Here's a clean ASCII version of the article without those pesky =20 ASCII
codes getting in the way.

Kelly



The Wall Street Journal

March 19, 2003


THE MOSSBERG SOLUTION

By: Walter S. Mossberg

Service Lets You Download Audio Books Off the Web

You Can Have Your  iPod Read You 'War and Peace' While You Drive

    If you travel often -- whether commuting to work or jetting away on
vacation -- you may be fond of audiobooks. But anyone who listens to
these books on tape or CD knows that buying them can get expensive,
renting and returning them via the mail can be cumbersome and
time-consuming, and borrowing them from a library limits your selection.

    Audible Inc. aims to change that. Its Web site, www.audible.com,
sells downloadable audio literature, including books and subscriptions
to newspapers, magazines, radio and original programs. You can get a
book this way in a very short time after making a decision without
juggling any tapes or CDs, and without using the mail.

    These downloads can be purchased a la carte or in monthly membership
programs. Once downloaded, the media can be played back directly on a
computer, burned onto CDs or uploaded onto one of 14 mobile devices,
including Apple' s iPod and Audible's own player, Otis.

    You can buy audio books one at a time from Audible , ranging from
$6.95 to $24.95. Or, you can buy one of two Audible membership plans,
called BasicListener and PremiumListener. The $14.95 monthly
BasicListener membership includes one subscription and one audiobook
every month, while the $19.95 monthly PremiumListener membership allows
you two audiobooks per month. If you sign up for a 12-month commitment
to either plan, you get the $119 Otis player free.

    So this week, my assistant Katie and I rested our eyes and gave
Audible .com a listen. Audible is Windows and Mac compatible, and we
tried it out on both operating systems. In Windows, you must first
download special AudibleManager listening software. On the Mac, the
downloads are managed directly in Apple's iTunes jukebox program along
with your music.

    The AudibleManager screen is divided into three boxes. A panel on
the left organizes all of your downloads into folders such as Audio
Inbox, Subscriptions and Trash. The top right portion of the screen
displays the folder that you have opened, and the bottom right of the
screen shows the programs that are copied onto your Otis player when it
is plugged into the USB port, or files that you are burning to CD.

    [photo] Otis player (in hand). Price: Free with 12-month commitment,
$119 alone. Audible .com (on screen). BasicListener. Price: $14.95 per
month, includes one audiobook and one subscription. PremiumListener.
Price: $19.95 per month, includes two audiobooks.

    Audible content comes in four different quality formats for
downloading (labeled 1, 2, 3 and 4), and each format takes up a
different amount of space on your PC. The Otis player holds 64MB, runs
on battery and is about an inch smaller than the iPod, which measures
about the size of a deck of cards. The iPod is vastly roomier, holding
from five to 20 gigabytes, and is rechargeable.

    In format 3, Otis's highest-quality format, the player can hold
about three three-hour books, while a 5GB iPod can hold 208 three-hour
books in the same format. If files are copied in the 5GB iPod's
highest-quality format, 4, it can hold 104 three-hour books.

    Otis's setup is simple, with a monochrome screen that displays the
title, time remaining and track information for your audio. Volume and
section-advancing adjustments are on its left side, while a hold button
and USB port are on the right.

    You can choose from a list of 20,000 titles on Audible's Web site.
The content is well organized at the top of the site into categories
such as fiction, foreign language, kids, radio and exclusives. You can
also browse lists like New York Times bestsellers, award winners and
Oprah's picks, or just use the search box. Almost every title includes a
short paragraph or two of description, as well as customer reviews and
ratings. You can even listen to a sample of each book before buying. We
liked having the freedom to browse through selections before ever
entering any credit-card information.

    Katie finally decided on "The Vagina Monologues," Eve Ensler's
popular one-woman play. Instead of buying the audiobook alone for
$11.95, she chose to buy a BasicListener membership for $14.95, which
includes one book and one subscription. She entered her name, e-mail,
country of residence, username and password, and then entered
credit-card information for purchasing the membership. She then
downloaded the title on the iMac, and it dropped into iTunes. When she
logged onto Audible on the Windows computer, the "My Library" section of
her account showed that she had purchased "The Vagina Monologues," and
could download it again onto her Windows PC.

    Audible does limit your use of each book to two computers to prevent
mass redistribution. But once a file is purchased, it remains in your
account and can be downloaded or transferred over and over again on
those two machines.

    On the iMac, I burned the audiobook onto CD, but the process wasn't
as easy as it should be. I first had to create a separate play list that
contained the audiobook file. I then had to manually adjust the start
and stop time to properly burn the first CD because one CD holds about
70 minutes worth of audio, and this audiobook is an hour and 44 minutes
long. I used a second disk to burn the rest of the file, but had to
manually enter the start and stop time, which I wrote down on a piece of
paper.

    Copying "The Vagina Monologues" onto my iPod was a snap -- I just
plugged it in, and the file automatically copied onto the player.
However, files copied and burned from Audible on a Mac don't show
tracks, or chapters, and instead group the whole book into one track.
Audible plans to release more Mac-friendly solutions in April.

    Katie listened to "The Vagina Monologues" on the iPod during her
commute to and from work on the DC Metro at rush hour, and found herself
laughing out loud at its hysterical stories. Needless to say, she got
some weird looks from other commuters condemned to riding in silence.

    She found that burning a book to disk on the Windows PC was a much
more automatic process, complete with a message that told her the
download wouldn't fit onto one disk. The software automatically adjusted
the start and stop times and notified her to insert the second CD.
Windows computers also enable tracks to show up in files when they're
burned and copied onto players, and they also let you print custom
labels for your CDs

    We also tested the Audible Otis player (which is both Mac and PC
compatible) by uploading "The Vagina Monologues" onto the player. Katie
used the AudibleManager software to drag and drop the file from the
computer to the Otis, and it worked without a problem.

    For the subscription part of her BasicListener membership, Katie
chose a daily subscription to National Public Radio's daily program,
"Fresh Air." By 6 a.m. EST from Monday through Friday, a copy of this
program was automatically added to her "My Library" section under "new
subscription programs."

    Overall, Audible provides a smart, highly flexible alternative to
standard books on tape or CD, especially for people who are comfortable
with PCs and the Internet, and who love small digital audio players.

    -- With reporting by Katherine Boehret

    Write to Walter S. Mossberg at

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    Updated March 19, 2003


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