As you have probably guessed by now, I like digital media! I try and keep all my books and magazines completely digital. It isn't too difficult, but there are some issues that you have to occasionally work around. A few years ago, my employment required that I drive about 100 minutes each way, every single work day, to get to my job. After just a week, I figured my only two choices were to quit or find some way to cope. Lucky for me that I remembered a trial subscription that I had received years before with the purchase of a Windows Mobile phone to Audible.com (now owned by Amazon).
With the ability to listen to 200 minutes a day of biography, or history, or novel, this time spent commuting quickly because a personal treasure! After more years than I care to count, I still subscribe to one of the Premium Subscriber Monthly Plans, and so get books every month that I can also share with my wife. That being said, it is not necessarily cheap, and I don’t always find exactly what I am looking for.
Audio Book Formats
The Audible.com file format is .aa and in today's world, it can be played directly on any iPod/iPhone, Zune, Windows Mobile device, Blackberry, as well as various other platforms. Go here for a list of of Audible compatible devices . Sadly, there is not yet a client for the Android platform although I have heard Audible is commited to bring spoken books to Android. Interestingly enough, you can purchase audiobooks directly from iTunes or the Zune Market Place as well. These books are delivered in .m4b format.
What is M4B or .m4b is 100 percent identical to .m4a format, but just with different name. So, .m4b is, similar .m4a, an audio file wrapped within MPEG-4 container format. The audio encoding can be virtually anything, but the most commonly used encoding for both .m4a and .m4b, files is the AAC. The only reason for the duplicate naming convention is so that the Apple's iTunes software and iPod players can recognize the file as an audio book rather than a normal audio track and thus allow "bookmarking" the file.
That is the wonderful ability that this audiobook format delivers: bookmarking. That means that as you listen to an audiobook, if you stop and later return to the audiobook, even if you close the program, it will return to exactly the same spot you were previously listening. For example, if you do a listen to the Bible every morning as I do while shaving, etc., this gives me the ability to always return to where I left off.
MP3 to M4B
In addition to these wonderful formats that support bookmarking, there a many audiobooks that come as CD's or as a collection of dozens of MP3 files. If you rip the CD to disk (there are almost always several disks full for a book), you can end up with hundreds of files per book and now real way to remember how far you had gotten. That is when I discovered the free MP3 to iPod Audiobook Converter. This software will take the multiple MP3 files that constitute an audiobook, concatenate them into a single file, and convert it to an .m4b files, complete with the bookmarking feature. This is a wonderful to create your own files with this excellent ability.
There are a number of commercial programs out there with can do it a little faster, as well as change the bit rate during the process (so as to create smaller files), and also automatically break the audiobook into chunks of approximately 100MB, which is really the limit of what you want in an audiobook file, to facilitate usage on low memory devices. One that I use quite a bit is the M4B Converter from the AVS Software Collection. However, you may not be willing to pony up the $29 to register a copy, so enjoy the free tool above! Other tools, such a TuneBite Platinum, has the ability to convert your DRM protected audiobooks, legally, to MP3 files, which you can then convert back to unprotected M4B files with the process described above. Be aware, it is a LOT of work to do this, but the ability is there is you need to do it. It is also the ability to convert various audio and video formats to non-DRM versions, but it will set you back $39. I have used it and it works well when you really need this functionality.
What Do I Need to Listen to an Audiobook?
If you have an iPod of any type, you have this ability built-in natively, as does the Windows Mobile platform for Audible (.aa) files. The ability to play .m4b files is also native to Windows Mobile for version 6.1 forward. I currently use an 
application available in the Android Market, Astro Player Beta, to play my non-DRM M4B files on my Droid. Just scan the code with Barcode scanner on you Android Phone to find the app in the Market Place. Â I am a geek I cannot help doing things like this. Â If you search around, there is surely similar technology available on the Blackberry platform. If nothing else, you can try the beta Audible.com application which will also work with unprotected files. Unfortunately, I found this software to be very unreliable.
With very little effort, you can experience audiobooks on your mobile device, along with your music and videos. Enjoy!
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