I’m very pleased to find freeware for the Windows desktop that offers persistent and editable bookmarks for audiobooks and long podcasts. AIMP 4.51 (Ghacks review) is maintained and mature, has a well-designed interface, is genuine freeware, and the playlist and bookmarks system is both simple and robust.

AIMP’s bookmarks are stored in XML at C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\AIMP\Bookmarks.xml and can thus be backed up.

It also has a graphic equaliser, supports pitch shift and subtle speed changes of playback, and has many plugins including one for podcatching via RSS.