How To Download Audible Audiobooks To An IPod Or An MP3 Player

The enhanced audiobooks on Audible sound great on an IPod or MP3 player. Learn how members and non-members can buy and move audiobooks to their devices.

For people who are not used to downloading and transferring audio books to an MP3 player, the process can be a little confusing. It’s not as easy as moving an audiobook file from a CD and transferring it to your device because Audible.com and Audible.co.uk audiobooks have copyright protection. You have to authorize devices in order to use them with Audible audiobooks. Check out book recommendations. 

How to Buy an Audiobook from Audible.com and Audible.co.uk

Audible is good but it pushes people to subscribe to their audiobook membership programs to buy books, but that is not the only way to buy an audibook from either of the Audible websites. Audible is owned by Amazon.com, so you can buy Audible audiobooks through Amazon. You can usually get the member-only price on an audiobook through Amazon’s website, so if you are just buying a single title and you do not want a membership, start at Amazon. After you choose a title on Amazon, you will be brought to the Audible site, and you can buy the book for the Amazon price.

If you are an Audible member, start at the Audible site. An Audible book credit is worth about $15 or £8, depending on your membership plan. However, Audible.com members get 30 per cent discounts on books, so a $20 audiobook would only cost $14 with the membership discount. You can only roll over 6 credits, so use your credits on books that cost more than $20.

How to Download a Book from Audible to an MP3 Player or an IPod

You need to use the Audible Manager to download audiobooks and transfer them to your MP3 player. If you are using an IPod, you have an additional step to move books to your device. First, check-in the Audible Device Center and make sure that your MP3 player is compatible with Audible. Most popular MP3 players can play Audible audiobooks; even GPS navigation devices can play audiobooks.

If your device is listed, you can use the Audible Manager to add audiobooks. The first time you do this, you will have to authorize your MP3 player to play the files.

Connect your MP3 player to your computer.

Open the Audible Manager and click on “Add New Device,” which will open a screen for you to choose your brand of the MP3 player.

Audible will have to connect to the Internet to add your MP3 player, and then it will download a small file.

Add audiobooks from your “My Library” at Audible.com to the Audible Manager by clicking “download” next to each title in the “My Library” section.

A window will pop-up to show your books downloading. Once they are downloaded to the Audible Manager, highlight a book and click “Add to Device.”

You will get a pop-up window asking for your Audible user name and password.

The books will transfer to your device once it is authorized. If you are using an IPod, you will need to transfer the books into iTunes and then move them your IPod. Sometimes iTunes automatically sees files and adds them to your iTunes library, but you can also do this manually. In iTunes, go to “File” and choose the “Add File to Library” option. You can then browse to your Audible library and transfer your audiobook file into iTunes. Before you can move your file, iTunes will prompt you for your Audible user name and password to authorize your IPod.

Some of the older iPods can not play the highest quality Audible files, but anything after the 3rd generation iPod nano can play an Enhanced Audiobook. If you are using an IPod Touch, IPhone, or IPad, you can download the Audible app to play audiobooks directly on your device without having to connect to your computer.