The Kindle Chronicles discussion

Len read a comment after the Otis Chandler interview on the latest TKC, about a listener who uses LibraryThing to list the books she owns and goodreads to review all kinds of books, owned or borrowed.

Years ago I started with LibraryThing, thinking it would be a good central repository for listing books in my library--but then the ebook revolution happened. LT is still a possible landing site for me, but I'd have to manually enter all my Kindle and other ebooks and that would be quite a chore. And there's no dedicated iOS app.

Shelfari (which Amazon acquired) allows you to upload information about every book I've ever purchased at Amazon (hardcover, paperbacks and Kindle books) and I suppose I could add the "where" (for print books). There's supposed to be a way to export the list from Shelfari but I don't know whether goodreads will import it. Does anyone know?

I used to use a standalone program called ReaderWare, which now has an iOS app (though apparently it's "read only"; all it does is wifi sync with the ReaderWare database on my computer). The new version allows you to drag and drop book listings from an Amazon page, but then, too, it's otherwise a manual process. Maybe ReaderWare can import the Shelfari data?

Some people use Evernote to track their purchases, and that might work, but would involve a lot of manual data entering.

Bottom line--I have a lot of printed books and ebooks scattered everywhere and as I get older and can't cram too much more into my brain, I forget where things are. Did I put the file in Dropbox? Is it in iBooks? Or the Kobo app? On my Kindle Paperwhite? Where are my printed books on Thomas Aquinas? Don't I have a printed copy somewhere of Nabokov's Pale Fire? Do I have a Penguin Classics version of Don Quixote?

Maybe you know the feeling of searching for several unprofitable days for a physical book, only to find several books you had unprofitably searched for last time?

Solutions, please!

Cheerily,

Dan

Marc wrote: Perhaps Calibre could be a viable solution for you.

Hi, Marc,

Never thought of Calibre. Would it import the file that Shelfari exports? I assume you didn't enter all those ebooks by hand....?

Cheerily,

Dan

Hi, Marc,

Thanks for the recommendation. I'm eager to try it out!

Shelfari has a setting when you want to add books to your shelf to import ALL books you purchased from Amazon. Once that's done, there's another place (sorry, can't remember where) that you can choose to export all the book info in your library to a file. But it looks like a special kind of file, not just a CSV. I'll have to experiment with that, too.

This is getting fun.

Cheerily,

Dan

Hi, Marc,

Thanks for the info. I hope to set up a Mobileread account soon. Now it's time to play!

Cheerily,

Dan

Hi, Marc,

Thanks for this. You're diligent! :-)

Cheerily,

Dan

Hi, Marc,

Hey, that's what communities are for!

Take a loved one to dinner!

Cheerily,

Dan

Someone mentioned a book making his brain hurt. The idea of listing all the books I own on any site gives my brain pain. If I did that, I'd have no time to read. Tell me, guys, what is the advantage of the database. What am I missing?

Yes, thank you.

Marc wrote: "Dan, here is how to get your Amazon.com wishlist (not your purchased book list) out of Amazon.com and into Goodreads.

https://plus.google.com/1031841900914..."

Hi, Marc,

As Paul Harvey used to say, "here is a strange." I asked Shelfari to import ALL of my book purchases from Amazon, and it did so--about 1100 books from the beginning of Amazon time.

Then, on the Shelfari site, I asked it to export a file of my books, and I imported it into Goodreads.

Here's the strange: it only either exported or imported paper books. No Kindle editions.

What??

But I SEE all the books in Shelfari. Why did it export (or why did Goodreads import) JUST the printed stuff?

Huh?

* * *

And I got to thinking about calibre. While it can import the actual book files, what I'm looking for is really a catalog of my books, which are scattered all over platforms and companies.

And I'd like to access it on my mobile devices and tablet.

But calibre doesn't do that (that I know of). That leaves Goodreads (which has an app), ReaderWare (which has an app that syncs with my desktop), or iBookshelf (which has an iPad/iPhone app but no cloud, though it does sync with Dropbox--which, I guess, might as well be the cloud).

Thanks, Marc, for pushing us on this. I admire your persistence!

Cheerily,

Dan

Marc wrote: "I queried Amazon Tech Support.

"Thank you for writing to us, and I understand you want to know how to generate (export) a CSV file of all your purchased printed-on-paper and Kindle books/e-books, ..."

Hi, Marc,

But we have to be patient!

Cheerily,

Dan

Marc wrote: "Len, there is a very bad "gotcha" looming on the horizon for those brave and hardy souls who try to transfer their lists of printed-on-paper and e-books on the Amazon.com -> Shelfari -> Goodreads p..."

Hi, Marc,

Yes, quite a gotcha, especially if you have reviews and other things linked to a listing. That needs to be fixed, but I can imagine the coding that has to happen behind the scenes!

Likely we're pushing things here in expecting a better solution. That will come in time; Len is right.

So in a way we're trying to game the system, making it do what it wasn't exactly (at this point) intended to do. So it's fun, but frustrating, but I think that what you and I are discovering are things the goodreads team should be aware of. Of course they're reading this thread with rapt attention! (Hi!)

I appreciate your figuring out why only printed books imported into goodreads--Shelfari didn't add the ISBNs in the export.

So we're kinda at a dead end for now, it seems, unless there's a neat way to get those ISBNs added to the export. But we've made some progress.

And I know you will not sleep! :-)

Cheerily,

Dan

Marc wrote: "Dan, here is an interesting and well-thought-out piece on using modern Evernote to capture and organize and store digital photographs of your physical books on your physical bookshelves.

Going Pap..."

Hi, Marc,

This is a cool blog post. Thanks!

Cheerily,

Dan

Marc wrote: "Dan wrote: "Marc wrote: "Dan, here is an interesting and well-thought-out piece on using modern Evernote to capture and organize and store digital photographs of your physical books on your physica..."

Hi, Marc,

I've used Evernote for years and even have a premium account, so I've known that it does optical character recognition in photographs. But I just never put two and two together. Until now.

Thanks!

Cheerily,

Dan

Marc wrote: "Dan wrote: "That needs to be fixed, but I can imagine the coding that has to happen behind the scenes!"

Amazon's Shelfari already has working code that properly emits the ISBN for printed-on-paper..."

Hi, Marc,

Looking at the Amazon pages for Kindle books as opposed to printed books and lo and behold--I don't think Amazon uses ISBNs for Kindle books, just ASIN (their own internal identification number).

That could be the reason. Maybe somewhere in the background there's an ISBN for each Kindle book but, since Amazon uses its own format and DRM, Amazon may not need the ISBN.

This is all speculation but it may be the ISBNs aren't actually there!

Cheerily,

Dan

Marc wrote: "Dan, just as a reminder Microsoft's OneNote also does OCR on attached or embedded digital photographs and makes the recognized text both searchable by the internal OneNote search engine and availab..."

Hi, Marc,

I used to use Microsoft Office, including OneNote, quite a lot, but have since moved to a Mac, Pages, and Evernote. Haven't looked back.

Cheerily,

Dan

Marc wrote: "Dan wrote: "Maybe somewhere in the background there's an ISBN for each Kindle book but, since Amazon uses its own format and DRM, Amazon may not need the ISBN.

This is all speculation but it may b..."

Hi, Marc,

Ah, I haven't looked at the actual TSV file, but that makes sense. Goodreads needs the ISBN and there isn't any with Kindle books. Maybe that will change, but for now it's:

"ASINer in the hands of an angry Marc!"

I know. Keep my day job.

Cheerily,

Dan

Spent 5 hours today doing genealogical research..very intense. Came to read the latest in this blog. It's better than a soap opera. "As The Book Turns." Dan and Marc, you'll solve this. Very talented guys.

Mary wrote: "Spent 5 hours today doing genealogical research..very intense. Came to read the latest in this blog. It's better than a soap opera. "As The Book Turns." Dan and Marc, you'll solve this. Very t..."

Hi, Mary,

Thanks for your kind words! The process does seem a puzzle, but likely Amazon will have to add some functionality so we can just plain import all our book purchases (Kindle and otherwise) into Goodreader. But it's intriguing to see how far we (i.e., Marc) can get before the process turns purely manual to finish up.

Reminds me of an old Arthur C. Clarke science-fiction story in which an astronaut spends years in a rocket heading to Mars (if I remember). When he gets there Mars is already colonized with humans who during the years he was traveling invented a far faster space drive.

Like scaling Mt. Everest only to find a Taco Bell.

Cheerily,

Dan

Marc wrote: "I received a reply from Goodreads tech support..."

Hi, Marc,

So now we wait. The good stuff is just around the corner!

Cheerily,

Dan