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[Gweilo]

Sometimes you will get an audiobook as a set of M4A or M4B files, one per chapter.

Or you might have a gigantic M4B file that contains several different books.
You can split it to chapters then group these into one folder for each book.

The M4A chapters can be combined into a single M4B for each book without reencoding the audio on Windows using Chapter and Verse

Recommended: first check the metadata (tags) for the chapters. You can do that most conveniently using MP3tag. At minimum, the "Title" for each should be the chapter title, the "Album" is the book title, "Artist" is the author. Preferably also set the year of publication, the cover image (a square jpeg 500x500px or 600x600px. up to 100 kB is good), "Comment" a brief description (Plot, narrator, etc.). Make sure the track numbers are in the correct order and start at 1.

So this method can also be used to correct missing or wrong metadata in an M4B: split it to M4As, revise metadata using Mp3tag, rebuild.
  
Now use Chapter and Verse, "+ Add Files" and select the folder with your audio files.
"Input Files" tab.



See the "Chapters" tab.
By default it should read the tags from the M4As and set them correctly for the M4B.
Note the "Chapter naming prefixes" setting on the bottom, "<Metadata Title>" reads the chapter titles from the M4A files.



Special note for AUDIO FILES FROM OVERDRIVE
You may have a set of M4A or M4B files, one each per chapter. But the metadata for each file includes info about the previous and following chapters, which will create many duplicate chapters when combined.

To fix this: (from the "Help" topic "Setting Program Options")
In Chapter and verse menu, see Tools >> Options >> Chapter Options
"Default Chapter Extraction Options" tick both "Extract from files" and "OD Special Handling"
The "special handling" will attempt to remove sub-chapters and page information that are found in OverDrive-style chapters so each chapter is only listed once.




Now the "Metadata" tab. This is info for the book as a whole.
This takes the info from the first chapter file, so check the "Title" is correct. I found this could default the first chapter title, so just write the actual book title (the "Album") if so. Make "Track number" blank if it isn't already.



If all looks OK, click "Build audiobook" and select the filename (usually "Author name - Title name".m4b)

Creating the M4B is very quick since it is just copying the AAC data from erach file and streaming them, not decoding and reencoding the audio as generic conversion apps do.
The resulting M4B should be slightly smaller than the total of the M4As, as it has just one cover image instead of one for each chapter.


Chapter and verse can do quite a bit more if you explore its manual. You can use it to encode from other audio formats, not just M4A, though I use fre:ac for the latter.