The Association of American Publishers doesn't like what it is hearing from audiobooks company Audible.

The group, which represents major publishers such as HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster, filed suit in federal court Aug. 23 to stop Audible from offering captions in its app along with the spoken words, according to a statement on its website.

Audible, which is owned by Amazon, described its planned "Audible Captions" feature in July, and released a video promoting it.

But AAP CEO Maria Pallante said Audible only has the right to distribute author's works in spoken format.

"We are extremely disappointed by Audible's deliberate disregard of authors, publishers, and copyright law," she said.

"In what can only be described as an effort to seek commercial advantage from literary works that it did not create and does not own, Audible is willfully pushing a product that is unauthorized, interferes and competes with established markets, and is vulnerable to grammatical and spelling inaccuracies—it is a disservice to everyone affected, including readers," Pallante said.

A hearing on AAP's suit is scheduled next month in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Audible said in a statement to various industry news sites that Captions will help students with reading.

"We are surprised and disappointed by this action and any implication that we have not been speaking and working with publishers about this feature, which has not yet launched," the company said.

"Captions was developed because we, like so many leading educators and parents, want to help kids who are not reading to engage more through listening," Audible said.

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