Home > Tips and Tools, lifehacks > Audiobooks in iTunes (moving files and syncing)

Audiobooks in iTunes (moving files and syncing)

I have a bunch of audiobooks that I either imported from CD or downloaded from eMusic. One problem. These audiobooks don’t show up in the audiobooks section of iTunes. Why is that important? When I sync to the iPhone, my audiobooks show up like music files and I can’t bookmark my place. Big problem.

I skip around between different books (before finishing) and don’t like to lose my place. It was such a challenge that I had been keeping note everytime I paused an audiobook with the last chapter I was listening to. There’s got to be a better way! If I could get the books into the audiobooks section of iTunes, they would automatically bookmark the last place I stopped.

Finally, I did some searching in the iTunes customer forums and found two helpful things for myself and other audiobook listeners. Here are the steps I followed to move the imported audiobooks from the music section to the audiobook section on iTunes.

1. Highlight all the files for a selected book and right click (or control-click for us Mac users). Then select “Get Info.”

get-info

2. First, changed the generic “audiobook” genre to something more specific. In this case, I chose “novel.”

genre

3. Then jump over to the “Options” tab and change file from “Music” to “Audiobook.” I also changed to yes the following: “remember position,” “skip when shuffling,” and “gapless album.”

audiobook

4. Once you click “OK,” it takes a moment for iTunes to process your files. Now they show up in “Audiobooks” instead of “Music.”

audiobook-grid

5. In order to keep from syncing all audiobooks when I sync my iPhone, I select view by list. Highlight the books I don’t want to sync, right click (control click for Mac), and choose “Uncheck selections.”

uncheck

6. Finally, I choose “Sync only checked songs and videos” under the iPhone sync screen, and I am good to go.

options1

  1. January 10, 2009 at 10:35 pm | #1

    Hi, Doug:

    I’ve been reading a GREAT introduction. Berman’s ‘Law and Revolution’.
    He was a student of ERH, and applied much of it to the history of the law in the West.
    We’re in a big crisis.
    (c) by Harvard, where he was a professor.

    Love in King Jesus,

    Chuck

  2. Sara
    May 13, 2009 at 9:12 pm | #2

    Thank you for this! I was looking and looking for how to do this! I appreciate your help!

  3. James
    June 25, 2009 at 1:18 am | #3

    Thank You !!!

    Very straight forward and to the point without all the weeding through the garbage.

    Great Job !!

  4. June 25, 2009 at 7:44 am | #4

    I am glad this helped.

  5. August 10, 2009 at 1:48 am | #5

    Excellent tips, thanks a ton!

  6. Brian
    October 12, 2009 at 1:09 pm | #6

    Stumbled on this site after a frustration search for a solution to this problem and what a simple and effective solution you provided, many many thanks!

  7. Iain
    October 24, 2009 at 5:28 pm | #7

    Thanks very much for the tips, I subsequently found that you don’t need to go and select all of the tracks, you can do it at the album level (even selecting multiple albums)

  8. October 24, 2009 at 5:41 pm | #8

    Thanks Iain. That’s helpful. I just tried it out and it works great.

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