Why don't audiobooks have proper chapter titles?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve only listened to a handful so maybe not true of all of them. I have War and Peace, which I listen to from time to time, I am renting In Our Time, a collection of early Hemingway short stories, and as free books on Audible.com I got The Hemginway Stories, parts of which were read on the Ken Burns doc on PBS, and The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, a collection of hard boiled detective novels from the 20s-40s. 70 hours! What a deal. I think I will continue after my 30 day trial

All of the books don’t have names for the chapters, it’s just Chapter 1, Chapter 2 etc. Now for War and Peace, the novel doesn’t have chapter names, but the chapter numbers in the audiobook don’t correspond to the hardcover. Not a big deal, but in a book of short stories, I will want to go back an relisten to some, but I don’t know that when I first listen to a story if that will be the case, and since I am often listening in bed before going to sleep, I don’t want to make a note that this is Chapter 12, which BTW is only the first half a story. Chapter 13 continues it. And in the case of In Our Time, the only way I can ever know the titles of the stories, because the narrator doesn’t even say the name of the story at the beginning, is to try and cross-refererence the chapters to a pdf of the ToC on Amazon. But that doesn’t even work because there are several editions of In Our Time.

How hard it is to have the name of the story in the ToC, and in the case of anthologies, name of author as well?

Not a big deal, thus my posting in this category. Just one of those minor annoyances

2

In order for you to see proper chapter titles,

  1. the chapter titles have to be included somehow in the audiobook files, and
  2. the software you use to play the audiobook files has to read and display them.

A few years ago, Audible’s app started displaying chapter titles (before then, it did not). But it can only do so if someone has taken the trouble to encode them in the first place. So, if you use Audible’s app, you’ll see them on some audiobooks, but not all.

3

I just glanced through some of the audible books I have on my phone - some have chapter names and some don’t. I suspect those gigantic freebie anthologies were recorded long ago - chapters may even be tied to CD tracks and discs, which would explain why they don’t match up neatly to the actual stories.

4

It’s a common annoyance. With something like an anthology of short stories, it’s often worth checking the reviews on Audible - often some kind soul has gone through and written out which chapter(s) correspond to which story.

5

Sometimes reviews will mention whether or not chapter/story titles are included. If a reviewer complains that they are not, pay attention to the date of the review, and whether there’s a more recent review that says “Now there are chapter titles.”