A guide to successfully using third party audiobooks with the fantastic Audible app

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Atinkoriko
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A guide to successfully using third party audiobooks with the fantastic Audible app

Postby Atinkoriko » Wed Apr 12, 2017 12:31 am

First of all, a small disclaimer. This is, as far as I know, 100 percent legal. The audiobooks are obtained from the public domain and as far as I know, Audible does not prohibit the use of its free app this way.

Secondly, this guide is for iPhone users only who have ITunes installed on their computers.


Why the Audible app? For me personally, I find it much easier to use. The interface is very pleasing to use, you can add bookmarks to the audiobook at any time, it saves your progress and allows you to pick up from where you left off, it allows easy skipping back and forth, and the most important thing for me at least; it allows you to set the narration speed ie slow it down (0.75x) or speed it up (1.25x, 1.5x.....3x).
It also tracks your listening stats and provides a nifty graph.

In summary, a pretty neat audiobook app.


The steps
1. Get the app and install it, if you don't have it already.


2. Get the third party audiobook and download it

You can get one from the excellent www.librivox.org, if you didn't know that already.
Personally, I also use the clipconverter Google Chrome extension to get some audiobooks directly from Youtube. With one click, the video is converted to mp3 and downloaded to my computer.
Absolutely fantastic resource, Youtube, especially for languages which tend to have fewer official audiobooks made by professional voice actors and more user made content.
For example, here is a reading of Thucydides's Peloponnesian War read by someone proficient in Ancient Greek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s615M_0b00 .

Get the extension here => http://www.clipconverter.cc/addon/


3. Fire up iTunes.

a. Import the mp3 into ITunes.
Just open the Downloads folder or wherever your mp3 was downloaded to, and drag the file directly into ITunes. Easy peasy.

b. Right click on the dragged down file and select 'Get Info'

c. It should open up another dialog box. Do not be overwhelmed but skip over to 'Options'.

d. At the 'Options' tab, you'll see 'Media kind'. This will display 'Music'.

e.Click on that and change it to 'Audiobook'

f. [Optional] Directly below, you'll see 'Equaliser' set to 'None'. You can click on this and select 'Spoken Word' but this is not entirely necessary, as it's more a question of improving the quality of the recording.

e. Select 'Ok'

f. The file will disappear but do not be alarmed. Simply go to the 'Audiobook' section of your Tunes library and you will see it there as an audiobook.



4. Connect your iPhone to iTunes.

a. After your phone's been recognised as usual, go to your new audiobook.

b. Right click on the audiobook and you see the option 'Add to Device'. Select your iPhone and the audiobook will be added to your phone.


5. This is the final step.

a. Open up the Audible app.

b. Go to 'My Library'

c. There, at the top you'll see 'Cloud', 'Device', 'iTunes'

d. Select 'iTunes' and you'll see your audiobook there.

e. Success!



6. Other tips to make the experience more enjoyable. A notable missing feature is the lack of chapters that usually accompanies an Audible audiobook. There are two ways around this.

a. If you're getting the book from Librivox, you can download it chapter by chapter. This effectively solves the problem.

b. If not , do not despair. You can simply skip through the book and place the bookmarks yourself ie if Chapter 1 ends at 27.00, you place a bookmark there with the very convenient 'Place bookmark' button etc. In fact, you can place bookmarks every paragraph if you like, since you can name your bookmark and add some notes to it. If you want to access your bookmark, simply click the '.......' button and you'll see 'Bookmarks' in the drop down menu.

In fact, the app has a special 'Button free' feature where you can swipe left to rewind 30 seconds, swipe right to go forward 30 seconds and swipe vertically to add a bookmark.



In conclusion, it is far easier than it looks and I've tried to break it down as simply as I can. I spent half the day trying to figure this out and I hope this guide will spare you virtually all of the frustration I felt initially.

If you do encounter any problems, please do not hesitate to point them out in this thread.

Good luck and I hope this is helpful.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: A guide to successfully using third party audiobooks with the fantastic Audible app

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Wed Apr 12, 2017 6:55 pm

Atinkoriko wrote:
a. Import the mp3 into ITunes.
Just open the Downloads folder or wherever your mp3 was downloaded to, and drag the file directly into ITunes. Easy peasy.

b. Right click on the dragged down file and select 'Get Info'

c. It should open up another dialog box. Do not be overwhelmed but skip over to 'Options'.

d. At the 'Options' tab, you'll see 'Media kind'. This will display 'Music'.

e.Click on that and change it to 'Audiobook'

f. [Optional] Directly below, you'll see 'Equaliser' set to 'None'. You can click on this and select 'Spoken Word' but this is not entirely necessary, as it's more a question of improving the quality of the recording.

e. Select 'Ok'

f. The file will disappear but do not be alarmed. Simply go to the 'Audiobook' section of your Tunes library and you will see it there as an audiobook.


If 'Audiobooks' does not appear in the drop-down list under the library items near the top left corner of the page (Music is first on my list), click the right arrow, thus ( > ), to get more sections. If that doesn't work, click on the left arrow ( < ).
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: A guide to successfully using third party audiobooks with the fantastic Audible app

Postby Atinkoriko » Thu Apr 13, 2017 1:02 pm

Please if you guys encounter any further problems with this, or think improvements can be made, please do post about it.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: A guide to successfully using third party audiobooks with the fantastic Audible app

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Mon Jan 18, 2021 10:47 pm

Atinkoriko wrote:First of all, a small disclaimer. This is, as far as I know, 100 percent legal. The audiobooks are obtained from the public domain and as far as I know, Audible does not prohibit the use of its free app this way.
Secondly, this guide is for iPhone users only who have ITunes installed on their computers.
. . . .

b. Go to 'My Library'
c. There, at the top you'll see 'Cloud', 'Device', 'iTunes'
d. Select 'iTunes' and you'll see your audiobook there.

This has changed, at least on my iPod.
Near the top you'll see 'All Titles' 'Not Started' 'Started' 'Downloads'. Select 'Downloads' and you'll see your audiobook there.
Note you may not see the audiobook right away, and this iPod layout (as of iOS 14.3) may differ from an iPhone.
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson


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