4 Reasons Why Audio Books in Audiotape Format Might be More Popular Than CD Format

In spite of the great popularity of CDs, many people still prefer audio cassettes above CD’s, especially when it comes to listening to audio books.

Here are some reasons why:

1. Audio books on audio cassette contain as much as 90 minutes of content but on CD format they are restricted to no more than 75 minutes of narration. It is possible I know, to have the entire audio book spread out over a number of CDs, but you would then have to carry around a number of CDs for each audio book. So, while you might need a few audio cassettes for a particular audio book, you would need many more CDs for the same audio book.

2. People don’t like to spend the extra needed to buy CD audio books when they can get them for less in audio cassette format. An example being, the full-length version of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” on 12 audiotapes can be bought for just $31.96 on the Barnes & Noble website, the CD version at Barnes & Noble costs almost twice as much as that amount - exactly $55.96 for 17 sets of CDs! Of course, its not that they are ripping you off - it’s just that it costs much more to produce CDs than it does to produce audio cassettes.

3. If you turn off your CD player whilst listening to an audio book, you will not pick up listening from the same spot that you turned off . With a cassette of course, you will continue from the exact position that you finished listening. With CDs it used be exasperating when listening to them in your vehicle because, every time that you turn off your car, it would mean having to start at the beginning of the audio book and trying to establish exactly where you were before you stopped your car. Of course with the more modern and advanced CD players they now save your precise location in the audio book as you turn off your car, thereby allowing you to take up again from the exact same spot that you left off. This won’t work when you turn off the car AND take out the CD. But it will work with an audio cassette!

4. Audio books are in the main narration, but many users don’t see why they should pay extra buying CDs for better recording quality when they can get near enough the same sound quality with audio cassettes.
The debate is that if it was just sound “quality” they wanted, they would go for audio books in CD format, but sound quality is virtually the same with audio cassettes and CDs when it comes to audio books.

However with the advances in computers and their increased mobility and compactness the future popularity of audio books looks assured.

Graham Winmill belives Audio Books are more popular than ever due to the increased use of mp3, portable players and iPods. Find out about more interesting content for your portable players at
http://www.the-audio-book-shop.com

Audio Books, Something Educational To Use Your MP3 Player For

The MP3 player and other devices have become very popular. The many advancements that have been made in terms of technology are amazing. We have much more technology now than we did just five or ten years ago. The technology industry is always coming out with something new and improved. All these devices are to make our lives easier. We can do so much with the technology we have, and it will just continue to become more advanced.

The MP3 player is one of the many technologies that has grown rapidly in popularity. Your MP3 player allows you to take your music with you anywhere. Many people enjoy listening to their music, and this allows you to do so where ever you want. You can listen to your favorite songs while at work, or jogging, or exercising, without disturbing anyone else. They are small enough to stick in your pocket and be out of the way. No bulky walkmans to carry around anymore.

Time seems to be something many people feel they do not have enough of. We are so busy doing so many things it is sometimes hard to get everything done, or find time to do everything we want to do. Reading is one such thing that many people do not have time for. Finding the time to sit down and read a book can be very difficult in today’s busy world. After going to work all day, and cooking, and cleaning, and taking care of the kids it is hard to make time for reading. After getting everything else done you are ready to just go to bed.

The MP3 player may have a solution to your problem. You can now download audio books for free off the internet. You can visit one of the many sites available and get an audio book. By doing this you can be listening to your book instead of reading it. Now you can get your reading in while you are cleaning, or cooking supper, or on the drive to work. This is a great way for you to keep up on your reading and still keep up with the rest of your busy life.

There are many sites that offer these free audio books. Some sites offer only certain categories, while others have a wider variety. You can find audio books of the Bible, or scripture readings if that is what you would like. You can also find classic books, or science fiction, or more modern novels, or even children books, or rhymes. Whatever you are looking for you can find. You can many options available to you.

Next time you want to read a book, but don’t think you have the time you may want to think again. Just remember that there is a wide variety of audio books available for you to download for your MP3 player for free.

Gregg Hall is an author living in Navarre Beach Florida. Find more about this as well as audio books at http://www.bargainbookstoreonline.com

Busy With No Time To Read a Book?

For most of us who are business people, we love to improve our business acumen via reading and taking courses, but we lack the time to do so.

This is where audio books have come to play a very important role in our lives.

As a business person, you can now use the amazing value inherent in listening to audio books. You won’t have to worry about not having the time or will to flip through the pages of a book.

With an audio book you can enjoy the same value of any business book when preparing to go to work in the morning, when commuting to and from work, etc.

If you are at a loss for the specific business audio books to go for, below are 6 of some of the best that any business person should listen to:

1. E-Myth Mastery by Michael E. Gerber

Michael E. Gerber, the world’s leading small business guru and bestselling author of the phenomenally successful The E-Myth Revisited, presents the next big step in entrepreneurial management and leadership with E-Myth Mastery. This audiobook presents a practical, real-world program that can be implemented in real-time in your business.

Gerber shows that most businesses fail because of a crisis of vision that creates an inevitable cloud of misdirected activity. Presenting practical exercises to help small business owners recover their vision and passion, he clears a path for getting back to the basic disciplines for business success. The E-Myth credo — Don’t work IN your business, work ON it — is spelled out here in the seven essential disciplines followed by every leader of a world-class enterprise. Each discipline provides the leadership keys for unlocking success in the critical areas of business development:

E-Myth Mastery is the ultimate business development program that will help you recover your passion and turn your company into a world-class operation — a turn-key machine for the money and satisfaction that only a successful entrepreneur can enjoy. Get started today!

2. How to win friends and influence people - by Dale Carnegie

I don’t know about you, but the most important aspect of my business is PEOPLE. For almost every endeavor of life, especially business, we need people to keep the business going.

Not just the people that bring us sales, but also the people that make the sales possible. To be able to succeed at this, we all need to know “how to win friends and influence people”.

That’s why this incredible book by Dale Carnegie is a “must have” for any person in business.

With the power of the information contained in this book, you can learn, not just how to influence people so that they bring in more sales for your business, but most importantly how to win your friends and staff that help you make the sales possible.

Now in audio book format, you can enjoy this book from the comfort of your car while commuting to and from your job.

3. It’s not the big that eat the small… it’s the fast that eat the slow - by Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton

In today’s business, one of the single most common words that we need to embrace is “CHANGE”. In this era where what was the latest yesterday is no longer the latest today, we need to constantly be ready to embrace change.

This audio book by Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton, provides you with all of the information on how to keep your company afloat, despite the ever-changing nature of business today.

Asserting that the fastest organizations in the world today will be those that will thrive, this audio book shows you how to make your company or business among the fastest, using the power of commerce, deployment of resources and good management of people.

4. Management Challenges for the 21st Century - by Peter F. Drucker

When it comes to business management and leadership, one name stands tall in any gathering of experts. That name is Peter F. Drucker.

Being an expert of the industry and writing about it for a staggering 80 years, Drucker is not just talking from theory. He has been there and done that, when it comes to business and management.

This audio book thoroughly examines how business people can handle the management challenges that the 21st century ushers.

5. Jack: Straight from the Gut - by Jack Welch

There’s no denying the fact that Jack Welch is one of the world’s most successful CEOs ever.

In this powerful thought-provoking audio book, he tells his story detailing how you can follow his steps to become one of the most successful persons in your career today.

6. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap - by Jim Collins

You can’t argue with the fact that “without the techniques and strategies, no company or business can excel beyond a few days, weeks or even months”.

Businesses and companies that have stood the test of time for many years know what to do and they have done it right.

Jim Collins took the time to conduct extensive researches into how and what companies did to maintain success for many long years, while their counterparts failed within a few months or years of starting up.

The power of the information contained within this audio book can help any business person to succeed.

These 5 audio books can do a lot for your business and career if you take the time to listen to them, and apply what you will learn therein to your business and career.

To check out how you can listen to some of the #1 best seller books, visit http://www.merlionaudio.com
If you are interested in becoming an affiliate, we offer attractive commissions, you can visit http://www.merlionaudio.com

Great Places to Enjoy An Audio Book

Everyone seems to be busy and chasing after time that they never have a chance to sit down and literally read a book. The technology has done great wonders by providing audio books.

Now you don’t have to find the time to read a book after work.

Now you can have the books reading to you while you are on your way to work, when you fetch your kids to school. You can now enjoy someone reading the book to you. Isn’t that amazing?

With audio books, we also get to enjoy unique advantages of doing other things that take up our hands, but not our minds. We can now do other things like household chores, exercise, etc while still having the book read to us.

More people are embracing the wonders of audio books and are buying their favorite books in audio book version.

If you are considering buying an audio book, below are 6 of the great places you can enjoy an audio book:

1–In bed - There are certain days when we just don’t want to do anything but lie down in bed thinking of certain issues. Or we could just want to lie down in the dark until we fall asleep.

This is a great time to listen to an audio book. You wouldn’t have to bother with putting on the lights, holding the book, flipping through the pages or the stress of reading the book itself.

With an audio book, the entire book will be read to you while you stay comfortable in bed - without flipping any pages, holding the book or putting on the lights.

2–In the kitchen while doing household chores such as washing the dishes or cooking. For some people it can be very boring being in the kitchen, especially washing the dishes or other such chores.

This is a great time to enjoy an audio book because your hands are busy but your mind is free.

Instead of feeding your mind with negative thoughts during this time, an audio book would be a wonderful alternative.

3–In the garden while gardening - You can also listen to audio books while gardening. The audio book can make the gardening fun because you would be concentrating on the beauty of the audio book and not on the difficulty of gardening.

4–While exercising such as jogging - Exercising such as jogging leaves your mind open but your hands, legs and even your entire body busy. This is a great time to enjoy an audio book.

Most people perform exercises for many minutes or even hours while their minds do nothing. But listening to an audio book during this time ensures you don’t waste those times that you exercise.

Talk about killing 2 birds with one stone - exercising your body and mind at the same time!

5–On the road commuting - This could either be in your personal car or a commercial bus or train ride to work. You see, many people lose a great deal of time doing nothing while commuting to and from their jobs.

Why not use that time to listen to an audio book, especially one that develops your mind and/or improves your professional and business skills?

For example, listening to an audio book that improves your skills daily can do a lot of good to your career, instead of listening to a musical song which wouldn’t help you much in the area of skill acquisition.

6–In the air while traveling - You wouldn’t believe it, but there are many people who spend more time in the air than on road. There are professional assignments that involve traveling from one state to the other, or even from one country to the other.

If you are in such a situation, consider the enormous benefits you would get listening to audio books, especially those that can improve your professional skills.

Yes, there are many audio book courses made specifically for professionals to improve their skills in many areas of their professions.

Not only that, you can also find books on health, beauty, sex & relationships
sports, travel, hobbies, religion & spiritual books and new york’s #1 best selling books.

To check out how you can listen to some of the #1 best seller books, visit http://www.merlionaudio.com
If you are interested in becoming an affiliate, we offer attractive commissions, you can visit http://www.merlionaudio.com

Is Now The Right TIme To Ride On The Audio Books Trend

Avid book readers can now “listen”to their books while they are commuting to work or to school! Learning while you are traveling! With the advancement in digital technology,book readers are now downloading their favourite books from popular audio bookstore to their iPods and other MP3 players and it has become the next hottest trend in US and UK.

The audio books industry is the next big thing to watch out for! In UK, over $124 million worth of audio books were sold in 2004 and in Germany, over $120 million in 2005. Experts say that this year the market is expected to rise by 20% in Europe, and audio books seem to be even more popular in the USA.

According to the report from digital trends,research firm iSuppli is predicting that shipments of MP3 players are expected to rise by nearly a factor of four from 2004 to 2009 which means total MP3 player shipments will expand to 132 million units in 2009.

What’s more! According to a recent survey, in the USA a person is driving an average of 1 hour and 13 minutes daily, which means over 440 hours a year for each driver, or 11 full-time work weeks. This is huge! Imagine how many things you could learn during this time by simply having your MP3 player with audio books at hand.

Audio books is going to be the next hottest areas in publishing thanks to their convenience and ease of use

But why are audio versions a convenient way to “read” a book?

Audio books is a fast and convenient way to bring fun and expression in our books. It also help people in the development of hobbies, and enriched their knowledge such as foreign languages and other hobbies. People can remember faster when it is narrated to them.

Audio books will greatly enriching our lives, both personally and professionally.

1) You can listen to an audio book anywhere and everywhere and you can even do other things at the same time. You can listen when driving to and from work, when walking the dog, cycling, working around the house or at the computer, exercising, and so on.

2) If you love reading but don’t have a enough time, It really saves a lot of time especially when you truly want to enrich your knowledge by reading many books but just simply don’t have the time to sit down and read a book. You can listen at home while you are doing your housework, cooking, commuting to and fro from work.

3) Audio books are good for older, ill or recovering people and can be a wonderful gift for someone in a nursing institution. There are inspirational, motivational and spiritual audio books that could keep them positive and motivated about life. A positive mental health has an amazing energy to heal physically.

4) Audio books is a miracle to blind or people with impaired vision and disabled people. Everyone should have the chance to experience to enrich their knowledge and enjoy the wonders of a good book.

The most important skill a child can ever acquire is probably the ability to read and improve their vocabulary and communications when they listen to audio books while following the story in the paper book Audio books has narration and sound effects and can certainly instill your child’s love for reading and expression.

You can select a vast range of audio books from the following categories:
Arts & Drama Biography Business Crime & Thrillers Fiction Foreign Language Study Health & Recreation History Humor Juvenile Misc Radio Shows Religion & Spiritual Self Help TV & Film!

Check out New York’s best selling audio books here at the most talked about Merlion Audio Bookstore - http://www.merlionaudio.com
Find out how you can start your own audio bookstore and tap on the two billion dollar audiobook market in
http://www.merlion.com to sign up as an affiliate.

How to Get Free Audio Book Downloads and Samples

Welcome to the world of sound. Are you a good listener? Did you have a hard time learning by holding your attention focus to your school teachers years ago? Did your mind literally fly out the classroom window when you tried to be a good student and listen to your teachers years ago?

Almost all of you will find that you have grown out of the concentration problem as you got older. We settle down as we mature and can hold our concentration better. Unfortunately many people never learned to read at all. This is sad because they can never know the joy of reading and enjoying a good book. With the introduction of audio books now they can.

One of the great innovations flying out of developments on the internet is the audio e-book and free downloads and samples that come before it. The non reader can now enjoy the recent popular fiction book and adventure story that happens to be true.

An audio book is a printed book that is read to you. Just like mom, dad or big brother or sister did when we were very young.

One of the great discoveries of our time has literally been with us all along. Educators can teach us when we can pick our best learning times. The blind do not have to use Braille methods to read books, anymore, to enjoy travel adventures. So, non readers and the blind both can learn to speak languages foreign to them via audio book training modules.

These amazing audible books appeal to the deeper consciousness within us. Our minds make pictures in a very different way when we are read to by professional speakers, famous people and original authors. Books from languages we do not understand can be translated into our native languages for us to now enjoy in story book spoken form by a reader.

We can learn almost any task, at least in part, by using audible books. We can get a free book summary online from thousands of audible stories and training programs that have been put into spoken form to get a better idea of what they are all about with no charge. This way we can decide if we want to get the whole book back by downloading it.

You can get an abridged book that takes out many parts of the whole story book and just includes critical parts so you can get a lot of the meaning of it. Words will sometimes be changed to give you the meaning and gist of the book.

You can also get an unabridged book that gives you the complete spoken story, fact or fiction, of the book. For example; The Green Mile unabridged book by Stephen King that you can download, with a purchase, is thirteen hours long. This includes the whole book.

Writers and publishers will accept the lower priced audio story book version of their stories to make more money from higher volume sales of their works of art and education being sold. So this audible version will save you some money. The online web sites will sell you the stories for less than the printed hard or paper cover versions.

The downloads from the website can be burned onto your cd. Of course, you are not allowed to sell them to others or buy them and burn cds to give to others.

This is not fair to the writers or website. You are allowed to download and use them on cds, dvds, cassette tapes and other recording devices for yourself.

Cds, mp3s, dvds, ipods and cassette tapes are light and easy for you to transport anywhere. Ipods have very large capacities with new innovations so you can get a lot of product into a small spot for convenience and access. The quality of the reading sound will deteriorate very little versus old style records, tapes and other recording devices.

The way you access your audio products is usually by download. This is an easy process to learn. This is taught on the web sites that sell the books.

Some websites even have videos you can access on the website to learn how to do the downloads. They are short and easy to understand. You can email the party you buy them from with any questions about this process but this is seldom necessary.

One of the amazing parts of the downloadable internet audible book is you can download them from the website whether you live in Paris, New York, Miami, Sydney or Canton. You can now do this easily from virtually anywhere in the world. You do not have to travel to get your audio storybook.

You can get your audio e-book and free downloads and samples anytime of the night or day because they are automated on the internet. They are accessible any day or holiday of the year.

They are entertaining and they can teach you many different lessons on an oral format that does not stress your fingers, elbows, back, eyes or arms as much as printed books do. This is a new concept in learning and enjoying books that will enhance the joy of your life.

James M. Lowe has thousands of audio books for you to view with free samples.
http://www.lisneen.com/

Downloadable Audio Book Of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America

Are you proud of who you are, your conduct, self discipline and what you are as a human being and American? Do you still wear a white shirt, suit and tie to work and when you go out on a date with your girl friend or family? Are you one of the few people who curses little or not at all?

Do you sometimes wonder about who started the downhill slide in America, and the world, that started decades ago? I have found a lot of the guilty culprits in a book by Bernard Goldberg.

There is now an abridged version of this reading book that is available as an audible version in the downloadable audio book of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. They should add, the world, to this title also because the aura of civility that used to be world wide has spread, in the wrong direction, like an unhealthy virus to the whole Planet Earth.

A downloadable audio book is a printed book that has been put into an audio or sound format file. The printed versions of books started to go down about 10 years ago when young authors and their promoters or agents learned that they could literally publish whole books on line. This leveled the playing field between established and beginning authors.

A sharp difference between an audio iTunes type audio book and a printed book is the real life part of it. You can literally feel the warm, cool or heated breath of the narrator or, in this case, actual author of a book. It comes with their voice out of your pc speakers, ipod or cd.

You can hear background music that dramatizes the points the authors want to make. You are dealing with a human being committed to the content of the book so the drama deepens dramatically with their reading of their reading book with their passion added to it. This is not possible with a printed book.

Although it is an iTunes audio book and recorded you can feel the emotional fire and passion from the speakers of your pc, mp3 or ipod. There is surely no boredom here as the author, Bernard Goldberg, is clearly flaming angry at the 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. You will like the passion here as he goes through his list of these rascals one by one.

You can get a free sample of this fiery audio book that is five full minutes long. If you like it and want to know more you can get the whole full six hour abridged version of the 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America on an audio book that is downloaded from the web site promoting it in an mp3 format. If you are as straight laced as I am you will be disappointed and angry with the people who have made this loser list.

In this reading book audio version you will listen to Bernard Goldberg as he takes dead aim at the America bashing cultural elites who look down their snobby noses at ordinary Americans, and people of all countries, and detest so much of what this country is all about. The Hollywood Blowhards who are incredibly dizzy celebrities who think they are smart because they are famous.

Also featured are TV Schlockmeisters, including the one whose show has been compared to a churning mass of maggots devouring rotten meat. Included are the Intellectual Thugs, big wigs at some of our best colleges, whose views run the gamut from left wing to far left wing.

Goldberg does name names, profiling the villains in his rogue gallery, one by one, from 100 down or up to the number one jerk. You know who is number 37.

Goldberg does not just round up the usual suspects we have come to know and get angry at. He also reveals some of the people who operate away from the limelight but still manage to yank a lot of strings and do all sorts of harm to the American and World culture.

This downloadable audio book of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America is a serious reading book because it reveals those who endanger what is left of our civil lifestyle in America. Sometimes it is discounted at a lower price on the web site. You can find it on the web site by clicking in the name of it in the source box at the top of the page.

Now that you know about it you can get this entertaining and unfortunately real audio book. You can listen to it piece by piece of fifteen or thirty minutes at a time and make it all your own. It can be played repeatedly so you can go back to different parts. You can also burn it onto a cd and put it on an ipod.

James M. Lowe has thousands of audio books for you to view with free samples.
http://www.lisneen.com/

Where And How You Can Find That Favorite Audio Book

Technology is a wonderful thing indeed. It makes life easier in almost every ramification. One such area in which technology has made life a lot easier is in the area of searching for information.

Gone are those days of spending long hours, days or even weeks looking for the information you want. For example, 20 years ago if you were searching for a particular book you would have to physically visit the Library.

As if that isn’t manual work enough, you would then have to spend laborious hours searching through the huge collection of books therein, all in an attempt to find the book you want. And who says you would end up getting what you want? Most times you hardly ever get the book you want, even with the help of the librarians.

But gone are those days. Now with the Internet you can find ANY information you want with just a few mouse clicks.

If for example, you are looking for a particular audio book, you can get started from the search engines. Simply visit any of the major search engines like Google and type the book title you are looking for with the word “audio book” included. By simply doing this you will be presented with the most relevant results for your search.

Specifically, you can get the particular audio book you are looking for by going directly to bookstore websites. These online bookstores have special search features on their sites which you can use to find the particular audio book title you are searching for. Using these search features on the sites is similar to using the search feature on your favorite search engine.

The major advantage is that you are searching the database of the particular bookstore (very focused search), unlike the search engines which search the entire database of websites that they have (obviously unfocused search).

To get started, visit any of online bookstore and enter the particular audio book title you are searching for. If you know the exact title or author name, put it in the search. It will be wiser to include the term “audio book” in your search query so as to get the best results.

If you exhaust these options and are unable to find that audio book that you are looking for, visit one of the many book forums on the Internet and ask for the advice of other book enthusiasts. You will be astonished that there are many people out there who know a lot and are willing to share.

Eddie Lamb provides an abundance of information on a range of topical subjects. We believe better understanding your area of interest helps your decision making process immensely. You’ll find a host of useful information about digital downloadable products at http://www.DigitalAudiosDirect.com

Audio Books - The Unfair Advantage

I didn’t believe it the first time I heard a friend of mine say -

“I benefit from the reading of 50 books each year… in my spare time”.

Knowing how demanding her time was because of her top position in her job and because she is a single mom, I was certain she was lying and I told her so.

Smiling, she insisted that it was the truth. I would have continued arguing with her until she pointed out to me that she didn’t have to physically “read” them, but they were “read” to her while she listened… in her spare time.

Not giving me any opportunity to argue, she went ahead and played an audio book on her CD player for my perusal.

She explained that this was how she had almost any book she wanted read to her as audio books while she prepared for work in the morning, while she prepared her daughter for school, while she did her exercises each day, while she commuted to and from work and any free time she had on hands that didnit involve using her mind.

I was surprised, to say the least, that I could have been doing the same thing in my spare time, instead of just commuting to and from work doing nothing.

You see, my work is one that requires a lot of my time involvement. I have to leave home quite early, spend over an hour on the road because of the constant heavy traffic and when I get to work, I work all day until break time and closing time.

From what this friend of mine explained to me, I knew I had to give audio books a try.

I did and was very impressed.

Now, I can proudly say I also benefit from the reading of up to 50 books each year.

Still don’t think it’s possible?

Fine, let’s do the math:

For an audio book that takes 4 hours, you can have it read to you in just two days - 1 hour each day while preparing for work in the morning and 1 hour each day while commuting to and from work. That’s 4 hours in 2 days.

So, if it takes you 2 days to have one audio book read to you, that will be 365 days in a year divided by 2. That will equal about 133 books each year!

That’s over double the original 50 audio books we were targeting, right?

Audio books are indeed the secret formula that many people use to get the value from the best books they want to read. With audio books, you can forget the frustration you always had whenever you force yourself to read any book.

For the bookworms back in college that want to continue reading but can’t afford the time anymore, you now have a solution in audio books.

Whether you want to use your PC, cassette tape player, CD or even any PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) iPod or MP3 player, it is now possible and within your reach for peanuts.

Eddie Lamb provides an abundance of information on a range of topical subjects. We believe better understanding your area of interest helps your decision making process immensely. You’ll find a host of useful information about digital downloadable products at http://www.DigitalAudiosDirect.com

Head To Head - Audio Books vs Downloadable Audio Books

An audio book is the recording of a person reading aloud the content of a book. These audio books are also known as talking books or spoken books.

One of the best definitions of audio-books was given by William Swanson in the article “I Hear America Reading”: Swanson says, “Audio books are one of those happy marriages of art and convenience loved by frenetic Americans. The idea … is to enable us to enjoy books - a traditionally solitary and concentration-intensive pastime - while doing something else - mowing the lawn, cruising the interstate - often in the company of others.”

Audio-books have been available for decades, becoming more popular in the 60’s as books on tape, and more recently as books on CD.

The boom of the Internet technology and high-speed Internet connections made available another breakthrough in the industry: downloadable audio-books.

Downloadable audio-books are also known as digital audio-books and that’s exactly what they are: digital versions of the audio-books. They can be listened to on a computer, on a CD player or on a portable Mp3 player.

The best advantage of downloadable audio, combined with the use of portable Mp3 players is convenience. You can listen to fiction and nonfiction best sellers, how-to books, biographies, children books and so on… while doing boring or repetitive tasks. This way, we can fill the “dead” moments we all have in our lives and increase our knowledge at the same time.

In fact, today you can find almost anything you can think of in a digital format, including radio dramas from the first decades of the 20th century.

Downloadable audio books are becoming more and more popular these days because they are also cheaper than audio books on tape or CD. And the reason is obvious: you don’t need a storage medium.

An increasing number of public libraries are now offering downloadable audio books to their members. The library members can download the audio books onto their computers and listen to them for a certain period of time (usually between one and three weeks).

Here’s how the system works:

Using Digital Rights Management (DRM) software these titles are automatically checked out and automatically checked back in on the due date. These files can be played on any computer that has Microsoft Windows Media Player (version 9+). Once downloaded, the files can also be transferred to selected portable devices (devices that support Windows Media Player) or burned to a CD.

The audio book files on the computer or portable media device become unplayable after the check in date. The CDs can still play and be used within the copyright guidelines.

So if you always say that you don’t have time to read, now you’re out of excuses. Go get yourself a cheap mp3 player and buy some downloadable audio books, or get them for free from your public library, and start enjoying the wonderful world of books … oh sorry… downloadable audio books… ;o)

Eddie Lamb provides an abundance of information on a range of topical subjects. We believe better understanding your area of interest helps your decision making process immensely. You’ll find a host of useful information about digital downloadable products at http://www.DigitalAudiosDirect.com

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