Manually added audiobook not showing up in iOS

Anyone have some experience with Apple Books?

I have manually added an audiobook (mp3) on my MBP (MacOS Monterey), and also added to the ‘Want to Read’ collection. I added a new pdf to this collection as well to double check.

In Apple Books on my iPhone XR (iOS 15.0.2) pdf is displayed under books and ‘Want to Read’. The audiobook is missing from the Library > Collections from both Audiobooks and ‘Want to Read’ (the newly added pdf is there)

Its been about 2 hours since I added to audiobook (692MB), and syncing should not take that long (if that is what the issue is). The pdf was almost instantaneous (5MB)

I also tried airdrop and accessing through Files then share > open with Books though this option doesn’t seem to exist anymore (did for iBooks a few iOS ago).

Any tips/did I miss something?

thx

Does the book have chapters? I use Audiobook Builder to create books from CDs and other sources. Go have a read… Audiobook Builder: Create Audiobooks on Your Mac

Much easier than cramming into a big MP3 file