The New York Times is reporting that beginning tomorrow, eMusic, which is second to iTunes in music download sales, will offer more than a thousand books for download, with many of them costing far less than on iTunes.

The report gives Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" as an example: it will cost $9.99 on eMusic compared with $18.95 on iTunes. Meanwhile, the retail price for a five-CD version of the same book is $29.95.

Here's why we're excited about this: "The biggest selling point for eMusic is also its biggest point of controversy: the site uses the MP3 format, which works on any digital player but lacks the technology, known as digital rights management, that protects copyrighted material from unlimited duplication.

"By contrast, iTunes only works on an iPod, and songs downloaded from the service can be burned onto a CD only once and cannot be transmitted over the Internet."

In other words, you can buy an audiobook on eMusic -- at a huge discount -- and then listen to it on any mobile phone that can play MP3s, without having to take along your iPod, Creative Zen, or other portable music player.

EMusic, a Song-Download Site, to Offer Audiobooks [NYT]