Helpful Hints from joeeze: Audiobook choices for the iPod

J.D. Biersdorfer, New York Times tech writer extraordinaire, spilled the beans in her November 5, 2009 "Q&A" feature; the juice follows.

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Audiobook Choices for the iPod

Q. What companies sell audiobooks for the iPod Touch besides iTunes? Are there fees involved?

A. The iTunes Store stocks thousands of audiobooks alongside the music, video, games and applications for sale to iPod and Apple TV owners. But this is not the only place to get recorded books for your portable player. You can find some popular options for playing audiobooks on MP3 players at audiobooksusa.com, and the Internet Archive has more than 4,000 free audiobooks and recorded poetry at archive.org.

With 60,000 titles to download on the site, Audible.com is one of the largest repositories of iPod-friendly audiobooks. You can hear a short audio sample of just about everything on the site to decide if you like the sound of it (as well as the narrator’s dulcet tones).

You can buy and download books from Audible whenever you want, although prices tend to be much higher if you are not a member. If you sign up for an Audible membership, you basically get one audiobook a month for a $15 monthly fee on the Gold plan, or two audiobooks a month for $23 a month on the Platinum plan. (The site is currently running a special, in which the first three months of a new Gold plan membership are half price at $7.50 a month.)

While some people also borrow audiobook CDs from the library and convert them into iPod-ready digital files with iTunes, some libraries now have digital collections of their own online. For example, the New York Public Library has certain iPod-compatible audiobooks for download at ebooks.nypl.org. (The library’s digital offerings also include some electronic books, music and video files to download as well.)

Check with your local library to see what is available and what software and system requirements are needed to use any of its digital material.