Random House and eMusic have begun to sell DRM-free audiobooks on their site. This is pretty big news, since iTunes has an exclusive deal with Audible for ebooks, and Audible won't sell non-DRM ebooks (though they have other non-DRM products), even when the author doesn't want any DRM. I wonder if Random House will buy audio rights from authors who refuse to allow their works to be released with DRM on iTunes, though.

Back when i still used a Mac, I bought tons of Audible books -- thousands of dollars' worth. When I switched to Linux, those books were the hardest part of my switch. I had to re-encode each one as an MP3 by playing it back while running AudioHijack, which took almost a month, using two Powerbooks at once.

So these days, I buy most of my audiobooks on CD and rip them, then give away the discs to charity, which is kind of a pain in the ass, but it beats the alternative. Nice to know I can buy some titles from eMusic (though I'm still bummed that none of the major audiobook publshers will do DRM-free releases and that Apple won't allow non-DRM audiobook publishers to sell through the iTunes store). Link (Thanks, Ben!)