Goodreads Developers discussion

I'm calling review/list to get a list of the user's read books.

I'd like to get more information about each book using Amazon's API, but in order to do that I need the ASIN for each book.

The XML I get from review/list has an internal ID and an ISBN but eBooks don't seem to have ISBNs.

Do I need to call book/show for each book in order to get the ASIN? Is there any way I can batch together requests so I can get the ASINs for all the books at once instead of sending requests one per second?

Can you post an example here of a ebook without ISBN?

<book>
<id type="integer">13019146</id>
<isbn nil="true"/>
<isbn13 nil="true"/>
<text_reviews_count type="integer">1</text_reviews_count>
<title>Velvet Dogma</title>
<image_url>https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net...
<small_image_url>https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net...
<link>https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
<num_pages/>
<format/>
<edition_information/>
<publisher/>
<publication_day/>
<publication_year/>
<publication_month/>
<average_rating>3.15</average_rating>
<ratings_count>85</ratings_count>
<description/>
<authors>
<author>
<id>992207</id>
<name>Weston Ochse</name>
<image_url>
<![CDATA[https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net...
</image_url>
<small_image_url>
<![CDATA[https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net...
</small_image_url>
<link>
<![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
</link>
<average_rating>3.91</average_rating>
<ratings_count>2238</ratings_count>
<text_reviews_count>274</text_reviews_count>
</author>
</authors>
<published/>
</book>

Here's a more detailed reply to your questions.

All Kindle books should have an ASIN, but non-kindle ebooks won't.

Also, many physical books use the ISBN as the ASIN, so there is not a separate ASIN for the book.

Currently review/list does not return ASINs, so the only way would be to use book/show, unfortunately.

Hope this helps.

Reviving this ancient question, as I'm having the same issue.

Returning a user's shelf lists books with isbn / isbn13, but not ASIN , even if ASIN is available. For some ebooks, that means we have no isbn, no isbn13, and no ASIN - and therefore no way to get more info about that book.

As Ettore mentions above, the book/show API returns ASIN, so it seems there's no legal / rights issue with giving that info.

Is there a technical reason why ASIN can't be returned in the user shelf API? Maybe it would be straightforward to add?

Very intersting. Similar situation here. I'm getting isbn: { nil: true }. Following the post