Listening to audiobooks for iPods is one of the best ways to make a commute or an exercise session much more fun and productive. The iPod and it’s sister the iPhone play audiobooks in addition to music and video. And I find that audiobooks for iPods really enhance the original book by turning it into a performance that can packed with more excitment and emotion than the book by itself. For non-fiction, I especially like it when the author reads the book and adds in some off script narrative, as Gary Vanerchuck does in his Crush It audiobook. On the fiction side, you want the best narrator you can find to bring the story to life.

If you want to buy audiobooks for ipod, I recommend shopping at my audiobooks for iPod store called Castlibrary.com. Castlibrary works in partnership with Audible (a division of Amazon) and Ingram Books to provide the widest selection of audiobooks for iPod and iPhones possible. I also have an audiobooks for iPod store for the UK and can also point you to audiobook stores for Germany and France. And you can also buy them from iTunes, but I find that you can get better deals on audiobooks from Castlibrary.

In addition, Digital Podcast lists about 2,000 free audiobooks for ipod, iPhone and MP3 players in our downloadable audiobook section. These audiobooks have been organized into podcasts so you can subscribe to them as podcasts.

You can also buy audiobooks on CD, and then import them into iTunes and then listen to them via your iPod. The process works like importing music from a music CD. However, if you get your audiobooks from Castlibrary the process is almost automatic, with the books forming one or two files that are easily navigated using your iPod music menu.

Options for Buying Audiobooks for iPod

Buying a single audiobook is expensive. Some audiobooks, like the Harry Potter books, can go for as much as $50-60 per audiobook. Fortunately, there is a better option called a subscription plan. The deal that Castlibrary has with Audible allows you to start getting audiobooks for only $7.49. Talk about great savings. The way it works is that you pay the $7.49 and get one credit for an audiobook. You can then exchange the credit for one of the audiobooks in the library and the audiobook you download is yours to keep, even if you decide to cancel. If you want more, the next two months are only $7.49 per month for 2 more audiobooks. After that the price goes up to about $15 per month, still a fantastic deal compared to the full price of audiobooks and you can cancel anytime you want with no further payments. And yes, you get to keep the audiobooks you download.

On the other hand, if a subscription is not for you and you want to buy a single audiobook, I suggest checking both Castlibrary and iTunes to find the best deal. Just remember, that for the price of one audiobook you could have received 2-3 audiobooks for your iPod via the subscription service.

CastLibrary’s audiobooks for iPod, iPhone and MP3 players are easily searchable and organized by tags, best sellers and new audiobooks. If find the tags and best seller lists to be great ways to find new audiobooks for my iPod. If I know what I want, I just use the easy search feature to find the audiobook for iPod.

Here’s a video I made showing how to find an audiobook, download it and get it onto to your iPod.

The subscription service has a big advantage over the iTunes Music Store, because you can re-download the audiobook if you lose it. The subscription service keeps a library of books you buy and you can download them again if needed. With iTunes, you need to be careful to make a backup.

If you want to buy an audiobook for your ipod on iTunes, then you can find them in the iTunes Music Store.

At the time I write this post, you can find a link to audiobooks in the banner in the iTunes Music Store next to the Podcast link. It seems to move around over time so you may need to hunt it down to find them.

Listening to your Audiobook on Your iPod

Both services format the audiobooks for iPod and iPhones and make then easy to navigate and re-start via automatic bookmarking of an audiobook made for iPods. You can listen, stop it, and come back later to the same place to re-start the audio. It’s a real nice feature of audiobooks for iPod.

The bookmarks are also included when you sync your iPod with iTunes, which means that you can listen to the audiobook on your PC just like on your iPod.

After you sync up your iPod and iTunes, if the audiobooks are made for iPods you can find the audiobooks in the Audiobook section of the Music menu, if not then you will have to search for them via artist or song title.

The audiobooks for iPod play like music files and if you want you can even speed them up.

In all, I recommend getting audiobooks that are designed for your iPod or iPhone, as you will get to experience audiobooks for iPod the way they were meant to be played.

 

 M4V Video for iPod [5:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 MP3 Version [5:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download