I had a coupon for a few free Audible audio book downloads, so I picked out a book at Audible.com and decided to check it out.  Little did I know that this seemingly innocuous action would pitch me into an hour long journey of frustration and despair.

I went to the Audible site and saw that it was now “an Amazon company” and thought “Awesome. I love Amazon. I’m sure this site is easy to use.”  Never in my life have I been more wrong about something than I was at that moment.

There were problems from the get-go, starting with the account creation. I clicked “Sign up using your Amazon account,” and it didn’t work. I had to set up a brand new Audible account.  Another account to manage, another place to get spam from.  Great.

Then came the download.  I picked out my audiobook and added it to my cart.  I completed the check out process then I clicked “download.” “No!”, screamed Audible.com.  “You must first install our special proprietary downloader software!”  Before even downloading the software you have to tell them how you plan on listening to your book.  Mp3 player?  CD?  On your computer?  There’s a small note that informs you that whichever choice you make, you can still listen to the book via the other methods.  So what’s the point of this question?

I ran the software install process, but it hung, telling me I had to close Chrome before it would continue.  “Audible needs to make changes to your browser configuration.”  What?  Why?  Just to download a file?  Why should Audible have to reconfigure my browser just so I can use their site once? 

So I close all of my open tabs and let Audible do its thing.  I then have to restart everything, re-login to the Audible site, and do the download again.  (It’s hard to find this link, btw.)  I do all of that, and try to move the book to my audio device.  Whoops, not supported.  Now I have no way of listening to this book on my MP3 player.  And all the software really does is sit there, trying to look like iTunes, making constant “clicking” noises.

I spend the next half hour or so downloading different packages that claim to remove the DRM protection from Audible books. After all, it’s my copy of the book, and I should be able to listen to it on my mp3 player, even if not supported by Amazon, right?  It’s only fair.  Long story short, none of those software packages worked.  One tried to install a download manager instead, one would just fire up iTunes and lock up, another didn’t do anything.  One told me it couldn’t do anything because I had the wrong version of Windows Media Player installed. I tried upgrading my player, and 20 minutes later, it still didn’t work.  So I decided to just burn the book to CD then just rip it back to MP3’s.

The computer I was using didn’t have a CD burner, so I had to go through the above process again on another computer.  Install software, close my browser, restart everything, go back to the site, re-download the book.  Except this time, the Audible software was completely different – this time, it only installed an Audible Download Manager, and wanted to know if I wanted to use WMP or iTunes to manage my Audible downloads.  Maybe I downloaded the wrong thing, but I did exactly what I had done previously.  Audible gave me a different piece of software this time around.

I re-downloaded the book, and chose to open it in Windows Media Player, then chose to burn it to a CD.  After having to input my Audible username & password, WMP churned around for a few minutes then told me “Sorry, but you can’t burn this book to a CD, it’s copy-protected.”

Here I am, an hour after downloading a book, and I still can’t play the thing.  I’ve installed software on 2 computers, let it install a download manager that wants to launch every freaking time I reboot my computer, let it reconfigure my browser, all of that, for nothing.

All of this hassle just to listen to a simple AudioBook?  Really?

I learned that the Nero CD Burning software package lets you burn Audible (AA format) books to CD, and fortunately I had that installed on that particular computer. I used Nero to burn the book to a bunch of CD’s (again, having to enter my Audible username and password), then used the free Foobar2000 software to rip the CD’s back to MP3’s.

Finally, I had the book in a format I could use. It’s over an hour later, I’m frustrated as hell, I’ve had to install software on multiple machines, reconfigure my browser on multiple machines, install a “download manager” that wants to run every time I reboot my computer on multiple machines, waste a bunch of CD-R’s, and for what?  Just to listen to a single audiobook?

I went back and cleaned up the mess Audible had made on my other machines, and resolved to never download another Audible book again.  Even though I have a few free downloads left, I won’t be using them.  It’s just not worth the hassle.