Does anyone “read” audio books on their iPod? Does it work well? Is there good selection? How expensive are they? In particular, is there some feature that makes it easy to remember your place and resume there later, rather than having to do a lot of fast forwarding and rewinding?
thanks
The iTunes software has a feature where you can mark any track to let iTunes know you want to listen to it from wherever you left off last time, rather than start at the beginning. I believe audiobooks can also be marked with chapters, making it easy to flip through. I’ve never listened to one though.
I find the Audible service works well on my mp3-enabled Palm PDA. It seems to me you need to be willing to pay for either 1) fairly expensive audiobooks or 2) a fairly expensive player. There are free audiobooks, but IME they won’t work on lower-end players. But if you have an iPod and are willing to use iTunes to acquire your books, I think that’d work pretty well. I found I needed to get a supplemental speaker to listen in the car, though.
I listen to audiobooks from audible.com on my iPod nano while I commute. It’s a really good combination. Audible has a good selection of audiobooks, and if you buy them via a monthly subscription plan they’re pretty cheap (I get 2/month for $22). Individually, audiobooks can be somewhat expensive, up to $60 for longer and/or newer books.
The iPod handles audiobooks really well. You can exit the book and go listen to music and it will remember your place when you come back. Audible is smart enough to download the books so that they show up automatically in iTunes and can be easily transferred to your player. All in all, I’ve been very happy with both.
Do you mean listen to them or read them as text files? Because technically you can do either. I’ll assume you mean listen to audiobooks instead of read text on the little screen:
I do it everyday. I get some from Audible and sometimes I get CDs from the library and import them into iTunes. When I’m done the book I delete it and bring in a new one. They are fantastic!
The selection is huge. Just about any popular book gets a CD or digital format. Try this, look up a book on Amazon.com. Now click the link under “Also available in…” (you may have to click “show all formats”, but CDs will probably be there.
They can be expensive to buy like this, but liek I say try your local library or Audible or the iTunes music store.
You can click an option in iTunes to remember where you left off and resume at that same place.
This is the primary function of my husbands Ipod.
He has read the entire Lord of Rings, the entire Dark Tower series (7 books) this way.
I’m the big reader, I haven’t made the transition.
I ran across the following pages a while ago; haven’t tested them for myself.
FAQ About Audiobooks and iTunes
How to Import Audio CD audiobooks into iTunes
BTW, some public libraries now offer downloadable, time-limited audiobooks. Unfortunately, this system doesn’t work with iPods. From the first link aboveMany public libraries now allow you to “check out” downloadable versions of audio books, just like checking out tape or CD versions, but more convenient. But they won’t play on an iPod! Is there a way to get them to play on an iPod?
The short answer is no, there is no way to get these versions to play on an iPod. The audiobooks are wrapped in a Microsoft Windows-only digital rights management (DRM) encoding, to prevent the books from being copied. Breaking the DRM to play the books on an iPod is illegal under current US law (as well as in many other countries). (Under US law, it’s even illegal to point at someone else’s instructions for breaking the Windows DRM. So, you’re not going to find that information here.)
The best bet is for all iPod owners to pester our libraries about compatibility with the iPod. It seems to me that it’s a poor use of taxpayer money to license digital versions of audiobooks which cannot be played on the handheld audio player with 80% of the market. Better to spend that money on additional books on CD, which a wider range of library users can enjoy.
2 of my kids have worked at the local library. There job, shelving books, can be on the boring side. So they both took out audio books on CD, and loaded them on their Ipods to listen while working. Seems to work great for them.
Before they had Ipods, they did the same with portable CD players.
I’ve transferred a few audiobooks from CD to iPod. the big advantage is that my car CD player won’t let me go backward without skipping to the beginning of the segment, whereas with the iPod I can move back a sentence or two. If I pause the iPod before I turn it off, it will resume at that point when I turn it on again.
Works well. It took me awhile to figure out how to rewind, however, because I have this terrible habit of falling asleep listening to audiotapes.
Thanks for everyone’s advice. I’ve gotten my mom all set up with audible.com and some NPR podcasts, and things seem to be working.
One follow-up question. Audiobooks are many hours long, often in one enormous track. So, if you’re in the middle of that track and then accidentally hit skip-back or skip-forward, you’ll (as far as I can tell) completely lose your place, and have to laboriously fast forward back to it. Is there any way to get around this?
thanks again
As I said, the iTunes software has a feature where you can mark any track to let iTunes know you want to listen to it from wherever you left off last time, rather than start at the beginning. I believe audiobooks can also be marked with chapters, making it easy to flip through. I’ve never listened to one though.
In iTunes, hit CTRL-I (or maybe Apple-I, if you’re on a Mac), click on the Options tab, then check the box that says “Remember playback position”.
Yeah, the playback-position stuff is working automatically. What I’m worried about is accidental track-skippage, which, if the track is 15 hours long, would be a BIG pain to fix.
I poked around in the iTunes options a bit without seeing anything useful…
I love it. In fact, I’m currently listening to John Hodgeman’s The Areas of My Expertise which Apple offered for free over the Christmas holiday week. (Currently $18.95). I have also been downloading old episodes of “This American Life” from Audible as well.
The only gripe I have about Audible is the fucking bumper that they put at the beginning and end of everything they sell:
“This audio program is presented by Audible-dot-com. Audible: audio that speaks to you wherever you are!”
That gets old pretty quick.
You know that you can track to any playback position you want to with an iPod right?
When the track is playing, just press the center button. The volume control will turn into a playback bar. Use the clickwheel to scroll forward and back to wherever you want to listen from. Granted, it will take a little trial-and-error to find the relative spot you left off from, but it’s not too hard, either.
Oops. Didn’t read your original question. Yes, of course you know. To answer your question:
All the books I’ve listened to are broken into “chapters” no more than about a couple hours.
If you skip forward, the iPod will remember your position. But if you skip backward, you will lose your spot. I don’t know of anyway to regain the position automatically.
You mean pressing the fast-forward or rewind button accidentally, and skipping to the end (or beginning) of the entire book? Used to happen to me occasionally, but I soon got into the habit of using the “Hold” switch all the time. Also, using a snug rubber case for the iPod seems to help. (It doesn’t cover the buttons, but the case has some thickness so the buttons are effectively recessed.)
That only helps if you know exactly where you were.
Marking a file as Audiobook will also prevent it from being played when you hit shuffle songs.
Best solution for the accidental skipping is to divide up the file into managable portions. I find that I have to do this anyway because my iPod gets twitchy dealing with files over 3 hours long - sometimes it will stop for no apparent reason and go back to the begining of the file. This program will automate that process and make it somewhat more manageble.
Strange, I’ve been an Audible subscriber for… probably 3 years now, on the 2 books/month plan, and I’ve never heard that bumper. They start off with “This… is Audible”, and then go right into the book. Short enough that it’s barely noticeable. These are on books purchased directly through audible.com; maybe they put a different bumper on ones purchased through itunes…
Except for some of the Terry Pratchett books. Some of those have a big nag section up front about how you’re not supposed to sell or give away or whatever any of the audible content. Must have been some fairly serious abuse going on to prompt that.