Audiobooks do not show as Purchased in iTunes

Audiobooks are currently a one-time only download from the store, so they won't show in the Purchased tab - I believe that they are all supplied to Apple by audible.com, so I assume that it's them that are requiring the one-time only download.

Do you have copies of them on your computer's iTunes library (they will be in the Books part of your library if you do) or on your backup of your downloads which you can use to sync them to your iPad ? If you don't have a copy of them anywhere then you can try contacting iTunes Support and see if they will grant you a re-download : http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/contact/ - click on Contact iTunes Store Support on the right-hand side of the page, then Purchases, Billing & Redemption

The contents of the Videos and Music apps are not included in a backup (syncing is from a computer to a device), and iTunes Match is only for music (and you can only upload content to it from a computer's iTunes).

Does connecting the phone and doing File > Devices > Transfer Purchases copy them over to the Books part of your computer's iTunes ?

As far as I can see you need to download it on a computer's iTunes to play it

I just wanted to have an audiobook on the go and i cant find it anywere except on the station i purchased it with, in disturbing contrast with all other media, not able to transfer it to my iphone without totally erasing it and sync it again. This needs to be fixed.

As far as I know my first reply on this thread still applies e.g. it's audible.com requiring the one-time only download - and other content will be redownloadable whilst it remains in your country's store.

If it's not on the computer that you usually sync your phone to then you should be able to copy it over : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527 (you should be able to use 'home sharing' to copy any content between computers).

If you haven't synced your phone to a computer before then there are instructions on this page for syncing to a new computer : https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3141

I didn't have any success trying the suggestions by King_Penguin as I got my audio book from a set of CDs.

iTunes readily imports the book and all CDs but it ends up putting all the content into Music and not into Books. I guess this must be due to the fact that the audiobook was supplied on CD just like music is on CD. So, when I couldn't find my books after spending an hour importing a bunch of CDs, I used the search function in iTunes to look up the author and promptly found my audiobook in Music.

My comment would be that if you imported the book via CD, you may be able to do as I did and find it. Is a book supplied on CD not considered an audiobook?

I had this problem too. Heres what you do:

1) make a smart playlist that only contains music files over 20 min long (shorter than the shortest audio book file but longer than anything else like standup commedy)

2) select everything in the playlist and right click> get info . go to options and change media kind to audiobook. or if you can't go to sorting and change the genre to audio book.

Often a book supplied on CD is seen by iTunes as an audio file just as music would be it is just save don the CD as a CDA file (CD Audio)

Find the appropriate ripped files in your iTunes library right click and select get info > options tab > media kind, change to audiobook

it will now be in your audiobooks section and should save your last position.

Oh, shame on you Apple! I spent $10 for one time download and wasn't even notified about it. Could it make a lawsuit?