More retail sources than just Amazon

It would be nice to have other store fronts as sources especially when importing ebooks. I've come across failed imports for some books because either their Amazon listing doesn't have an ISBN 10 or 13 number and just their ASIN or they're not on Amazon at all. But those same books with their ISBN numbers are on Kobo, Google Books, or Barnes and Noble.

I know there's a lot of libraries to pull from but I've also ran into the libraries that have some of these books aren't on Librarythings (or at least I couldn't find them) or the books just aren't in a library's database when searching on WorldCat.

LT has access to amazon data through a contractual arrangement that might preclude them using other online retailers as bibliographic sources. Amazon certainly still has the biggest selection among online book retailers.

Each retailer also has their own interface and LT doesn't have the manpower to support too many

I understand trying to include too many retailers would likely be labor intensive. But Barnes and Noble is the largest brick & mortar bookstore in the US. They put out quite a few special editions and signed books show that have ISBNs unique to B&N. Unless there is a contract in place that prevents it, or B&N does not want to allow it, it would make sense to me try and add them as a search option.

A lot of Amazon listings are from amateur sellers for used books. These will be assigned an Amazon ASIN as a unique identifier. It is specific to them, of course.

But the inclusion of an ISBN in one of these amateur listing is up to the person who made it. So I'm not surprised that many don't have them.

For older books, the inconsistency of Amazon listings has been a point of derision for a decade or more. The phrase "ratty data" is sometimes used in these discussions.

Amazon has a financial investment in LT so that may preclude, by contract, the use of other retail book databases.

LT mainly uses specific library protocols and makes rare exceptions to work with non-library sources. Data like this is not free at the volume that LT members would use it.

James

The Amazon investment in LT probably isn't a factor. Amazon acquired that when it bought up Abe Books, but the terms of the original investment were very well written and still only include Abe Books, and not other branches of the Amazon imperium.

However the contracts that allow LT to use Amazon data do limit putting other booksellers at the same level as Amazon. I don't know the details, but that could preclude using other booksellers as sources.

It probably would not be hard to add Barnes&Noble, Apple Books, and Bookshop.org, among other sellers who would probably work with LT to be added.

I can google my ebook ISBN and find the book on Hachette and Barnes & Nobel. But it's not on amazon and doesn't show up in the LT searches. I'm guessing if you can google it, LT can too.

Does anyone actually know if this is a policy decision or if there are practical issues that prevent this?

>7 dchaikin: Major public libraries are the go to for fiction ebooks with ISBN, so add Brooklyn, San Francisco, Seattle and such, CARLI for non-fiction ebooks to your sources.

>7 dchaikin: LT doesn't use Google to access its data sources.

For practical issues, see >2 paradoxosalpha: and >3 jjwilson61:.

>9 paradoxosalpha: these are suppositions. They might be the reason. But i haven’t seen LT confirm them. Also LT is pretty open. Maybe someone can just email Tim…

>8 SandraArdnas: i’ll try these four. Thanks

>10 dchaikin:

I don't think it's a "supposition" that LT doesn't use Google to access its sources.

Where does LibraryThing get its information?
LibraryThing uses Amazon and over 1,000 libraries that provide open access to their collections with the Z39.50 protocol. The protocol is used by a variety of desktop programs, notably bibliographic software like EndNote. LibraryThing appears to be the first mainstream web use.

My >2 paradoxosalpha: remark is merely informed speculation.

But >3 jjwilson61: is certainly correct that non-Amazon online retailers are using data formats that are neither clones of Amazon nor Z39.50, and that they would take serious developer commitment to address.

You can email Tim if you want. Making such a demand of the site owner is no more off-kilter than the peculiar passive call for "someone" else to do so. For myself, I'm satisfied with the current range of sources. I rarely have to resort to manual entry from scratch.

>10 dchaikin: I have recommended a official ISBN Agency in my country as a source by email on 2024/10.
Here's the part of the response by the staff:
Unfortunately, other than Amazon, we are not able to add sources unless they are a library, and have certain specific kinds of access they can give us.
When I referred to library sources, I meant their own internal catalogs, which we access using the Z39.50 search system.

>12 paradoxosalpha: ah, i was thinking of messages 2 & 3. Sorry. Of course they don’t Google. They need authoritative sources. I was merely suggesting if google can find these sources, LT can access them.

>13 HsuBattery: thanks. That’s informative. But I wonder why Amazon and why only-amazon? It kinda made sense on 2006. But it doesn’t make sense now.

Amazon is still, perhaps even more so now than then, the biggest international online seller of books. Even if Barnes & Nobles is big in the USA, they are not international. One of the arguments above was that they have the information on their own editions. That might be an argument for using publishers as sources, but we don't do that, and I don't see anybody calling for that. Manual entry is available, and is very easy.

>15 MarthaJeanne: but they don’t have all the books. There are many missing. So it’s an incomplete source. And - yes - i love the manual entry option

B&N don't have all the books either.

>17 MarthaJeanne: that’s why I’m questioning why they don’t work on multiple online sources - assuming those sources make it easy for LT.

They do not make it easy for LT. They do not have data in a format LT can access.

>16 dchaikin:, perhaps we need to consider not the very general subject of data sources but the specific book you can't find.

If it is from a micro publisher, print-on-demand, or self-published, the odds of finding it anywhere but in the main source is small.

For example, many books are not found in WorldCat.org (which LT positively will not use as a data source since they are competition) because the member libraries (a) don't have it or (b) don't catalog it in the system.

An ISBN is basically an inventory control number. It has a language group, publisher ID, book ID checksum in the ISBN-10 and the ISBN-13 adds a retail category (978- for most books today) and changes the checksum (no longer 0-9, X but 0-9 and following a different algorithm).

If B&N facilitates print-on-demand books with their own ISBN series, those may not be included in Amazon if it is not a book they sall. Note that Amazon requires their own PoD service. I think it is currently called Kindle Direct Publishing but it has changed names a few times. But their options are paperback-only. If you want to offer a hardcover such as Lulu.com can produce, it can't be offered through Amazon. They don't get their cut to a sufficient degree as well as participating in the publishing side of the business. It is a bit much. I buy from Amazon. I buy from B&N stores. I buy from independents and especially used and antiquarian stores for the kinds of books I want.

If we understand what you are trying to find, that is a better starting point. Seeing the ISBN with the dashes can give a lot of insight about the size of the publisher. Knowing the bibliographic details helps.

Library of Congress is not always a data source that returns a listing. My second try is usually OverCat, LT's own data source based on listings that are pulled from library data sources by members.

I think it is broken now but if another member has a listing of the book, it has been possible in the past to copy a full listing from their catalog to yours using a custom script with the TamperMonkey plugin. This may not be an option for you but it is something to think about if someone else routinely has works you are trying to catalog. Once the detail page is stabilized, the custom script (LT Copy Book) will have to be fixed.

James

>20 Keeline:

I publish my books using Amazon's POD service, which is still called Kindle Direct Publishing. They have offered hardcover publishing options since at least last year.

>21 paradoxosalpha:, OK. that's a new development. Does this apply to 8.5x11" pages as well as the usual 6x9"?

James

>22 Keeline:

There are a lot of page sizes that can be hardbound. My one hardcover title (so far) is 7 x 10". I'm pretty sure larger pages work, but my existing paperbacks at 5 x 8" are too small, unless I reformat them. (That's a project I hope to get to later this year, combining some smaller paperback volumes into larger hardbound ones.)

>20 Keeline: hi James. My specific book is an ebook i purchased at bookshop.org. When i went to add the book to my lt library, I couldn’t find the e isbn on any lt database. I tried googling and found it in a few places, but not amazon and not libraries. That’s what led me here.

In my case i resolved this by adding a different edition and manually editing to match my book.

>24 dchaikin:, this seems like an edge case of micro-publishing. For this example, it would not call for the large number of rare developer hours to add something like B&N as a data source, especially if there are contractual barriers. If there were thousands of books people want to add that are not available in the existing sources, that is the time to look at options for developer time.

Keep in mind that most LT developer time has been described to work on upgrading the page structures of different portions of the site. This process has been going on for a long time. The promised benefits include more customizability, including things like dark mode. There's a lot more but it is one of the common requests that is usually deferred for 2.0 page designs.

These days anyone can publish something through PoD and eBook options. No single database, and often many in aggregate, will be a single source of truth.

James

>27 gilroy: Not really an edge case. Just a case where the Bookshop.org edition isn’t sold on amazon, which may have a different ebook edition. It’s not an obscure book. That’s what surprised me - that amazon didn’t carry this edition, but that several other sellers did

>26 dchaikin: That's become more common since Amazon has drained many authors of their royalties because they are being pirated and then banned.
The Ebook ISBN should remain the same across platforms, unless the platform requires a different ISBN (As Amazon would.)

>24 dchaikin: I couldn’t find the e isbn on any lt database.
You searched a non-source for the book first? Librarything is not a source, so if you didn't find the book here, it's because no one else had entered it. And even then, you'd still have to search elsewhere.

What book is this anyway?

>27 gilroy: i searched to add the book on the Add Books page. Databases are libraries and amazon. Not, notably, worldcat.org - which i believe is finicky with their access. There is “Overcat”, which searches LT’a own database. (Which I also tried)

The book is The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. My ebook isbn is 9780316126953

ETA: As the book is now in LT, the overcat option should now work. But i just tried and it didn’t work.

>28 dchaikin: Overcat is specifically library searches that worked. Adding it to Librarything manually would not add it to Overcat.

Okay, you searched through various sources from the add books page. Your phrasing confused me.

Interestingly, if you find the book, then click on the green add button, followed by clicking on Advanced, you find the most popular sources. For the Ebook:
Source
Amazon.com
National Library of New Zealand (Wellington, WGN)
Amazon.co.uk
Christchurch City Libraries (Christchurch, CAN)
Amazon.de
District of Columbia Public Library (Washington, DC)

>28 dchaikin: Bowker came up with The Luminaries for 9780316126953.

>29 gilroy:
- overcat - makes sense. Thanks
- sources - how can you do that for a specific edition?

>30 amanda4242: huh. Interesting! What is Bowker?

>31 dchaikin: bowker.com:
" Bowker, the official ISBN agency for the United States, provides resources to help authors publish, distribute, and promote their books. Our products and services make books easier for readers to discover, evaluate, order, and experience. "

>31 dchaikin: It gives you options of Paperback, Hardback, audio, or ebook. Then when you select the option, you edit the selection to match what you have specifically.

>31 dchaikin: thanks! I’ll use that source in the future

>30 amanda4242: Can we access it from the 'add books' to search for books by ISBNs?

>35 humouress:

Yes. In the full list of sources, under USA, you'll find "Bowker Books in Print".

>36 lilithcat: Got it now, thanks. I did look before I posted my question, but I didn't realise/ forgot that I could expand it to see more sources.

FYI, the Bowker source flips the author name. You will have to correct every single author after adding. Bug reported in 2021: https://www.librarything.com/topic/329512