Your questions are accurate. Apple iPod products are way better at automatically organizing audiobooks and podcasts.
The SanDisk product line is more for DIY users.
Here is one suggestion, try using Folder Mode to play your audio files from within their own folders, (This mode will not provide the “Resume” feature of Books Mode.)
Beyond that, you could read a few message topics in this Forum that involve curation of ID3 tags using external software (like mp3tag).
Here is one example from 100’s more on here.
