Three Free Audiobook Tools

Do you have e-books that you want to turn into audiobooks?

1
Convert your Word doc, PDF or text file into an mp3 free here: Zamzar.com >

• Free up to 100kb
• Very good voice translation (listen to a sample > )


2
Cut resulting mp3 into chunks convenient for you. I like 10 minutes because I often fall asleep at night with a book and need to find my place again. (Do that enough times and your brain gets good at it.)

Audiobook Cutter Free Edition v0.7.5 >

• Free
• No renumbering or renaming, but very fast and easy
• Portable. If you've never used a portable app before, there's no installation; in this case, just copy .exe over to a directory of your choice and run.
• There is a newer paid version with more features if you like it and want more options.

3
Mp3tag editor (here >) let's you add/edit mp3 metadata that your mp3 player understands so you can quickly order tracks, add album names, artists, etc. Allows you to change hundreds of files at once if needed.

• Free
• Portable
• Great reviews

c0

I'm listening to Quantum Physics and Theology - An Unexpected Kinship, by JC Polkinghorne, using these three tools.[1] Polkinghorne is an English theoretical physicist, theologian, writer, and Anglican priest. I first learned of him when he joined Stephen Hawking on Larry King to talk about Hawking's The Grand Design, which got a lot of buzz for obviating the need for God (not my opinion, but Hawking's).

And when you have an A-lister like Hawking, the B-list necessarily crosses a wide variety of competing or complementing opinions, so you get a few folks IMHO more helpful (like Polkinghorne) and a few IMHO less so (like Deepak Chopra), though I enjoy listening to both.

I struggle still with a full reconciliation of science and faith. Thoughtful Christian scientists like Polkinghorne intrigue me (as do thoughtful atheists). I am still working through Davis Young's Good News for Science: Why Scientific Minds Need God, but as you may know, the time I have to actually hold a book is so limited, I have trouble reading a physical book. Young's is the only printed book I am reading or have started in the past couple years.

Learn more about Polkinghorne here >

[3/22/2013]

c0

[1]
You'll want to take some care editing out footnotes, page numbers, headers, and other things that interrupt the narration. The mechanical voice takes work to follow and these things make it especially difficult.

c0