When Google started selling audiobooks in Play Books back in January I was quick to dismiss their service because the audiobook experience was simply awful. It was so bad that I concluded "Google clearly does not" care about selling audiobooks.
It looks like I will have to revise that opinion.
Boing Boing has brought my attention to the fact that Google will let you download your purchased audiobooks as DRM-free files.
You can find the download option in the audiobooks tab in the "My Books" section of the Google Play website. Simply click the 3-dot menu icon for a given ebook, and then select the export option.
I checked, and I can confirm this is true. I was able to download both of the audiobooks I bought from Google, and play them in VLC. I got the complete file, and not just a sample.
This is great news for anyone who wants to protect their investment, and it also gives Google a competitive advantage. Amazon refuses to let you download DRM-free audiobooks from the Audible website; when I try, they give me a file that is intended to be opened with their abysmal Audible Windows app. (I gave up in despair a while ago.)
I know where I will buy my audiobooks in the future; how about you?
I have managed to get audiobooks out of Audible in the past, the procedure is:
1) Download the audiobook from Audible to get a .aa file
2) Open the file with iTunes
3) Burn it to CD from ITunes (I used a virtual CD drive)
4) Rip the CDs to mp3s
For those of us that don’t have an iThing, Nate provided another option some time ago, although you need a Linux computer or the knowledge to fake browsing from a Linux computer.
Anyway, Google Play is a good option more popular for the general public than other alternatives, if they have the audiobook you look for, which is another caveat, Audible has a lot of audiobooks exclusively.
This does not work for ALL audio books, at least in theory.
All Play Books audibooks have ‘???????: ????????” (Export: Available). If such option is present, it could mean it does have 2 states.
p.s.
For iTunes we have inAudible app
Like Vikarti says, not all audiobooks support downloading. The publisher has to enable that option and you’ll find it in the description of a title under “export function”. In fact, in most titles i tried, export (downloading) was unavailable.
The ones that do are great though and you can download a m4a file that you can play on other devices (or convert to mp3). I play them with the free VLC Player which also handjes audiofiles well.