In preparation for our camping trips this year, I’ve been buying one or two children’s audiobooks on Audible to keep the boys entertained during the car journeys. I’ve been really impressed with Audible, they have a great collection, are reasonably priced and really simple to use – just buy, download and they automatically go into iTunes into a nice Audiobooks library folder. The iPod then downloads it when you sync and away you go.

However, we’ve also been given a couple of free audiobook CDs plus I have some other ones that the kids have been given as birthday presents. It would be lovely to have them on the iPod too rather than having to faff with remembering to take the CDs and swapping them around during the journey. However, when you rip them into iTunes, you end up with lots of little track files of about 3 minutes long and they just end up in the Music folder not the Audiobooks library, which then get shuffled out of order (as that’s the way I have my music set up to sync to my iPod).

After a little research, though, I have managed to find a way to get them as one big track into the Audiobooks folder and make them bookmarkable (i.e. when you stop half way through, it remembers where you got to, even if you listen to something else in between). Here’s how you do it.

1. If you are a Mac user, download and install (following the instructions on the site) the Make Bookmarkable script from Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes. It’s really quick, hassle free and doesn’t mess anything up.
2. Put the CD in with iTunes open. Click ‘No’ when it asks you if you want to import.
3. Select all the tracks on the CD with your mouse (shift left-click) then go to Advanced>Join CD Tracks. This will make it into one big track instead of lots of teeny tiny tracks. Now you can click ‘Import CD’ at the bottom right of iTunes.
4. One the CD has been fully imported, you need to find it in your music library. Search for it so its the only track showing. Check that you have the ‘Kind’ column showing in the display (if not, right click on the grey bar with the column headings and check ‘Kind’).
5. If the ‘Kind’ is already an AAC audio file you can skip this step, otherwise, select the track with your mouse and go to Advanced>Convert Selection to AAC. This may take a while, but when it’s done delete the old MP3 track leaving only the new AAC audio file remaining.
6. You may notice that the title and artist fields are a bit messed up. Time to fix that. Right click on the track and select Get Info. Go to the Info tab and amend the name and artist as appropriate. If there are multiple CDs I like to put a “Part 1″ or “Part 2″ etc at the end of the title. I also tend to put the book author in the “Artist” field and the book narrator in the “Composer” field. Change the Genre to “Audiobook”. In the ‘Options’ tab make sure to check ‘Remember playback position’ and ‘Skip when shuffling’. If you want a nice little picture to show up for the icon, go to the “Artwork” tab and upload a scan of the CD cover (or use any other picture you feel is appropriate). Click OK when you’re done
7. Last step now, I promise! Mac Users: see the little curly script icon between the ‘Window’ and ‘Help’ menus? Click on that with the file selected and use ‘Make Bookmarkable’ – that’s the script you installed in step 1. Click ‘Proceed’ and then ‘Thanks’ when it’s finished. Don’t panic when the file disappears – it’s been moved! Click on Audiobooks library and you will see your Audiobook file in all its glory! Windows Users: you will need to close iTunes, then find the file in your “My Music” directory and change the file extension to “.m4b” this should hopefully do the same thing. Job done!

Now, that may look a little long winded but it’s much quicker than it looks. Once you’ve installed the script in step 1 you only need to use steps 2-7 for any other audiobook CD you have and it makes listening to them on your iPod a whole lot easier.