Getting iTunes and your iPod to treat audio books as audio books — not some random playlist of songs — can be a struggle. Here's how to do it.
Digital audio books come in all shapes and sizes. You can purchase them online from sites like Audible, eMusic, and iTunes. You can download free audio books from places like Archive.org. Or, you can rip audio books to your computer from CD. Unfortunately, no matter where your digital audio books come from, getting iTunes and your iPod to treat them as an audio book — not some random playlist of songs — can be a struggle.
If you've ever purchased an audio book through iTunes, you may have noticed that the file appears in a separate audio book tab in your media library. Keeping your audio books separate from your music library not only makes them easier to find, but it also prevents chapters of Crime and Punishment from popping up in a party music playlist.
iTunes even treats the playback of audio books differently than music playback, allowing you to adjust the playback speed of the file and automatically resume any previously played chapter where it left off instead of starting at the beginning.
You don't have to purchase your audio books from Apple to get the special iTunes audio book treatment. By tweaking a few settings, you can make iTunes and your iPod recognise any audio file or group of audio files as an audio book. To find out how, take a look at our step-by-step guide to creating audio books in iTunes. Note that this tutorial requires Tunes 8.0.1 or higher.
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To create an audio book file in iTunes, first import the audio you want to use. This could mean ripping an audio book from CD, downloading an audio book from the Web, or even recording your own audio book using an application such as Audacity. Whatever it is, drag and drop the audio into iTunes or import it using iTunes' "Add file to Library" or "Add folder to Library" commands, found in the iTunes File menu.
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Find the imported files and select them all by clicking on the first file, holding down the shift key and clicking on the last file. With all the files highlighted, go to the iTunes File menu and select "Get Info" (or just right-click and select "Get Info" from the context menu).
(Photo credit: Donald Bell, CNET.com)
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Under the Options tab of the Get Info window, change the Media Kind to Audiobook. Changing this setting will effect all the selected files in one shot.
(Photo credit: Donald Bell, CNET.com)
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While you're still in the Options tab, change the "Remember position" setting to Yes.
(Photo credit: Donald Bell, CNET.com)
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Now, click over to the Info tab and enter in any relevant information you want to include about the audio book, as well as any cover artwork (what's a book without a cover?). By opening up a browser window and performing a Google image search for the book title, you can typically find what you're looking for and just drag the image directly from the browser into the iTunes artwork field.
Hit OK.
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Your audio book files should have vanished from your music collection and relocated to a separate Audiobook library, found in the left column. If you don't see an Audiobook library, open up your iTunes preferences in the Edit menu and check off the selection for Audiobooks in the General tab and hit OK. Once you've found your book, double click on its cover to reveal the list of audio files.
(Photo credit: Donald Bell, CNET.com)
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To make sure your files play sequentially, you'll need to make sure the files fall in the correct order when sorting by name. In this example, the first nine chapters were titled with a single digit "Chapter 1" instead of two digits "Chapter 01", which placed the file named "Chapter 2" immediately before "Chapter 20". You really don't want to hear audio book chapters out of order, so its worth taking a few minutes to glance over your file names and fix any discrepancies.
(Photo credit: Donald Bell, CNET.com)
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Once your audio book is all set in iTunes, just connect your iPod and sync it over. Remember, your audio books won't appear in your iPod's music library (this is a good thing). iPod audio books are found in a separate Audiobooks folder within the Music menu.
(Photo credit: Donald Bell, CNET.com)
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