new to read and the choice comes down between unknowns, text-to-speech could easily be a tipping factor.
As to your textbook case: Professor's think about supplemental stuff when making textbook choice. (I know, because I've done it.) If there are two introductory texts that would be fine alternatives, choosing one with more features just makes sense.
I agree the show isn't propaganda. They ran a news piece on the Fox News at 10 immediately following the premier saying that the approach probably doesn't work. I just took it as an attempt to get another police procedural on Fox with a unique twist, like Bones.
By your logic, there is nothing wrong with forced abortions, because an embryo is just a mass of cells that "could potentially become a human with the right signaling factors and growth conditions." It is exactly the same as removing a tumor from a person without consent. That is just silly.
Observable facts inform our morals, but they do not decide them. You cannot derive should from is. Many people believe that because the natural course of embryonic stem cells leads to a human being, they should be considered a human being. If you disagree, you need to tell them where the dividing line between human and not human is. You know any such line is arbitrary. Until we decide on where that line is a society, doing anything within a reasonable range of that line is morally questionable. That does not mean immoral, just questionable. If you want it to be unquestionably moral, prove to a majority of the population why they are clearly not human yet.
Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky