Audiobooks discussion

Well, I won a free audiobook on CD. However, I normally purchase audio downloads which are no-brainers on the iPod. I've imported the CDs into iTunes. Now, each chapter shows up in music as a separate "song". How do I turn these files into and audiobook that works like my digital downloads?

Not sure Sandi - I listen to mine in my music folder on my ipod touch

There's software you can download to splice music files together to make one really long track, but it's a time-consuming pain in the butt and REALLY not worth it for just ONE audiobook. It won't be quite the same, but I'd just make a playlist containing all the chapters and then just listen to the playlist.

The trick is that when you import the CD you need to do a couple of things. First, you have select all the tracks on the CD, then click on "Advanced" and select "join CD tracks". This will import the whole CD as one single track. I make sure to name the individual CDs so that they will sort into the right order - I usually mess this up at first and have to try again. Once you have imported the CD, right click on the track and hit "get info" Go to the tab that says "options" and there you can change media type to "audiobook". Those are the things I find most helpful when importing a book from CD to itunes; there's some other stuff you can fiddle with in 'get info' if you can be bothered. Good luck!

ETA 2 other things to do in the "options" tab are to check "skip when shuffling" and most impt "remember playback position" so that when you go back to your book after a break you don't have to scan through a whole track to find your place :-)

I made a playlist. It's not as convenient as having it my audiobook file, but that's okay. It'll actually be kind of easy to keep track of where I am because it's broken up into so many tracks. I figure I'll uncheck the chapters I've listened to before I sync.

I made a book file in iTunes and just drag and drop the books into the file.

What book did win Sandi? Congrats on winning the book.

I won Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting. I didn't realize I was entering for an audiobook. I avoid those because they're always on CD, not download. Strangely enough, they sent me five copies! I'm giving three to my daughter. She's a new mom and one of her closest friends is expecting and one of them has a one year old. I'm going to donate the fifth one to the local library.

Sandi, I'd go with Darkpool's instructions, as that is what I do too (Get info - change it from music to audiobook, etc.) if you select all the tracks for the one book at once (click the first one once, hold shift & click the last one once) then do the right click on any of the ones you have now selected. Then click "get info" and so on, you can do all the tracks at once and they (should) get automatically put into your audiobooks file as a single book/folder with all the tracks inside.

I went ahead and deleted the tracks I had already imported and uploaded the CDs again using Darkpool's instructions. It was more steps, but it worked like a charm. It's a good thing the book was free.

Sounds like you got it but to clarify for other users, you'll want to change the audio file type, not the genre (last tab in the get info window) to audiobook.

Darkpool wrote: "The trick is that when you import the CD you need to do a couple of things. First, you have select all the tracks on the CD, then click on "Advanced" and select "join CD tracks". This will import t..."

I do the same thing Darkpool said too. Works great.

Thanks Darkpool for that info. I struggle with importing some older audiobooks because they end up getting out of order. This was super helpful!

I do a lot of audio on CD - I pick them up cheap at Half Price Books or free from the library. I've always created a playlist to listen to them, but I'll give Darkpool's suggestion a try. Thanks!

I have to say that it was someone (can't remember who) on this group who originally explained to me what to do - I'm just sharing the love :-)

I use a free piece of software called Chapter and Verse, so I don't have to merge track and it breaks books into pieces that can are useable on all version of iTunes and iPods. It takes a little time to get the hang of it, but I found it great for bookmarking, leaving chapters in place for reversing back to missed bits (distractions), etc.