The iPod is a music and movies player, but people can listen to audiobooks and other spoken-work content, while commuting, jogging or exercising. Audiobooks are either complete or abridged recordings of books, which are read out loud and recorded. Sometimes the author himself reads the book, like Bill Clinton’s My Life, and the late Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Others are read by famous actors, like John Lithgow’s reading of Michael Crichton’s Disclosure and Joe Mantegna’s readings of Robert B. Parker’s mysteries.

Usually, these are read by professional readers whose purpose is to make a book sound as compelling as it is on paper. After purchasing CD audiobooks, you can import them into iTunes and listen on your iPod like other digital audio. The Ipod audio books from the iTunes Music Store or Audible.com are created as one or two files lasting ten hours each, making them easier to listen and manage in your iTunes Library.

Buying audio books on-line

It is good to know your options as these can be expensive, costing more than paper books. Audible.com provides the same quality of audio book content that the iTunes Music Store sells, apart from Audible’s broader selection of non-book audio programs and its monthly subscription that includes either one book a month for $15 or any two Ipod audio books for $22 a month.

You can only buy individual titles from the iTunes Music Store. Fans of audiobooks will view this as a great deal; you spend more than that for most individual audiobooks on CD or from the iTunes Music Store. Yet, if you only want single audiobook without a monthly subscription, check both places: on some books, the iTunes Music Store is much cheaper than Audible.

You can rip audiobooks from CDs to use in iTunes and iPod. For maximum benefit, you have to choose a format for importing, join tracks on the CD, and make the files able to be bookmarked. When you sync audio books to your iPod, they appear in one of two places. If they are bookmarked, they appear in the Music > Audiobooks menu automatically, though they are not in that genre. They also show up by genre, artist or "song". If they cannot be bookmarked, you will have to search for them from these latter menus.

You play Ipod audio books like other audio files, but bookmarked audio books give you an extra advantage. This is going to the iPod’s Settings menu and selecting Audio books which let you choose a different speed for the playback or change the speed of a droll or hyper reader: Faster or Slower. The played file’s speed changes, not the voice. The distortion noticed is not a problem.

This change can also be made as you’re listening to Ipod audio books. After they start playing, press the Select button thrice. Run your finger around the scroll wheel clockwise to make it ‘Faster’; scroll the other way to return to ‘Normal’, or to change it to ‘Slower’.