There are a few solid audiobook apps available for iOS, but they lock you into a specific ecosystem. Audible, Audiobooks.com and Nook Audiobooks a are all well designed but they don’t really let you load in your own personal collection. This problem has been solved by the Bound Audiobook Player that has just been released for the iPhone. The big selling point behind this app is that it can access your catalog via Dropbox and not iTunes.
Tim Bueno the app developer told Good e-Reader that “I created Bound out of frustration with the current offerings of audiobook players for iPhone. Many of them lock you in to a specific ecosystem or are difficult to use and load with audio. Bound is in a very active development stage right now. New features such as a sleep timer, customizable skip times, and proper M4B chapter support are in the pipeline.”
Bound has all the basic features you would expect from a mainstream audiobook player. You start a book from the list view of all of the audiobooks that you have imported from Dropbox. Â If you close the app to reboot your phone or come back to it at a later date, the app remember exactly where you left off.
There are a number of free and legitimate places that sell audiobooks DRM Free, but there is also a number of shady options. Not matter where your collection comes from, Bound currently has support for MP3, M4A, M4B.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
