How to convert audiobooks for use in iTunes
Go to the iTunes' General preferences and click the "Import Settings..." button.Ensure "AAC Encoder" is selected, and then optionally set the encoding quality. The "Spoken Podcast" option should be enough for most audiobooks; however, you can use another preset or customize the settings manually if you wish.Close the preferences and select your audiobook in the iTunes window.Choose "Create AAC Version" from either the Advanced menu, or from the contextual menu by right-clicking the file.Now delete both the new and old files from the iTunes library, and when prompted be sure to move them to the Trash (do not click "Keep Files").With the files gone, go to the Trash and move the one that ends with ".m4a" to your desktop.Rename the file so it ends with ".m4b" instead of ".m4a," and then drag it to the iTunes window to re-import it.The info window in iTunes is another way to change the media type for the file.Another way to get iTunes to recognize song files as audiobooks is to use the "Options" section of the file's information window (Thanks to MacFixIt reader "Olivier" for this contribution). Select the file in iTunes and press Command-I (you can also do this with multiple songs selected), and then click the "Options" tab in the resulting information window. In this section there is a drop-down menu for "Media Kind" which you can use to select between Music, Video, Podcast, Audiobook, TV Show, iTunes U, and other options for the file. For the audiobooks, select the "Audiobook" option and the files should now show up in the Books section of iTunes as audiobooks.At this point the files should be placed in the audiobooks section in iTunes along with the rest of your audiobooks. If you use the manual conversion method and have more than one audiobook you would like to convert, first convert them all to AAC format (you can queue them up) and then delete them all at the same time so you can manage them all in the Finder in one step, instead of having to do all the steps each time for every file you want to convert.This is likely the best approach for managing audiobooks that have already been imported into your iTunes library; however, if you have books that are not already in your library then you might consider using a third-party tool for converting them before importing them into the program. Some popular options include ChapterMark ($14.95), Audiobook Builder ($9.95), and Audiobook Binder (free).Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or e-mail us!Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.
