I really enjoy audiobooks because I don’t have as much time to read as I would like, and it is a good way to make the drive to work more enjoyable and educational rather than listening to idiotic radio chatter.
However, I have purchased about 20, and I am puzzled as to why not one single audiobook has ever come with a booklet and table of contents or a track listing. It would be nice to have if I need to remove the CD from the player for whatever reason, and I lose my place. I can’t stick a book mark in it, so it would be helpful. I feel kinda ripped off.
Also, most of the audiobooks I purchase are historical biographies. My last two were American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, and I am currently listening to Dolly Madison: A Perfect Union. Could this be why? Do novels and fiction come with more features?
Is this lack of features only found in certain audiobooks, or is it only the ones I happen to buy? Is anyone else annoyed by it? I mean, really, I pay more for the audiobook than a soft bound copy, and as much as a hard back, so the least they could do is give me damn table of contents.
Yes, this would be nice to have, and I do wish they would provide it. Some audiobooks-on-CD have track listings of a sort printed on the discs themselves, but many do not.
This is one advantage that cassettes have over CDs. Or portable mp3 players that allow you to set a bookmark.
I don’t think so, although collections of short pieces (stories, essays, etc.) are more likely to indicate which piece is on which disc. And it may vary by publisher.
I guess I’m not following, every book on CD I have listened to, has markers on them. You pop in the CD and it says “Track 14” for example. They are usually tracks every 3 to 10 minutes on a CD depending on the maker of the CD.
So if I remove the CD I look and I can physically see it’s says CD #5 and then I look at the track #. So if I was half way through the 5th CD, I would look and it’d say track 5, I’d remember that or right it down. OK not as easy as a book mark in a physical book but it doesn’t seem too hard.
If you want just rip the CD to mp4 (not mp3 but mp4) and instead of the .aac or .m4a use the .m4b file extension and iPod will allow you to bookmark wherever you leave off.
Many audiobooks (like Blackstone) have the features Markxxx notes. In addition, many audiobooks I have come with chapter listings. Admittedly, not all. And not all of them come with those convenient breaks. Some of the audiobook collections I have only have breaks at the end of individual stories.
The one I’m ploughing through at the moment is a short story collection on 24 cds. (Songs of the Dying Earth, the Jack Vance homage collection)
Every cd is 99 tracks, rarely lasting much more than a minute, and with no thought as to fitting the tracks to the chapters or anything. And with intros and afterwards (and just being plain wrong, I think) there’s no way, without playing it first, to cue up the start of a story. You might be able to start at the intro, but there’s no guarantee that it starts at the beginning of a track!
I just listened to one where literally the last minute of the story was on the next cd. A bit of forethought and juggling the story order might have improved the listening experience.
And my software doesn’t take kindly to my trying to upload 24 x 99 untitled tracks, either!
And on a tangent, when I am reviewing an audiobook, it does not come with a press release, so I do not know how to spell the characters’ names, and do not have needed information about the author, among other things. Print books include this; why don’t audiobooks?
Glad to see I am not the only one who feels like something is missing with the packaging and format of audiobooks.
As much as I love the convienence of listening in my car, and I will continue to buy them, I just like real books better. I like to write in my books and make notations in the margins, I dog-ear them, stick papers in them, and basically love my favorites to the point of being tattered. I’ll never be a Kindle person.
Thudlow - yes, I see your point about ripping it to an mp3, but then again, why should I have to do that? I already paid 50 bucks for the thing. I want it to be more user-friendly as it is.
Markxxx - None of the ones I have say “Track 8” or whatever. They just go from one track to another. And yeah, I have taken to carrying a pencil in the car and writing on the flap of the box what track it was on when I stopped it.
Meurglys - Looks like we are on the same page…enjoy the things, but there is certainly room for improvement.
Sigmagirl - Yes! I agree! You have to do extra research to find those things, and they should come with the product, IMO.
Well, nothing replaces the real thing, I guess. At least when you buy a book you can thumb through it at the store before you purchase it and read the jacket.
[hijack] It seems that a lot of DVD players now will remember where you were on a DVD if you pop it out, put in another, then put the original back in. Mine does it, but I haven’t tested how far that goes. (Maybe I’ll try 3 DVD’s and see if it remembers 1 or all.) I wonder why CD players couldn’t have this feature?
FWIW, if I put in a data CD full of MP3’s in my DVD player it won’t remember where I left off on it. Perhaps I should try this with an actual music CD.
In the interest of science (and so I’m not contributing nothing to this thread), I did some experiments:
I put in my DVD player: DVD 1, music CD1, DVD1 (remembered), music CD1 (did not remember), DVD2 (that I think I had watched last. Remembered), DVD3 (started at beginning), DVD1 (remembered), DVD2 (remembered), DVD3 (remembered).
OK, I’m not going further, but it appears that my DVD player will remember at least 3 DVD movies, but not a music CD or a data CD of MP3’s.
I had a friend who had a car CD player that would pick up where it left off if you just cut the transmission without shutting the device off. Always thought that was nifty.