During my daily commute, I recently started listening to audio books on CD so instead of mindlessly listening to Howard Stern, I can learn something worth while. I recently listened to Love Is The Killer App by Tim Sanders and The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman. Now a company from Chagrin Falls, Ohio has essentially put audio books on an Ipod Shuffle. Findaway World LLC co-founder Christopher Celeste explains that they have created a device called a Playaway which is a book that is preloaded on a digital player. The player is the size of a credit card and they mirror a book cover. They actually look like mini-books.

The player is unique because it works without a separate listening device such as a CD or mp3 player. Instead of downloading a mp3 or buying an audio book on a CD, you just collect these new fangled audio books like you would anything else. Unlike the traditional music player, which give you the ability to load audio onto them, the Playaway player is the book. Why is this a big deal?

It just points to the fact that people are still not ready to give up something tangible to represent an audio book. With explosion of Podcasting, the creation of homemade radio shows that you can download and put on your Ipod, consumers are expressing the fact that they want new unique content. Everything is going digital and now most audio books are being offered on audible.com, but a digital file is not same as an audio book. You can hold your Ipod with the file on it, but you still aren’t getting the artwork you would with a traditional CD or book. Now with Playaway you can the audio, the artwork and the technology!

Look for the Playaway to hit your local bookstores in October this year.http://www.playawaydigital.com/