iTunes deleted my audiobooks

A couple of days ago, I sat down to convert a 14 CD audiobook (The Hour Game) into an audiobook file suitable for use with itunes, so that I could put it on my iPhone to listen to in the car.  In the past, I have done this using Toast Titanium 12 on my iMac.  This time the program had a conniption, because one of the discs had been incorrectly labelled by the manufacturer as being by Bachman Turner Overdrive, and not David Baldacci.  This meant that it generated 2 part files, with different authors.  Needless to say, it wouldn't work from iBooks as a single book.   I have in the past just generated music type playlists, for audiobooks, but that doesn't leave bookmarks, so you have to remember where you are if you 'put the book down' so to speak.   Proper audiobooks will resume playing from where you left off.

So, I looked up how to do it using iTunes for the conversion.  This time, some very strange things happened, and when I deleted the resulting useless playlist, for some reason iTunes deleted ALL my audiobooks except "Raising Steam", which was the only one I had ever bought from the iTunes Store.

At this stage I set out to re-download the book purchased from Audible.co.uk as I was halfway through it.  This time it didn't download properly, and didn't appear in iTunes Media/Audiobooks (that's the way I've always had it set up).  Had a chat session with audible, but problem was not fully resolved, and I eventually gave up and went to bed.

Next morning I thought "why don't I just restore from Time Machine".  So I duly did so.   All my books reappeared in the Audiobook folder in Finder, but not in the Audiobook 'tab' in iTunes.  I dragged them all back into that tab, and all was working again, but I still hadn't accomplished what I originally set out to do.

Looked on t'interweb for solutions and came across the program "Audiobook Builder" (only available for Mac, not Windows etc).  Only cost £4.99, so I paid for a copy, downloaded and installed.   It works like a dream.  Much easier to use than Toast Titanium and also much quicker, especially as I already had MP3 copies of my audiobook CDs and Cassettes.

So, if you have a Mac and want to convert your old audiobooks for your MP3 player etc, I heartily recommend this program.   The bit about being able to copy your purchased Audible.co.uk books back into iTunes is also very useful to know, IMO.