Importing MP3 audiobooks into iTunes

Note: These instructions have been superceded by a new version available in the Aldo on Audiobooks section of this site. Use that version instead of this page.

Our preferred method for obtaining audiobooks is from Audible.com, as part of our monthly subscription. For about $11 each, we receive an electronic-only version of a book, broken in to manageable chunks of 5-6 hours long each. The files arrive pre-encoded in a format which is bookmarkable in iTunes and on an iPod, and have all appropriate meta-data attached. The subscription format is both cost-effective and highly usable. Audible.com’s major liability is the selection; while there are thousands of books from which to choose, if you get interested in an author who has been writing for a while, chances are good Audible.com won’t have the older books, at least not yet.

The next best method for getting audiobooks is to borrow them on Audio CD from the local public library. While the procedure for importing them into iTunes is laborious, the price is right. This is an ideal way to experiment with authors you don’t know, to find books worth paying for. However, like Audible.com, the selection can be limited.

So, what do you do when you want a book that’s not available from either method?

We recently ran into this when we wanted to acquire all of the books in the Harry Bosch series. Half of the books were not available via Audible.com, and none of the older books were available via the library. Time to buy. (Because we are in love with Harry Bosch, waiting was not an option.)

The obvious way to go is to buy Audio CDs, the same thing you can get at the library. But those average $30, more than twice as expensive as what we get from Audible.com, and you have to import them into iTunes the long way. But as we explored the options, we found a different CD format called MP3 CD.

An “MP3 data CD” is a data (computer format) CD, but formatted in a particular way, with MP3 audio data stored on the tracks. These tracks are in the MP3 format, which is already compressed and digitized. This format can contain more than 13 hours of audio data on a single disc, far more than the 75 minutes of a standard Audio CD. And because there are fewer CDs, the cost is lower, sometimes a lot lower. We bought most of the missing Harry Bosch novels for $16 each, only $5 more than the Audible.com format, but we get a physical CD as a backup of the book.

The first trick to know about audibooks on MP3 CD is that they are a lot harder to find than standard Audio CD audiobooks. When browsing real-world bookstores, I’ve never seen an MP3 audiobook. Even on Amazon.com, finding them is not obvious. The trick is to find the book in hardcover or standard Audio CD format, and then click the See All Editions link in the Other Editions box of the item’s detail screen:

!/images/itunes/see-all-editions_sm.gif(Click the See All Editions link to find the MP3 CD edition of your audiobook)!

This will take you to a new screen with a list of all of the available editions of this particular work. That includes the different book printings, audio recordings, and even electronic editions:

!/images/itunes/all-editions-list_sm.gif(The all editions list for this work shows the MP3 CD edition of the audiobook)!

You are looking for the “MP3 CD” edition; in the example above it’s the last item in the list. And notice, the MP3 audiobook is $15 less than the standard Audio CD version, even though the recording is the same, it’s just a different format. (Also note the weird inconsistencies that Amazon.com occasionally has, the Audio CD version is noted as “MP3 Audio” in parentheses when it should be “Unabridged.”)

The MP3 CD format is a standard, supported by a lot of recently produced CD and DVD players. The discs contain a series of data files (those ending in “.mp3”), as well as a series of files used to index and order the data files, when played on a compatible audio player (the files ending in “.smil”, for Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language). And, while iTunes will mostly ignore MP3 discs, you can get the MP3 data off the CD and into iTunes easily enough, if you know the trick.

Importing MP3 audiobooks into iTunes

When you insert the CD, it is likely that (unlike with standard Audio CDs) iTunes will not automatically open the disc. iTunes can be configured to automatically open standard audio CDs, but the MP3 data CD format is quite different. On Mac OS X, I have not been able to get iTunes to show an MP3 CD in the Source list via any trick.

The most serious consequence of this is that there is no way to get iTunes to look up online the CD’s information, e.g., book title, author, etc. But that’s not as big a deal as it sounds. iTunes can pick some of this information up from the MP3 playlist file “playlist.m3u,” which is always included as a part of the MP3 CD standard. And you can batch add most of the additional information you might want on an audiobook.

As with standard audio CDs, you will want to ensure that your import settings are optimal for audiobook and spoken word. The settings and steps for configuring this are the same. Go to Preferences / Importing right now, and verify that you have the right settings configured.

1. Insert the CD, and allow it to mount on your Desktop (or My Computer in Windows).
2. In the Finder or Windows Explorer, open the CD, and locate the “playlist.m3u” file (selected below).
   !/images/itunes/mp3-playlist-file_sm.gif(An MP3 Audibook, with Playlist File Highlighted)!
   Double-click it to open it with iTunes. If iTunes does not come to the front, bring it to the front manually.
3. The CD will likely start playing at the same time that iTunes begins importing the files from the playlist.
   !/images/itunes/importing-mp3-data-cd_sm.gif(Importing an MP3 Audibook)!
   Click the Pause button to stop playback (even if you’re eager to start the book; your listening experience would be interrupted by the next steps).
4. Allow iTunes to finish importing the files from the CD. It will take a little while, depending on the speed of your optical drive. When it finishes importing the tracks, iTunes may then analyze the sound volume on the tracks. Let that finish, too. (It may feel like it takes a long time, but remember: you are not swapping CDs to get all of the audiobook imported.) You will end up with a window like this:
   !/images/itunes/imported-mp3-audiobook_sm.gif(Imported MP3 audiobook)!
   Of particular note: all of the tracks have the book title in the name.
5. Type the book’s title into the iTunes search field. Your goal is to have a window which shows all of the imported tracks, and nothing else (as illustrated in the screenshot above).
6. Select all of the tracks for the audiobook. From the Advanced menu, choose Convert Selection to AAC. This will convert the book’s tracks from large MP3 files to much smaller AAC files (which we can make bookmarkable in a later step), saving a considerable amount of disk space.
   !/images/itunes/converting-mp3-to-aac_sm.gif(Converting tracks from MP3 to AAC)!
   Note: You may have read somewhere that converting from MP3 to AAC (or from any lossy audio format to another lossy format) is a bad idea, because the audio quality will be degraded. Normally that’s good advice. In this case, however, the whole point is to throw away audio information, to make the files much smaller. So much information is being thrown away in the conversion from 96 kbps stereo to 32 kbps mono that the loss due to conversion from MP3 to AAC is irrelevant.
7. The conversion will take some time. When it finishes, you will have duplicates of every track from the book.
   !/images/itunes/converted-audiobook-files_sm.gif(Original and converted tracks from MP3 audiobook)!
   Click the Kind column heading to sort the files by type. This will make it easy to select all of the MP3 files. Hit the Delete key to remove them from your iTunes Library, and then click the Move to Trash button in the dialog which appears, so that you can recover the disk space.
8. Again select all of the book tracks (except this time they will be the AAC format tracks). From the File menu, choose Get Info (or press Command-I) to open the Multiple Song Information window.
   !/images/itunes/multiple-song-info_sm.gif(iTunes Multiple Song Info window)!
   Enter the information which will be the same from track to track (chapter to chapter), usually Artist (author), Album (book title), Year, Total Tracks, and Genre (“Audiobook”). You might also add the reader to the Comments, if you want keep track of that. Click the OK button.
9. Now select just the first track (chapter 1, or whatever the first part of the book is). Again from the File menu choose Get Info. This time you will see the individual track info window.
   !/images/itunes/audiobook-info-track-1_sm.gif(Info window for first track of audiobook)!
   Verify the info there (it should be correct), and then click the Next button to move to the next chapter.
10. This is the tedious part. Depending on the book, the chapter names will require more or less massaging. I recommend using the format {book title}, {track #}/{total tracks}, e.g., “Angels Flight, 02/40”. This makes it easy to keep the tracks in the right order on your iPod, and also see the track number for each chapter. Depending on the title of the book, you might want to abbreviate it, especially if you have an iPod mini; long titles will push the track numbers offscreen. You will also want to correct the track number for each chapter.
    !/images/itunes/audiobook-info-track-2_sm.gif(Info window for second track of audiobook)!
    Click the next button, and repeat on the next track. Work your way through the entire book. (I repeat, this is the tedious part.)
11. Use your preferred method to make the track bookmarkable. (Some detailed steps are available “here”:/blog/471.) This mainly involves changing the file extension from “.m4a” to “.m4b”, which tells iTunes that the file is a Protected AAC file, not a plain AAC file. This is the step that makes the tracks bookmarkable, and also tells your iPod to show the book under the Audiobooks item of the iPod interface.

Note: Curiously, iTunes seems to have some part in telling an iPod that the files are Protected AAC. I have found that I must play a few seconds of each track to force iTunes to discover the change in file extension, or the tracks stubbornly refuse to appear in Audiobooks on an iPod.

And that’s it. A bit tedious, but it beats swapping 10-15 CDs, and doing most of the same work, but spaced out over more time. And remember, those MP3 CDs are cheaper!