Hi Will, On Wednesday, March 28, 2007, at 11:00AM, "william lomas" wrote:
>when browsing i tunes store, can i read descriptions of the books? i >can get price and sample but cant seem to read a description. can >anyone help? There's no way to get descriptions of audiobooks under iTunes, but you can find descriptions and customer reviews of these books at the UK site for Audible.com which is at: http://www.audible.co.uk/ The following are detailed instructions on how to get reviews and publisher's summaries at the UK Audible site from this starting point. (This is a long answer: after the three paragraphs that tell you how to navigate the UK Audible site for descriptions and reviews, and do a general book search there's a description of the differences between using Audible.com and the iTunes store for buying audiobooks. Skip that if you're not interested.) Use the item chooser menu (VO-keys+i) and type the first few letters of "browse". You'll get something like "Sample and browse over ten thousand titles image". VO-keys+right arrow to the empty text box and type in the title of the book you're looking for and carriage return. Use item chooser again to search for "All" to get the summary of all results. VO-keys+right arrow through to get information on Author, Title, Narrator, Playing time, Price, Release Date, and Average Customer rating (on a scale where 5 is highest). The summary search page gives a short description line. To go to the detailed result page, either select the "more" link at the end of the description or select any of the earlier links to the title of the book with VO-keys shift space. The detailed page for each audiobook contains the publisher's summary description and any customer reviews that may be available. Use item chooser to type in the title. There may be multiple entries for reviews, descriptions, etc. so select the link image if you want to be sure of starting near the beginning of the page. VO-keys+left arrow if you want to get back to the author link; otherwise, just VO-keys+right arrow through the rest of the page. (The earliest title entry always seems to appear at the BOTTOM of the item chooser list.) Choosing links to authors, narrators, etc. gives you the results of a search for other works of that author, narrator, etc. Selecting links to reviewer's names brings up other reviews by that reviewer with their ratings. To search from any of these pages (past the top-level page for the general public), use item chooser, type the first letters of "Search" and select. VO-keys+down arrow first to a pop-up button, where you can change the default setting of "By keyword" to "By author" or "By title". VO-keys+down arrow to the blank text field to enter your search terms and return. You can also use links to Categories or Featured Content to browse by subject or listings under "New Releases" "Editor's Picks", etc. Use item chooser and "Categories", then VO-keys+down arrow through "Action and Adventure", "Biography and Memoirs" and other links. Or use item chooser and "Content", and VO-keys+down arrow through links like "Under £8" or "Award Winners" or "New Releases". Then use item chooser again to go to keywords like "New" (for New Releases) or "Best" (for Best Sellers) according to what selection you've made. Some general comments about Audible.com books and using their web pages. 1. The samples are longer than at the iTunes store -- generally around 15 minutes instead of 1-2 minutes. Just select the "Hear Sample" link (with VO-keys shift space) to bring up a window that will start playing the sample. You can close it (Command-W) if you want to stop it at any time and continue your browsing. 2. Unabridged audiobooks will be noted "(Unabridged)" after the title. Otherwise, the recording is abridged. If both versions are offered, you'll be given a link to explore the other version. 3. All the audiobooks in the iTunes store were prepared by Audible.com and, with the exception of the Harry Potter exclusive iTunes audiobook deal, are either currently available at Audible.com or were previously offered for sale at their site(s). So in general you will be able to find descriptions for iTunes audiobooks at Audible.com, as long as the item is still in their current catalog. There are usually more selections under the Audible.com catalog, but Apple carries the most popular books or versions at the iTunes store. 4. Prices for individual audiobooks are similar on the two sites, but not exactly the same. You can get substantial savings at Audible.com if you join one of their subscription plans and intend to buy 1 book a month. There are also periodic sales. 5. Audible's files are a different format from the ones in the iTunes store, and can be played on some mp3 players that support Windows Digital Rights Management (DRM copy protection) as well as on iPods. This may be a consideration if you are also using Windows. But if you download through Windows you need to install an extra software plugin, while on the Mac downloads work through iTunes, like iTunes store purchases. You can also choose the quality/size of the download format to get more compressed files that are smaller. This is useful if you're on a dial-up modem. iTunes audiobooks always use the equivalent highest quality format. 6. You can always re-download any Audible.com audiobook you have purchased -- even if it was a book you purchased without being a subscriber. This is very useful in the case of a computer crash, or if you upgrade to another computer. With iTunes downloads you should either burn to audio CD or at least make an iTunes backup (using the "Backup to Disc" option; VO-keys+m to the menubar and right arrow to the File menu then down arrow to this option) since you can't download purchases again. You can also download Audible purchases again in other quality formats. 7. It's a lot easier to accessibly browse the iTunes store than the Audible.com site. The next version of iTunes might make it possible to read descriptions and subscriber reviews. You should find a UK Audible subscriber for opinions on using their site. The UK site is a lot like the US Audible.com site used to be a little over a year ago, and is more accessible than the present US site. Hopefully, the US site will be more accessible in the near future since the web page formats are being redesigned based on user inputs. Hope this helps. Cheers, Esther
