For those of you who like lots of options for doing certain things instead of being forced to adapt to just one choice, you definitely have plenty of options for listening to your downloadable audio book.

If you are someone who likes listening to audio books while seated on your favorite couch or seated at your desk, listening to your audio book through your PC speakers or on your home stereo CD player are the options for you. If you have a long commute, drive your own vehicle and have a nice car CD player, you could pass away the boring drive by listening to audio books on CD. You will have to burn the audio book to CD after downloading it.

You might also enjoy listening to your audio book on your PC while browsing the internet or doing some menial computer tasks. Most PCs have Digital Audio Players for playing audio books. If your PC does not have any (very unlikely), you can still download them completely free on the Internet. The two best digital audio players that you can download free from the Internet include:

RealOne Player: You can download it from their website:
http://www.Real.com or you can upgrade to their Real Player Plus and get advanced CD burning capabilities, analog recording, a 10-band graphic equalizer, and high bit-rate MP3 encoding capabilities

Windows Media Player: You can download it from their website:
http://www.Microsoft.com - I would suggest downloading Media Player version 10 for the least amount of problems and the best compatibility with file formats.

But if you would rather listen to your audio book while doing your household chores, dancing, exercising, jogging, commuting to and from work on the train or bus, then you would need portable audio playback devices that you can carry around and listen to, preferably with earphones.

With the ever-expanding market of portable audio playback devices, it goes to show that more and more people are now using them, because of the wonderful benefits they provide. The newer ones you can listen to music on, watch videos, and listen to your downloadable audio books all on the same portable device.

The most common form of these portable audio playback devices are the normal audio CD players or CD-ROM devices. You can carry these around with you while you do your household chores, exercise, jog or commute to and from work.

The more advanced form of these portable audio playback devices for playing audio books, especially those for listening to downloadable audio books, includes:

-- Audio-ready PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants)
Some of these PDAs include Casio CASSIOPEIA and Compaq iPAQ. Both can be expensive, costing as much as about $500 for the Compaq iPAQ and about $400 for the Casio CASSIOPEIA.

-- Compatible Portable Audio Players
Some of these include the Creative's NOMAD Jukebox 3 and the SONICblue's Rio 900. These are cheaper than PDAs. For example, you can get the SONICblue's Rio 900 for about $250 from sites such as Sonicblue.com. Of course, if you are a Mac person, you can always go with the iPod. The new iPods come with FM transmitters so you can transmit to play back over your FM radio. Newer cell phones also have built-in MP3 players with FM transmitters as well.

Therefore, as you can see, there are many options available for you to choose from to listen to your audio books. You will be happier with a player that can “bookmark” where you left off in the audio book, so you do not have to fast forward and try to find your place. In addition, I have found I like the sound quality of the FM transmitter to my car stereo.

Whatever tool you decide to use in listening to your audio books will depend largely on "how and where" you prefer listening to your audio books. Do not be afraid to try the different options out to see which you prefer and remember you can always download a free audio book to test out how your player performs.