Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App Review
The Bookmark App: Audiobooks finally done right
The Bookmark app [iTunes Link] has solved a number of problems I've always suffered while listening to audiobooks on an iPhone. It isn't pefect yet, but what is currently in the app store is the best implementation of digital audiobook listening I've found. It's earned a place on my home page and that alone is quite a recommendation. I'll get to a play-by-play in a bit, but first a bit of context is in order.I have always been a fan of audiobooks. Long before the inception of the iPod, I was a constant Books on Tape customer. I'd choose a book and in a few days, receive a sizable box filled with anywhere from two to over forty cassette tapes. It was worth it to me to go through all the hassle of keeping the tapes in order and carrying a stack of them with me to play on a portable cassette player when I wasn't listening in my car.
When the iPod came out, I found Audible.com and life became much easier. I always carried at least a dozen books with me on my iPod Classic. The books usually downloaded in one or two big files making a book easy to manage. A few years later, Audible.com started embedding chapter markers in their books so jumping to a particular chapter was a snap, but I always had a problem with the iPod losing my place in a book. It could have been due to syncing, or being knocked around, but it was constant and always annoying.
When I bought my iPhone, I found the way the iPod module handled audiobooks had changed. Instead of downloading a few big files, what wound up in the library was a separate file for each chapter. So, for example, Fool by Christopher Moore, which my iPod Classic saw as one file with twenty-six chapters, appeared to be twenty-six files on the iPhone. That would have been fine, except for the fact that the iPhone was no better than my iPod Classic in losing my place seemingly at random. Worse, I never knew which file I was on when my place got lost.
Read on to see how Bookmark has solved this dilemma for me.
Read on to see how Bookmark has solved this dilemma for me.
The Bookmark app solves this problem and does a whole lot more. For the very reasonable price of $2.99 any iPhone or iPod touch running iPhone OS 3.0 or better can get a full and multi-featured audiobook subsystem, and although it still needs some features, it's wonderful.
Instead of showing a bunch of chapter files, it brings back the long files downloaded from Audible.com. The app is meant to work with Audible or Librivox .aa or .m4a files. Librivox provides free public domain audiobooks.
At any place in a book you can add a bookmark which will get you back to wherever you set it. The bookmark allows you to type information into it, acting as a reminder, and even email the bookmark to yourself (the default) or to anyone else, containing the name of the file and start time as well as any personal information you typed in. This is useful if, like me, you listen to books on a variety of devices; Mac, iPod Classic and iPhone. You can have as many bookmarks as you like per audio file. Free form notes can also be written and retrieved within the app. Additionally there is a time ribbon that lets you jump backward or forward in the file in increments of thirty seconds, or one, five, fifteen or thirty minutes.
Online is a complete tutorial showing you how everything works, from acquiring books to running all the features, but I found an undocumented treasure. If you're using Bookmark, and exit the app then go to iTunes to listen to some music on your iPhone, the next time you run Bookmark, regardless of what you were listening to in iTunes, you are back in your book at exactly the right place. It gets better. If you are listening to two or three books at a time, it remembers where you were in each book individually. With all this functionality getting lost in a book or a number of books is a thing of the past.
But for all the goodness there are a few problems. It handles each file separately, so at the end of a file, it stops. This is workable if you have a book with two seven hour files, but if you ripped an .mp3 with a ton of smaller files, every few minutes you'll have to go in and choose a new file making the app just about useless. Luckily, the developer is working on this and has indicated that soon all little files with the same book name will somehow get joined. Vague? Yes, but it's a known problem and will be solved in a revision coming in October or November. For now it's suggested that you use a program like Audiobook Builder for Macs or Audiobook Converter for Windows to convert groups of small files into one big file.
Bookmark doesn't work in the background, so you can't listen to a book while running another app. This is a major disadvantage, but not being a developer I don't know if it's possible to fix. Bookmark also ignores embedded bookmarks within the file, preventing you from being able to skip to the next chapter.
Even with these limitations, I can't recommend this app highly enough. It's as if the developer read my mind and gave me exactly what I wanted. That, for me, is a first. If you listen to audiobooks frequently, or have an Audible.com subscription, this is one app that you need. You can forget about the technology and just enjoy listening to a good book, and If that's not worth $2.99, I don't know what is.
Even with these limitations, I can't recommend this app highly enough. It's as if the developer read my mind and gave me exactly what I wanted. That, for me, is a first. If you listen to audiobooks frequently, or have an Audible.com subscription, this is one app that you need. You can forget about the technology and just enjoy listening to a good book, and If that's not worth $2.99, I don't know what is.
Here's a video demonstrating the features of Bookmark.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Naren Hazareesingh said 6:36PM on 9-12-2009
I recently ripped some audiobooks into iTunes, and it's never once lost my place. In fact, the "bookmarks" in the file sync as well, so i could listen on my Mac and on my phone without EVER scrubbing.
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Jabbathewocket said 8:45AM on 9-13-2009
Yes he knows that the ipod/iphone audiobook system works perfectly fine.. but he is shilling for the app vendor.. to make $$$.. its the new way to make news!
Mihkel Sirel said 6:42PM on 9-12-2009
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=328864369&mt=8
Try SayAgain as well
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Andy said 6:42PM on 9-12-2009
I have never had this problem. I currently have 32 audiobooks on my iPhone, all of them are either one, two, or three files depending on the size of the book. Not once has it ever lost my place, in fact it keeps my place when I listen to it on my phone or on my laptop and synch between the two. It does the same with podcasts.
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thoppa said 10:40AM on 9-14-2009
I seem to have the opposite problem. My former iPod mini lost audiobook place about 50% of the time; my iPhone loses the place 100%.
Nikki said 6:45PM on 9-12-2009
I am an audible member myself and have never had the problem of several files on my iphone.... Maybe you are downloading the wrong format from audible? I use the new "enhanced" format and my experience has been pretty seamless....just one or sometimes 2 (for a long book) files on my iphone that are split into chapters....
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David Winograd said 7:00PM on 9-12-2009
I think I wasn't clear enough.
Audible downloads just a few large files, but the iPhone shows it as separate chapter files and when my place gets lost, which it always does, I never know which chapter I was on.
The difference is how the iPhone displays the chapters, like songs in an album, while I'm sure the source is still the big files as Bookmark only deals with the large files.
So the difference isn't in the files, it's in the interface.
Stephen said 7:13PM on 9-12-2009
@David - I'm still not clear what you mean, to be fair. Like Nikki, I'm an Audible member and the files not only download in big chunks but they also still display as large chunks on my iPhone. I've never seen this business of having the Audible audiobook show up as, for example, 26 individual chapter files. Right now I have a book on my phone called Olive Kitteridge which is reasonably long (10 hours) and yet is broken down into just 2 files displayed on my iPhone. Shorter books tend to be displayed as just 1 file on the iPhone.
Where I have encountered the exact issue you're describing is when I rip an audiobook from CD to iTunes, and it's then displayed as a whole bunch of individual chapter files (which is annoying, I agree).
Stephen said 9:02PM on 9-12-2009
@David - OK yes, now I see what you mean. You're right, if the iPhone loses your place, it would be harder to find it again because of this way of breaking each file into lots of chapters (I haven't had that issue, probably why I've never notice this before).
Tyler R. said 6:56PM on 9-12-2009
This app looks cool, I'd I'll probably check it out. I've ripped lots of books from CDs into iTunes. I've found Doug Adams' Join Together an indispensable tool in this process. It will join either mp3 or aac files into one larger file, then using chapter tool, create chapter marks, convert it to an m4b file (what iTunes reads as an audiobook), and will then automatically import it into iTunes.
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David Winograd said 7:24PM on 9-12-2009
@Stephen,
Here's what I'm talking about.
Got to any Audible book, you'll see the graphic and a top bar that says, for example in Fool which downloaded as one file, Chapter 1 of 26.
Now tap the little chapter button in the upper right corner of the screen just under the battery. It shows you each chapter as if it were a song on an album.
Go back to the main graphic screen and tap. You'll see a progress bar showing the length of the chapter you're on. In this case Chapter 1 of Fool is about 18 minutes out of 26 chapters of varied length.
When my place gets lost, I never know what chapter I was on. I would really have preferred to have it as my iPod Classic handled it which is one progress bar showing the whole 8 hours and clicking forward or backward to go to chapters. The way I have it, when the place gets lost, it can be in any one of 26 places.
Clearer?
Could the iPhone 3GS display things differently than other versions?
Andy said 8:28PM on 9-12-2009
I've never actually dealt with the chapters themselves, since my place has never been lost. I listen to the book, I can pause, play, rewind, fast forward, play other files, play the same file in another location and my place is always right where I left it. I guess if you have this problem then this is a solution, I've just never heard of it before now.
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Ian Greulich said 8:45PM on 9-12-2009
I use my iPod Classic and I used a 2nd gen iPod Touch, (I just bought an iPhone 3g, and havent put any audio on it yet) and in order to force the iPod to act as I want it to, I built playlists out of the audiobooks. That way the one I want, or the series I am listening to are the only ones I have to deal with.
This happens to be a mashup of Librivox, Audible, iTunes, and self-created/ripped mp3's.
As far as loosing my place in a file... My 2nd gen iPod Mini would, but only on the bigger files (>8hrs) Since I moved to the Classic, I haven't lost a place in a book. Seems to me like you might have some problems...
All the same I have been looking for a good way to deal with audiobooks.
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DistortedLoop said 9:02PM on 9-12-2009
I was going to say this sounds like a solution looking for a problem to solve, but actually, I have had bookmarking get screwed up on the iPhone, and like you say, you're not sure what chapter you were in, so if this really solves that rather RARE problem, great.
I'd really like to see that 30 seconds to 30 minutes skip forward feature on podcasts and even songs!
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CoreyJF said 9:07PM on 9-12-2009
I have had the -lost place- issue a couple times on my iPhone but it happened pretty regularly on my old iPods. I don't mind the chapters, but it would be nice to be able to toggle back between views to easily see total time elapsed/left.
Bookmarks is a feature I would love, but not being able to run in the background is a deal breaker. That has been the main reason I haven't really gotten into a Pandora type program, audio needs to run in background. Apple has been pretty clear in that regards so I don't see that happening in the near future on a non jail broken phone...
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TC said 9:19PM on 9-12-2009
I'm surprised by the comments on this entry - I listen to audiobooks in a wide variety of formats and no matter how much tweaking I do to my iTunes library, the iPhone handles them inconsistently. Nevermind not being able to disable coverflow (it was fixed for either audiobooks or podcasts, but not both - can't remember which). I guess I just wanted to chime in to let you know that you're not alone. I think I'll check this app out.
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Barry Ezell said 9:50PM on 9-12-2009
Hi everyone. I'm the developer of Bookmark and I appreciate the article and all of the comments. I had two overriding goals when creating Bookmark:
1. Make listening to audiobooks more like reading physical books. There was no equivalent to putting a Post-It in book in the audiobook world and I'd always wanted something like that. When I read a good book (especially non-fiction), I often want to make notes and remember important passages. Bookmark lets me do this and I use this feature often.
2. Using the iPod slider is easy for a 5 minute song but almost useless in a 7 hour book. I made the Time Ribbon to remedy this and if it were the only feature the app had, I'd still use Bookmark for all my audiobook listening.
There's been some discussion regarding whether the iPod keeps accurate track of your place in an audiobook. In Audible books I find it's normally accurate except after a sync when it sometimes uses an earlier "last played" point. I too have found this since pre-iPhone days. Bookmark always records the latest point you've listened to and you can get there via More > Jump to Latest Time.
The problem with ripped MP3's showing up as 100+ separate tracks will be addressed in the 1.4 update. The tracks will be grouped by album name and handled seamlessly by the app.
Regarding backgrounding, I'd love to do it but that's not allowed by Apple. When a non-Apple app quits, it quits entirely.
Please visit the bookmarkapp.com site and use the support link for requests. I'm making some significant upgrades and almost all of them are products of user feedback.
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jabbathewocket said 8:48AM on 9-13-2009
you REALLY shouldn't have posted this.. on a shameless paid advert "blog" post..
Noone is really caring that your app exists, or whatever.. the argument is with the author of this post going on about a non-existant problem and "suggesting" your app as the cure.. The breathless fanboi post by the article's author.. you really didn't get what you paid for advertising wise sad to say.
I suggest next time.. going with a proper 'review' style paid post, rather than the overused and oh so transparent "i just found this neat new app to fix this problem you will LOVE IT!" style used here.
again better luck next time, and I suggest you reprice your app to the store standard 99 cents if you want to fix non-issues, higher than 1$ prices are reserved for apps that actually.. do something...
Michael Rose said 10:45AM on 9-13-2009
Jabba, that was rude. Just because you don't care about the app doesn't mean you speak for everyone. Barry took the time to write a response to some of the concerns and that's to his credit.
John Michl said 6:19PM on 9-13-2009
Thanks for the app and in the info, Barry. This is pretty close to what I'm looking for in an audiobook reader. I taked about this a couple of years ago in my post about the ulitmate audiobook podcast player: http://randomthoughts.johnmichl.com/2007/10/26/the-ultimate-audiobookpodcast-player/. Since I switched to Mac, I also switched to Audiobook Builder which does a great job of ripping CDs. I can get one big file with chapters for each track or CD. That works great on my touch and I haven't had any issues with file size. OS 3.0 fixed the issue I had with fast forwarded. However, your app begins to solve my biggest desire -- annotation. My wish, though, would be sync the annotations and also to record them rather the type them. The majority of time I want to annotate, I'm in the car driving. Currently I have ReQall on speed dial and just drop myself notes that include the book, chapter and time and my annotation. This works fine but it would be better if I could do it directly to the iPod and sync back to my iTunes.
With that said, I'll buy the app anyway in hopes of encouraging additional development. Nice job.