Getting iTunes and your iPod to treat audio books as audio books — not some random playlist of songs — can be a struggle. Here's how to do it.

Digital audio books come in all shapes and sizes. You can purchase them online from sites like Audible, eMusic, and iTunes. You can download free audio books from places like Archive.org. Or, you can rip audio books to your computer from CD. Unfortunately, no matter where your digital audio books come from, getting iTunes and your iPod to treat them as an audio book — not some random playlist of songs — can be a struggle.

If you've ever purchased an audio book through iTunes, you may have noticed that the file appears in a separate audio book tab in your media library. Keeping your audio books separate from your music library not only makes them easier to find, but it also prevents chapters of Crime and Punishment from popping up in a party music playlist.

iTunes even treats the playback of audio books differently than music playback, allowing you to adjust the playback speed of the file and automatically resume any previously played chapter where it left off instead of starting at the beginning.

You don't have to purchase your audio books from Apple to get the special iTunes audio book treatment. By tweaking a few settings, you can make iTunes and your iPod recognise any audio file or group of audio files as an audio book. To find out how, take a look at our step-by-step guide to creating audio books in iTunes. Note that this tutorial requires Tunes 8.0.1 or higher.

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To create an audio book file in iTunes, first import the audio you want to use. This could mean ripping an audio book from CD, downloading an audio book from the Web, or even recording your own audio book using an application such as Audacity. Whatever it is, drag and drop the audio into iTunes or import it using iTunes' "Add file to Library" or "Add folder to Library" commands, found in the iTunes File menu.

(Photo credit: Donald Bell, CNET.com)

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