Podiobooks.com

I was on an author's Web site looking for podcasts and saw a link for Podiobooks. I'm not sure if the site carries the most popular authors, but I did see some interesting titles. You might even discover an up-and-coming author to enjoy.

The audios can be serialized once a day, week, or month, or you can get them all at once. The audios can be listened to on a computer, sent to iTunes, or read by a podcatcher:

Put most simply, podcatchers read RSS files you've subscribed to and automatically download enclosed media files (the book episodes). Once a podcatcher has been "fed" a feed, it will check that feed on a regular basis, fetching new audio files. Some podcatchers can even move the files to your portable MP3 player automatically. Others just leave them in a folder for you to do something with later.

You have lots of options when it comes to podcatchers. Juice, iTunes, Transistr, Bloglines, Nimiq, Doppler... some a free, some are browser-based, some for Mac, some for PC, some for Linux... do a search on "podcatcher" or "podcast receiver" and see what you get back.

More about Podiobooks:

The term podiobook was coined by Evo Terra to describe serialized audiobooks which are distributed via RSS, much like a podcast. Listeners to Podiobooks.com can choose to receive the episodes of their books via an RSS feed or by listening to episodes by directly downloading episodes from this site. Some listeners keep the audio files on their computers, some transfer the book to CD, but most transfer the file on to their MP3 player so they can listen no matter where they are.

Why are authors making these versions available for free? Many authors do this to get exposure for their work, others do it in the hopes you'll buy a physical copy of their current or perhaps next work in development. Still others simply do it for the sheer joy of writing. And while it's not required, you have the option to donate money to the author of your choice. When you consider that audio books run usually twice as much as their hardcover counterparts... we hope you'll be generous. Authors receive 75% of all the proceeds from the donations from listeners. The smaller portion goes to the maintenance and upkeep of Podiobooks.com.