Just to verify, I was trying to say that when I download an MP3 audiobook, I am doing so from my desktop PC, not the Overdrive app on my phone. As a matter of fact, I never open Overdrive on my phone anymore. I will probably delete the app.
I do not pay attention to the different file names and folder location. The Overdrive program takes care of that transparently on my PC. I do know that they are not stored in the PC’s iTunes folder. That is why it is important to have “Manually manage music and videos” selected in iTunes. I am sure that you must have that correct or else you would not have gotten this far. All of your books will disappear if you do “sync.” You gotta love Apple…
Things work differently on different versions of iTunes and Overdrive. I am running version 12.2 of iTunes and version 3.4.1 of Overdrive. Things will look different from my descriptions below if you have something other than those.
The “Get Info” trick is just right-clicking on the audio book files and selecting “Get Info” from option the context menu that opens. This is done in iTunes after the files are copied. So for me, when I transfer over an audiobook by clicking the “Transfer” button at the top of the Overdrive window, the files go in to the Music category in “On My Device” I might be able to find them on my phone by looking into my music stuff there, but I have never looked as I do not listen to music on my phone. In any case, open up the Music category under “On My Device” in iTunes and you will see your audiobook files. And yes, I have to re-transfer the files to pick up incomplete files about 25% of the time. To start the Get Info trick you first you need to highlight the file names. I have a PC so I just click anywhere in the folder and then press <CTRL>A to highlight all of the files. Another way is to click on the first file and then, while pressing the “Shift” key, click on the last file. There are other ways, but whichever one you use, you need to highlight all of the files. Then as I mentioned above, right-click on any of them and select “Get Info” out of the context menu. You may get a little box that pops up saying something like “you are about to edit the information on a bunch of files rather than just one” or some such. I have disabled this message and do not recall exactly what it says, but click the button that allows you to continue.
If you have done all of that successfully, a box will open in the middle of your iTunes window. Along the top of the box there are a series of buttons; “Details, Artwork, Options, and Sorting.” Select the “Option” button. There is a drop down menu next to where it says “media kind.” Select Audiobook. [Remember everybody; this may be the wrong choice if you are not working with Overdrive books.] The boxes next to “Remember playback position” and “Skip when shuffling” should be checked. If not do so manually. Then select “OK” at the bottom.
After a few seconds iTunes will start transferring the files to your “Audiobook” category in your iTunes view of “On My Device.” You will know when it has completed because the files will be removed from your “Music” category.
After doing this, I make a new play list. I do not know how you do this, but I just press <CTRL>N and a new one appears. Its name is something like “Playlist.” I then change the name to something easy. I usually listen to novels that are in a series, so I name the play lists something like “Ender-1” and “Ender-2” and so on for the series of books called “Ender’s Game” for example. I highlight all of the files for one of the books in the audiobook category and drag them over to the play list. Each playlist then contains all of the files for one novel. Oftentimes I will then open the playlist and check things out just to be sure that everything is okay. I usually do the “Get info” trick on the group of files just to make sure that the options are properly selected.
I agree that it is hard to change the playlists’ names. I just have to click on it a couple of times to highlight it for editing – or maybe it is a double click - or two. It is frustrating, but some kind on clicking on “New Playlist” or “Playlist 1” highlights the name for editing. There is probably another way, but that is what I do. I then just type in the name I want over the highlighted name and hit enter.
You can now disconnect your phone. The playlist should then appear in the Audiobooks category on your phone under iBooks. This is what I do now and it has worked every time. I never lose my place in the book anymore. Never.
There is a “scrubber” for each file rather than the entire book when using iOS 8.4. So, this is a must have upgrade for those running iOS 7. Life is good. Mostly. I get a delay when pressing the button on my Bluetooth headset before the book starts. Sometimes it does not start at all, so I have to turn on my phone and open iBooks before the phone “remembers” what it is supposed to do when that button is pressed. I hoped that this would be fixed in iOS 8.4.1, but I guess that was pretty naive of me. But hey, it is only 2015 so they have not yet had time to figure out this Bluetooth stuff.
One thing I skipped is that I normally transfer over book artwork. I do this while in the Get Info box. I select the “Artwork” button and browse over to a book artwork file. I do not think that I really need to do this. It appears to happen automatically the next time I enter iTunes. I am not sure why they would wait, but mine is not to reason why….
Remember, things will likely be a bit different in the next version of Overdrive. They usually fix some bugs with each version. I would not be surprised if the Get Info trick will not be needed in the next version. I will also not be surprised if something else becomes flakey, however.
