syncing audiobooks

Check iBooks on your iPhone. For whatever reason (proprietary brain lock?) iTunes apparently prefers to transfer iTune store purchases to the iBooks app on you iPhone. I spent hours on the phone and chatting with customer service for Audible when four of my earliest and all-time favorite purchases disappeared from Audible with an error message to teh effect that I no longer owned the books in question. Right.

They can be found in the iTunes store, as available for download. But they transfer to iBooks when you connect the iPhone to the Mac via usb.

Once you find them, it's all good.

SMP

You opened itunes?

Connect iphone?

Went to the audiobooks tab?

Selected sync audiobooks and selected the books to sync?

Synced?

You purchased them from the iphone?

From the computer?

A bit confusingly, perhaps, but Audiobooks are now listed in iTunes in the Books library section, the Books tab if you connect and select your iPhone, but in the Music app, More section, Audiobooks on the iPhone itself (assuming iOS 5).

But if you are using icloud, it appears that audiobooks, whether you get them from itunes or another source, will not sync at all. This strikes me as incredibly bad PR, if nothing else, and I find it hard to believe, but nothing I seem to do works. I can put audio book chapters in a music playlist on my macbook, but getting it onto my iPhone seems impossible.

Anyone out there to correct me and shine a light on the way I have missed?

Impossible? Not at all. You can sync audiobooks via iTunes without a problem. It's just not supported by iCloud (yet). Videos are not supported either. I would assume its's a question of receiving the rights to do so from the publishers.

I got it! I was having the same problem. Here's how to get your audiobooks from iTunes 10 to your iPhone:

1. Open iTunes

2. Plug your iPhone into the computer.

3. Under your iTunes Library, click on Books

4. Select all the books you want on your iPhone by holding down control and clicking all the ones you want.

5. DRAG AND HOVER them over the iPhone icon listed on the lefthand side of iTunes. When you do this, sub-menus will pop up. DROP the selected books into the Books category.

6. You'll see at the top that iTunes is now busy syncing your books. Hooray!

I tried this, and it simply did not work.

I'm having the same problem. Audiobook on my Mac won't sync to my iPhone anymore. Do you know if this is an iCloud or iOS5 issue? Or both?

Thank you Emily - I am on a PC with Windows Vista - I had no Audiobook Tab, they were just under books - and I used your method to click and drag the audiobooks into my iPhone.

They are now in my iphone under "music".

Wish I had read this sooner - I bought the iCloud, and subscribed to Audible ... all in an effort to get to the ibooks that I had purchased. Oh well ....

But now all is okay.

Thank you Emily. I struggled for 30 minues and finally landed to this page. Everything (Audiobook) is working fine in my iPhone and iPad.

I've purchased the audio books on my iPad and want to listen on my iPhone. Won't sync at all.

-iCloud is on

-Store settings on both divces: automatic downloads enabled for music and books.

Anyone? Or do I really need to do this in iTunes on my Mac? Thx!