Aldoblog

My recommended solution for creating digital audiobooks from CDs, Audiobook Builder, has recently been updated, and comes with a new feature for renaming the chapters in an audiobook: I don’t know that I’d want to use this on every book, but for those without interesting or meaningful chapter names (or if you’re just not as […]

Two years in the making, or just two years late. At long last I’ve updated the article describing recommended devices for listening to audiobooks: Which iPod Should I Buy for Listening to Audiobooks Hopefully this will be useful to you during your holiday shopping! (And come back for my Recommended Audiobooks when you find a […]

It’s an older article, but Slate Magazine has a terrific piece about the importance of narration in the quality of audiobooks, from hard boiled fiction to urban sociology. Read Me a Story, Brad Pitt is subtitled “When audiobook casting goes terribly wrong,” and gives examples of the three most common — and easily avoided — […]

This is an overview of my current process for importing audiobooks. It’s a preview of my forthcoming (no, really, I promise) update to my instructions for importing audiobooks from CDs into iTunes. For OCD types, anal-retentives, and Harry Potter fans (hello brothers and sisters!), this preview may be sufficient for you to follow along on […]

If you are looking to stay “on top” of all the latest audiobook releases, there are a variety of sources. Most of the different audiobook publishing houses and audiobook stores have email newsletters, or even paper catalogs they will send you in the mail. I’ve signed up for a lot of these, and find them […]

A couple of weeks ago, OverDrive, a technology vendor that provides many libraries with the software behind their download-to-loan content, released a new version of the OverDrive Media Console that is now Mac-compatible and iPod-friendly. It accomplishes this by providing loanable downloads in MP3 format, instead of a DRM-wrapped WMA (Windows Media) format. It’s not […]

The number one question I receive from visitors to Aldo on Audiobooks is “How do I get my audiobooks to show up in the Audiobooks section of iTunes and my iPod/iPhone?” iTunes 8 makes answering this question almost trivial. Here are the details.

Dan Sanderson provides a clear explanation, including pretty good photos, of one of the user interface “quirks” that can get you when using the iPhone for audiobooks, namely, the iPhone’s indicator and toggle buttons for Repeat and Shuffle modes are somewhat hidden, not 100% clear, and can be toggled accidentally if you’re not careful. When […]

The San Francisco Chronicle recently ran a story about fledgling authors who get their start by publishing their books online, via podcast: Take my book. It’s free. Giving away books as podcasts is new way to promote sales. The basic idea is, the author reads their novel a chunk at a time, recording it, and […]

In a weblog post titled A Big Day For DRM, writer Maya Reynolds provides a concise (after three paragraphs about a hotel upgrade) and personalized look at this week’s news that Random House Audio Group is dropping DRM from their audiobooks.