Thanks for the response @sibilant! Those are extremely helpful details and I think at least part of what I’ve been doing aligns with what what you’ve described. I was able to get some support in this post on the topic.
I’ve been creating official releases for both the MP3s and the M4Bs from Libro.fm. For Audible, I’ve been making an official release for the AAX file and a Psuedo-Release for the chapters embedded in the AAX file like in the “The Left Hand of Darkness” example referenced in this thread.
You highlighted two major problems I’ve run into: how to link an M4B or AAX release to a release or source containing the chapters for it and how to provide better chapters than those embedded in the original AAX or M4B files. The way chapters are split out-of-the-box in some audiobooks is absolutely horrifying. See this The Eye of the World release.
Compatibility for chapters between releases from the same distributor is also a problem given that some distributors, like Audible, add their own sound byte to the beginning and end of the audio. This results in chapter offsets being different due to disparity in the length of the first track. I’ve added both Audible and Libro.fm releases of Warbreaker which demonstrates this. It also shows how the tracks can be split up slightly differently between vendors.
My solution to connecting the M4B or AAX to its chapters is to associate each release with its distributor then find the releases from the same distributor. This works when there’s only one other release from the same distributor, but doesn’t work so well when there’s more than that. It would be great if it were possible to link directly to the release to use for chapters.
I’ve pondered using a Bootleg release to supply better chapters, but even if I were to do something like that, it wouldn’t be very useful without a way to link a release to it.
Thanks again for the context, it’s really helpful.