Apple Books Not Importing My Audiobook Library

Also having similar issues with my audiobook library being located on an external drive. All the threads I’ve read suggest it’s not possible to have this arrangement with the new Books. Many of my books are from non-Apple sources and losing the ability to edit book details is disappointing. It seems that a lot of the functionality that was available before has been lost, i.e. I used the smart folders to sort my collections, now you have to drag and drop what you want into each collection. I’ve got too many books to be interested in work arounds or re-converting them and importing them back into music, which has its own issues. Books has been pretty disappointing so far. Is it likely some of these issues will be fixed? If not, I’ll probably be looking for an alternative app. I’d appreciate any suggestions.

When I import audiobooks using "File --> Add to Library" or by dragging the files, Books scrambles the tracks out of order. I'm importing audiobooks from a folder containing each chapter as an MP3. I can't find a way to reorder the files in Books, do you know a way around this?

Did your audiobooks show up in the Audiobooks section of iTunes before you upgraded to Catalina? If so, they should have moved to Books the first time you launched the Books app in Catalina. If that process failed, then you can try running it again via the "File --> Move Audiobooks from iTunes" menu item. If that that menu item doesn't exist then kill Books and then launch it again while holding down the option key. You'll get a window where you can select your iTunes library. Note that Books wants you to select the top-level iTunes folder, not the folder that holds the actual audiobook files. Default location for that folder is /Users/<username>/Music/iTunes.

Alternatively, you can import the audiobooks directly via "File --> Add to Library" or by dragging the files, or the folder that contains the files, onto the Books library.

In both cases, Books is going to copy the audiobook files from your external drive to the local drive. I don't think there's a way around that.