Two positive developments I can mention. First, MP3 CDs seem to be less prone to being damaged. Maybe this is because fewer people know what to do with them (and so don’t check them out), or maybe it’s because with only one or two discs per book, it requires less swapping, and so gets handled less. In any event, they seem to be more durable, and they are also a lot less processing effort when adding to iTunes. Kitabe had a great Netflix-style MP3 CD loaning service, but they discontinued it. I’ve recently learned of a similar subscription service, Booksfree.com, that offers MP3 CDs, so I’ll be checking them out.

The second development is the discovery of a CD importing tool called “cdparanoia,” which uses more sophisticated error correction routines, to deal better with damaged discs. In my brief trials, cdparanoia has been able to import CDs which iTunes choked on. So sometimes you can deal with even a severely damaged disc. On the Mac, you can use cdparanoia via the free Max audio tool (you turn cdparanoia on in the preferences). There are a variety of products that include cdparanoia on Windows, but I don’t have a recommendation for a specific one, yet.

The reason for the payment info is pretty simple: the shopping cart is only set up to give out items you pay for, so if you don’t give a payment method, you don’t get anything. Give PayPal and the shopping cart software is happy.

You do have to have an online account – in other words, you can’t purchase audio downloads from BN.com accountless like you can with other items they sell. Again that’s not (just) marketing – it’s so you have someplace to download and store your audio books.