Q: I have an iPod mini that I just want to put an audio book on – I don’t want to sync all of the music, just the book. How do I do that?
– Judy
A: The simplest way to do this is set your iPod to manually manage your content. This will prevent any media content from syncing onto your iPod automatically. You can then drag and drop the audio book on specifically.
To enable manual mode, connect your iPod to your computer, open iTunes, select the checkbox beside Manually manage my music on the Summary screen in iTunes, and then click the “Apply” button.
Once this setting is saved, you can drag-and-drop the audiobook from your iTunes library directly onto the iPod icon to copy it over.
Alternatively if you still want to keep automatic synchronization enabled for whatever reason—perhaps to keep the book’s playback position in sync between iTunes and your iPod, then you can simply disable synchronization of all other types of content on the appropriate iPod sync screens in iTunes, ensuring that only “Books” is selected. In iTunes 9.1 or later, audiobooks are synchronized separately from music and these settings are controlled on a separate panel where you can choose the specific titles that you want to sync.
In earlier versions of iTunes, audiobooks were synced from the Music tab, in which case you will need to create a playlist containing the audiobook that you want to sync and then enable only that playlist for synchronization within the “Music” sync options.