How do audiobooks work and where can I find them

December 18, 2005 9:12 PM

How do audiobooks work on a 3rd gen iPod and where can I find them for free?
posted by a007r to Technology (15 answers total)

Ipod Audiobooks.
Free Audiobooks.
posted by sanko at 9:25 PM on December 18, 2005

Project Gutenberg has quite a few free audiobooks.
posted by meta87 at 9:37 PM on December 18, 2005

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).
posted by dagnyscott at 9:44 PM on December 18, 2005

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.
posted by mert at 9:53 PM on December 18, 2005

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?
posted by Good Brain at 9:55 PM on December 18, 2005

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.
posted by Good Brain at 10:01 PM on December 18, 2005

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.
posted by box at 10:18 PM on December 18, 2005

Good Brain - I don't think 3G iPods (like the poster has) support the bookmark function.
posted by nathan_teske at 10:32 PM on December 18, 2005

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
posted by meta87 at 10:50 PM on December 18, 2005

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
posted by mathowie at 11:12 PM on December 18, 2005

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.
posted by jessamyn at 3:47 AM on December 19, 2005

audible.com
posted by ae4rv at 4:45 AM on December 19, 2005

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?
posted by wackybrit at 5:32 AM on December 19, 2005

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.
posted by Mo Nickels at 7:24 AM on December 19, 2005

newzbin.com
posted by meta87 at 8:16 AM on December 19, 2005