iTunes gives you control over your own audiobooks… sort of.
The new iTunes 8 has launched and fans of audiobooks couldn’t be happier. Prior versions of iTunes kept the Audiobooks section under lock and key. The only files that would display in the Audiobooks section on your iTunes or iPod were books purchased from the iTunes music store. Not very handy to people who buy copies of audio books on CD or download them from other sources on the interwebs.
With 8.0, iTunes now allows you to change the Media Kind for files to Audiobook, taking them out of the Music section (where they never belonged in the first place). So score one for iTunes for enabling those who just want to use the software, but exercise choice in where they get their audiobook content.
Unfortunately, there’s still a bias against files received on a podcast — even a podcast of an audiobook. Those files are still locked up as a “Podcast”, prohibiting you from re-assigning the Media Kind for received files as Music, Audiobooks… you name it. Which means that files you get via our RSS feeds — default or custom — still won’t go in the Audiobook section.
Unless you are a bit crafty and willing to go through a couple of hoops. The good news is that you don’t have to buy any software. You can do it with a little bit of time and patience with iTunes 8.0. Here are the steps.
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Subscribe to any of our books on Podiobooks.com. I recommend this only for books that are completed. Repeating this process for episodes yet-to-be-released by the author would quickly lead to extreme frustrations. Your mileage may vary.
Release all the episodes. Hey, you want the whole book right now, and not as a podcast, right? If that’s not you (and it’s not me) stop right now. Cool as this is, it’s not even a little bit cool for listening to podcasts.
Add the subscription to iTunes. By default, iTunes will only pull down a single file in your feed. You can expand the feed in iTunes (see that little triangle next to the name?) and chose the “Get All” button. Now all of your files should be downloading. When they are done, proceed.
Convert all episodes of the title to AAC or MP3. Yeah, they probably are ALREADY and MP3, but this step is required to break that “Podcast” designation. Files are assigned the Media Kind of Music when you use the “Create MP3 (or AAC) Version” functionality. Select all the files. Right-click or Ctrl-click to get a new dialog box that contains the function you need. Do that, and wait for the conversion to happen. You can look under “Playlists” to watch the conversion process. See image below.
That’s it! If the author did a good job of consistency (and we sure try and make sure they do), you should now have a book from Podiobooks.com in your Audiobook section of iTunes. Feel free to delete the Podcast subscription and the files you previously download, as you now have the files in another location.
We’re talking about making a “one click” download for completed books. Now with iTunes allowing us to set the media type on our end, we’ve got even more incentive to get this done. Hooray for our side!
September 13th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Thanks for the info.
September 13th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
[...] Read the full Podiobooks.com blog post HERE. [...]
September 13th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Can we as authors do this with our books and make the feed show up as “audiobooks?”
Seth
September 13th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Or maybe I should say “with our files”?
September 14th, 2008 at 3:08 am
Excellent tip! Thanks for sharing this one - it’s a pain when audio books appear in the music list and then get caught up in the shuffle!
September 14th, 2008 at 3:36 am
There is an other way (works with iTunes 7.7 at least), though it might not be much easier:
Alter the ID3 tags manually, for example using Mp3Tag (for Windows). View “Extended Tags” and delete “ITUNESPODCAST=1″ tag. When you drag that file back to iTunes, it will no longer be a podcast.
September 14th, 2008 at 6:42 am
Excellent news for us audiobooks fans.thanks
September 14th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Seth - I think you missed a key point. ANYTHING that comes via RSS is re-set by iTunes as a Media Kind of PODCAST. So sure, you could set all of that on your files on your own. And then as soon as it was delivered via RSS, iTunes would reset all of your hard work.
Jari - That may work, but most people don’t have access to an application that gives them that level of control over ID3 settings. All we get is what is displayed and editable.
September 14th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Excellent. Although I gotta say, you could just select your audiobooks and hit get info, and then say yes to “Remember Position” and “Skip When Shuffling”.
September 14th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
There’s actually a freebie converter out there called “MP3 to Ipod Audiobook Converter” which I’ve been using for ages. Point it at a bunch of MP3 files and it will stitch them together as an M4B file, the audiobook format. Import that into iTunes and it shows up as audiobook.
Remember one of the greatest things about audiobook is that ipods let you set the listening speed to “faster”, so when there’s a book that you just can’t wait to finish, you can get there faster.
http://www.commutesmarter.com
September 14th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
I must have missed something!!!!! I converted as directed above. Everything worked like the instructions said they would. I now have a problem. I have ….. number of audio books (to many for my small i pod) and i tunes dose not have a way that i can figure how to select only the books i want to sync. Any suggestions will be appreciated. I’m not very smart, educated on how all this works yet, please forgive my ignorance.
September 14th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
A smart play list or a regular play list defeats the purpose of converting to audio book since that puts it right back under music.
September 15th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Edwin,
I don’t have a solution for you, but do have a suggestion. We have a
rich and vibrant community started with a mix of podiobook authors and listeners. It’s at http://community.podiobooks.com . Over there, many folks are looking at current conversations and questions. You’re
likely to get the help you need from those folks, as only a small
percentage of blog readers bother to look at the comments.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Thank you very much!!!! And WOW Mr. Evo I am so honored to receive your response. THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!
September 17th, 2008 at 1:55 am
The program mentioned by Jari above is mp3tag. It’s free (open source, spyware free) software and available at http://www.mp3tag.de/en/, so yes, everyone has access to such an application. I use it all the time and it’s incredibly useful to anyone who wants more control over their mp3 tags.
September 17th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
To Edwin
In itunes everything has a check box next to it. You can set itunes to only sinc checked items so that anything you dont want on there right away can be left out by un checking the box.
September 20th, 2008 at 11:30 am
For those of you that thought “I think you now know where to find them.” was insulting, you might have had the same problem as I had… Go to the Edit menu in iTunes, then select Properties. In the first section in the first tab (”General”) you’ll find check boxes that let you show or hide certain types of files in iTunes, for me “Audiobooks” was unchecked.
September 28th, 2008 at 10:29 am
To JDS,
*THANK YOU* I thought I was going nuts. In iTunes 8, it is, of course, renamed (why do they re-invent the wheel?!) It’s under “iTunes”, “Preferences”.
December 18th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Hey,
Changing the Media Kind worked a lot better than trying to change the Extension. That was stupid and a waste of time.
Just change the Media Kind as described above and the MP3 files (chapters of your boox that are being recognised as songs) will be moved into the Audiobooks section.
Make sure you have the Ausiobooks section enabled to be visible in the menu.
Thank you!!!
March 12th, 2009 at 3:58 am
Jari,
_thanks!!_, this worked for me!