Comments on: How do audiobooks work and where can I find them

Question: How do audiobooks work and where can I find them

a007r — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 21:12:59 -0800

How do audiobooks work on a 3rd gen iPod and where can I find them for free?

By: sanko

sanko — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 21:25:39 -0800

Ipod Audiobooks.
Free Audiobooks.

By: meta87

meta87 — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 21:37:02 -0800

Project Gutenberg has quite a few free audiobooks.

By: dagnyscott

dagnyscott — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 21:44:49 -0800

Some public libraries allow you to download free audiobooks from their website if you have a library card. It all depends on where you live, but it's worth checking out (or suggesting, if it's not available).

By: mert

mert — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 21:53:41 -0800

The free audiobooks on Gutenberg are read by a robot and are virtually unlistenable. I've downloaded a lot of good stuff from the various ethically suspect P2P sources that will remain unmentioned. And if you have money, there's always audible.com.

By: Good Brain

Good Brain — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 21:55:41 -0800

the iPod has a bookmark feature for audio books that lets you listen to something else and then come back and resume the book in the exact same place you left off. You can get it to treat any AAC encoded file as an audio book by changing the file extension to .m4b (from the default of .m4a).

This works on Windows, I'm not sure how you'd do it on a mac, change the type code maybe?

By: Good Brain

Good Brain — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 22:01:36 -0800

Doh! It looks like iTunes5 now gives you a checkbox on the Option tab of the Get Info dialog for tracks that will make it remember the playback position and it looks like it works for MP3 files, as well as AACs.

By: box

box — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 22:18:44 -0800

Other public libraries allow you to check out audiobooks in either CD or cassette form. These CDs and cassettes can then be converted to audio files via the usual process.

Audiobooks are also available via p2p networks.

By: nathan_teske

nathan_teske — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 22:32:08 -0800

Good Brain - I don't think 3G iPods (like the poster has) support the bookmark function.

By: meta87

meta87 — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 22:50:29 -0800

Mert: Not all of the project gutenberg audio books are read by bots.

If you click on the human-read section, you will see what I'm talking about:

http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/categories/1

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 23:12:32 -0800

Any mp3 format audio file should work fine.

If you want free and legal, there are loads of interesting recordings at the archive.

If you want free and arguably illegal, there's always alt.binaries.mp3.audiobooks

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 03:47:27 -0800

Librivox has free audiobooks in the public domain read by real people. It's a short list and it's weird sometimes to listen to books where different chapters are read by different people, but it's a neat project.

By: ae4rv

ae4rv — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 04:45:05 -0800

audible.com

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 05:32:27 -0800

The iPod has a system where audiobooks can be played faster or slower than the natural speed.. why can't you get podcasts to go like this?

By: Mo Nickels

Mo Nickels — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 07:24:28 -0800

Also:

alt.binaries.mp3.audiobooks.highspeed
alt.binaries.mp3.spoken-word
alt.binaries.sounds.audiobooks
alt.binaries.sounds.audiobooks.repost
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.books
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.spoken-word
alt.binaries.sounds.spoken-word

If you're on a Mac, a program like Unison can make finding and downloading files from binary newsgroups very easy. There are equivalents for Windows, but I don't know what they are.

By: meta87

meta87 — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 08:16:29 -0800

newzbin.com