Audible Books for GPS

Most GPS makers offer some models with media player and audio book player capability. Match one of these with a well-executed online audio book service such as Audible.com, and you are on your way to a satisfying book shopping, downloading, and listening experience. Here's the scoop on Audible.com, and a little how-to on using your GPS device as a book player.

Listening to an audible book is a great way to make travel time fly. I have been known to sit in my car at the end of a long trip because I couldn't tear away from the book. If you can relate to that, you will be interested in how to get your GPS device to serve as an audible book player.

Audible.com is a leading audio book, newspaper and magazine digest provider that also offers a special interface for managing book downloads to GPS units.

You begin by visiting Audible.com (Garmin and TomTom have special 30-day free trial offer pages for Audible. See links below) and signing up for one its two subscription plans. An Audible Gold plan costs $14.95 per month and includes one book download (or one credit for other Audible products), a complimentary subscription to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, and select free programs. The Platinum subscription ($22.95 per month) is similar, except it includes two books. The subscriptions are reasonably priced, but I would prefer to pay by the book.

After you have signed up, you may then down download and install Audible's Manager program for PC (Mac users will not need additional software). The Manager software is well-designed and easy to use. My book purchase automatically appeared in Manager after I downloaded it. I connected my GPS unit to my PC with its included USB cable, and it appeared in Manager's menu automatically. From there, it was easy to drag and drop my book into my GPS. Manager includes a nice gauge which tracks memory in your GPS, and you can do partial downloads.

Once my book was in my GPS, my test unit (a Garmin Nuvi 760) had a nice, simple, touchscreen interface to play, pause, and bookmark my book. The Nuvi also lets you do a close-range broadcast to an FM channel of your choosing so you can listen to the book through your car's audio system.