Why didn’t anyone tell me…

The economy is bad, and I realized early this year that my audiobook subscription was next on the chopping block, and, screaming in my heart, I clicked “Close” on my Audible subscription. And then I resumed reading the last 2 books I picked up.  Unfortunately, the second was a serial with 3 other parts, and I rather liked it. So I was in trouble. What to DO!?

So I did the next most logical thing. I went to the public library’s web site. Now, of course, this is where many of you will get angry with me, because I’m part of the San Jose Public Library system (www.sjlibrary.org) and you’re probably not. I can only say that this is documenting how I got around this problem, and you’ll have to adjust your experiences accordingly. Moving on.

So I still did the next most logical thing. I went to the public library’s web site. And sure enough: there on the left is a search catalog link. Which is exactly what I was after. I typed in the title and clicked search.  The list came back with over 300 entries. Most were paper, most by other authors, but the great thing was: they had audiobooks in there too. And I don’t just mean the CDs you can get on the shelves, which was all I was expecting – but electronic audiobooks. So I clicked, and fell down the rabbit hole.

For Father’s Day this year I got my audiobook subscription to Audible renewed for one year, so I have book credits on hand. However, I’m surprised by two changes; first – I love the new Audible site design with the NYT Bestseller lists and favorite-ever lists, and second – now that I know how to get so many books from other sources for ‘free’, I’m surprised how little is left on my Audible list that can’t be found elsewhere.  There are some exceptions, like there are a hand full of Orson Scott Card books that I just don’t find elsewhere, and some Michael Crichton (I limit myself to one Crichton book a year or I stop enjoying them). But even many of the newest books appear in the public library in short order.

For the impatient, I’ll just shortcut to the:

Workflow Cheat Sheet

• Keep a master wish list at Audible or Amazon. They have the big catalogs of books, with a variety of reviews available and star ratings that may keep you out of a book that sounds like one thing but turns out to be another. And sometimes they will have books that aren’t available from public locations. I hate forgetting: what-was-that-book-that-sounded-so-good-but-then-I-forgot-to-write-it-down-and-then -I-got-busy-and-now-I’ll-never-know-if-it-was-any-good-or-not. Get in the habit of using the voice recorder on your phone if you don’t feel like typing. I use the iPhone camera in book stores and the public library to snap the title and author of anything that looks good. They don’t have to like me.
• Periodically go to your wish list at either site above and start searching your public library catalog. I’m finding that about 2/3 of the books I search for can be had at one of the free sources, albeit with a wait. Even if there is a wait, I have 12 books queued up, I can be patient.
• Go to the public library site and search, sort by media kind and scroll all the way down – ebooks and audiobooks are at the end mostly. This catalogs both what is in the ebooks site and what is in the physical holdings. First pick the electronic version if you can get it. No CDs to import, quality is sufficient for translation into medium or low quality Audiobook Builder format. And no driving.

The San Jose ebook web site has its own flow. The flow here is [ optional - wishlist]->waiting list->bookshelf for 1,2,3 weeks. They manage it in the same way you would manage the paper copies – only so many copies are available for checkout, and you have to take turns with the others. Their wish list has each books current “Get it now” or “You’ll have to wait” status.

Spend some time one day just throwing piles of stuff into your wishlist from your master Audible/Amazon list, or from browsing. If you keep your checked-out list (a.k.a. bookshelf) about half full, you’ll still have room if a couple of your waiting list books come to you.  Otherwise you’ll miss your reservation window. Go ahead and keep your waiting list books more or less full and don’t be afraid to put yourself back in a queue if you miss it because of a full bookshelf. Remember about once a week to go back and check the wish list for available books and check out enough to keep it around half full and you’ll be happy.

Second choice is to get the physical CD set. Sometimes there is also an mp3 CD set. I was quite impressed with the quality of this. If the library is between work and home, I’ll drive it myself. If not, I’ll request a delivery to the one closest to home.

• Then turn to LibriVox. A surprising amount is available there, so don’t discount it.  Just don’t cringe at the narrators – quality varies widely. But also because they aren’t hindered by things like production cost, you can find a lot more content there than in most commercial collections, like their Sherlock Holmes collections are far more complete. The problem is that the LibriVox site is hard to navigate; but again, the price is right. If I liked my voice, I might consider doing some narrating myself. Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, seriously good stuff available.
• If all else fails, money talks. Audible or Amazon can help you find nearly anything in audiobook form.

Okay, now the details.

Welcome to DRM – we hates it forever

First: At home I’m a Mac user by default. I have a Windows box and 3 linux boxes, but my preference for the UI is the mac. iTunes is run on my mac mini – which is its main job really, followed by the endless video encoding I do. So when I showed up at the San Jose Library’s ebooks section (run by Overdrive DRM software, piggybacking Windows DRM), there were a few things of note:
1. They do have mp3 audiobooks with “do it yourself” DRM – please delete when you are done with a reminder from the download client.
2. They have far more DRMd WMA books.
3. But hey, the price is right.
4. Books can be checked out for 1, 2, or 3 weeks at a time, with a max limit of 10 at a time.
5. You can also put yourself on the waiting list for individual books. If you have a book slot open on the day your number comes up, you can check it out.  If not, just put yourself back in the queue tomorrow. Be sure to check your email.
6. They recently added “iPod friendly WMA audiobooks”, which apparently means that if you run iTunes from Windows, you can sync them to Apple devices. I haven’t tried them.

So, being an Mac iTunes-iPod-iPhone person, this limited me to just a subset of those books, but you can search just within that range and still get quite a bit.

Bundling and Organizing

So, just the same, I got busy with the checking out some MP3 audiobooks and some CD audiobooks, and remembered one of my pet peeves about the whole business. The “Audiobook” handling in iTunes is only scalable to the point at which you copy one or maybe two to the device you use. The interface on the iPhone and iPod for their Audiobooks navigation is annoying – titles only. So I’ve taken to storing them as Music, so I can navigate like so:

1. Music
2. Genres
3. Audibooks or Radio for radio shows
4. Author as Artist
5. Series name or Title as Album
6. Title Part N

I also keep a set of playlists based on the intended listener:

• Book Queue New

- for my new books. I keep them here to get around to them in some sort of order, whatever I feel like. I find that if a book is too dark or too much work, I only listen to it on the way to work and prefer something lighter for the trip home.

• Book Queue Reread

- for the lighter books or just anything I feel like I want to come back to soon.

• Book Queue Kids

- The public library has lots of audibooks geared toward the short set. I’ve picked up some for them and put them in here so we can get to them on the school run. They loved the Star Wars Radio Shows I got a couple years ago and a Peter Pan radio play.

So if Apple ever offers Audiobooks the same navigation, I’ll switch them back, but it’s a simple change.

Each publisher has different policies when dealing with the track length, and the books you get from the public library could be chapter divisions or they could be disc divisions, or something else entirely. Enter Audiobook Builder by Splasm software. It does exactly what I want it to do – combine lots of different little chapter or whatever files into a single set of m4b audiobook format files for iTunes. Bingo! Well worth the $10 I paid for it three years ago.

So now that I have my books and can listen to them and they aren’t 6 bizillion little files, I pop them into iTunes and the silence is gone. I have recovered – and the only thing I had to buy (but already owned, so no expense for me) was Audiobook Builder. $10 for a serious pile of audiobooks.

So I guess that’s the conclusion as well. I have a lot of credits for the things I can’t get from the Library, and the Library does a spectacularly efficient job of giving me access to books I can hear.Happy listening!