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Making eBooks Work, Part 4: Audible

Okay, I have a confession to make. Not only am I a supporter of an electronic book format that requires the activation of a book to a specific device, but I'm absolutely hooked on it. I buy at least five of these books each and every month, I've been doing it for almost two years straight, and I can't stop.

Such is the power of Audible. I love ebooks, but hey, I'm a busy guy. I'm lucky most days to carve out half an hour or so for leisure reading (after digging through email and AvantGo) which means it would take forever to slog through things like Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (a tome topping 3MB of plain ASCII text).

But like most Americans, I spend a lot of time each day in my car. (Unless you live in Manhattan, we're a very spread out country.) I also try to stay fit by walking, usually 45 minutes out of my lunch hour. That's at least two hours a day, more if traffic here in Denver gets clogged up because of something as cataclysmic as light rain showers, that reading an ebook could get me hit by a car, but also time where much of my brain could be processing a good book. So what's the solution if you want to experience a book but don't have the chance to read?

Have someone else read to you.

I've been a fan of audio books in general for a long time. I've got a decent collection of books on tape (pre-dating books on CD, though as you'll see below, we may have come full circle on that one). Like many people, I was hesitant at first to have books "read" to me, but it really works, especially in situations were your conscious mind doesn't have to focus on the matter at hand, like walking, working out or commuting. I can't listen to books at work, or even sitting at home, because my mind always moves on to other things in those situations, but when I'm on the go, I always make sure I have a good book to keep me company. I'm about 7 hours into the unabridged (50+ hour) version of Atlas Shrugged right now, and I'm enjoying it immensely, though it's a book I've never been able to make any headway into in print.

For all the advantages of audio books, they've always been somewhat cumbersome. Whether on tape or CD, an unabridged book frequently takes eight hours or more to get through. That's at least six tapes or seven CDs. Then add the bulk of a portable tape or CD player, and it becomes a not inconsiderable additional encumbrance, especially for today's mobile professionals.

Enter Audible.com, where audiobooks go digital. Audible provides audiobooks as downloadable digital files that can be played on MP3 players, laptops and PDAs. Atlas Shrugged, all 50 hours of it, would be nearly impossible to carry around as 50 CDs, but it only takes up about 100MB on a CF card the size of a matchbook. I can listen to it in Microsoft Reader on my Pocket PC, and I don't have to carry around any additional hardware that I wouldn't ordinarily have with me, other than a pair of earbuds.

Audible books come in four formats, each ideally suited for different needs. Format 1 is the smallest in term of file size, coming in at about 2MB per hour of audio. This massive compression leads the books to a somewhat synthetic sound, with noticeable digital artifacts in the audio playback. I'm okay with this, as I'm still limited to a 128MB storage card, most of which is filled with Palm Digital ebooks. For those that want a little better sound and can handle a little larger file size, Format 2 is generally the best compromise. The sound is noticeably better than Format 1 with about 50% larger files. Formats 3 and 4 are larger still with even better sound quality, Format 4 approaching both the file size and sound quality of MP3s.

The format you pick also depends on your listening device of choice. Audible supports Pocket PCs, Handspring Visors (with an Audible Springboard card) and most MP3 players for listening on the go. Not all listening devices support all formats, however. While Microsoft Reader on the desktop supports all for formats, the Pocket PC version supports only Formats 1 and 2. The Audible Otis, a digital audio player designed specifically for listening to Audible books (it also plays MP3 and WMA files) supports Formats 2 and 3, but not 1. Make sure you know what formats your device supports and don't download something you can't actually play.

While Audible provides a downloadable Player for the Pocket PC, I don't use it. I'm still limited to a 32MB device (and will remain so if I switch to the T-Mobile) and try to keep my installed third party software in RAM to a bare minimum. Audible Player is nice, but it isn't necessary. Instead, I listen to Audible books exclusively through Microsoft Reader, but with a twist. The downside to listening to Audible via Microsoft Reader is that Reader doesn't support hardware controls the same way as Audible Player, forcing you to use the stylus to make adjustments on the go. I've found that if I run Windows Media Player first, and map the up/down hardware buttons to volume and the action button to toggling the screen on and off, I can make most of the quick adjustments I need without ever reaching for the stylus or even looking at the screen. I can control the volume, rewind to catch something I missed and turn on the screen for more control with just hardware buttons.

Speaking of keeping the screen off while listening, I highly recommend this. You'll be amazed how little listening to books for hours on end affects your battery life if the screen is completely off.

Whether you listen via Audible Player or Microsoft Reader, on a Pocket PC or MP3 player, you're going to have to deal with Audible's digital rights management. Audible uses a DRM system remarkably similar to the oft-maligned DRM5 in Microsoft Reader. Every book you download is encoded with your account information, and unless your listening device is activated to the same account, the book will not play. You only have so many activations, although Audible's desktop Audible Manager program does make it fairly easy to deactivate one device before activating another. You can still run out, though, if you end up having to hard reset your Pocket PC without having a chance to deactivate it first, at which point you have to call Audible and have them reset your activations.

While I find this process odious with ebooks, for some reason it's never really bothered me with Audible. I think the reason is the ability to deactivate devices. Even though I'm down to one working activation (I think you're allowed three, and I've had two hard resets, but never bothered to have Audible reset them), I can switch at will between listening on my Jornada, my Toshiba e570 and my Audible Otis without incident or the intervention of anyone but myself. Microsoft Reader and Mobipocket don't make the process as easy for ebooks. While I'd still prefer no DRM at all or consumer-trusting DRM like Palm Digital's, device-locked DRM can be tolerable if the user is allowed to manage his own devices.

That said, you don't even need a digital media player to liste to Audible books if you don't want to. Most of Audible's books support a relatively new featuure in Audible Manager to allow the burning of books to audio CDs that can be played in any CD player. That's right, if you have a CD player in your car and primarily listen to audiobooks while commuting, you can just burn them to CD and not worry about all the activation nonsense. This takes us back full circle to the old days of audiobooks on CD, but at least it saves you a trip to the bookstore. By the way, if you're going to do this, Format 4 sounds the best.

In addition to saving a trip to the bookstore, listening to audiobooks from Audible could save you money, whether you burn them to CD or not. If you expect to listen to at least one audiobook every month, Audible provides Frequent Listener subscription programs that allow you to download one or two books a month for a flat price. Want the new Stephen King unabridged for $12.95 instead of $24.95? This is the way to do it. I've been a Frequent Listener member for almost two years, and I've always come out ahead, getting more listening material out of Audible than the $19.95 they charge me would have bought outright.

If you already own a Pocket PC or MP3 player, Audible puts to rest once and for all the excuse, "I don't have time to read." And never forget that writers get better as much by reading widely as writing constantly. Writers, you owe it to your craft to read more, so listen.