Missing book metadata

[Yoly]

I'm getting book information for this book via the API
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

It doesn't show a description, publication date or number of pages.

However, if I go to the book page
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

I get that information.

I see that the book has another edition, and if I look at that particular edition via the API I do get the metadata. Why is the site displaying the info for book 22566044 and the API isn't?

So far this has only happened with this book.

[Michael]

This is because of data licensing terms.


Pretty crappy, but you can expect this for a significant percentage of our book data.

[Yoly]

Yikes, really? But why does the book data show up correctly on the Goodreads site and it doesn't via the API?

The same data that is displayed on the website for that particular edition seems to be the same one that shows up on the API on the other edition.
It seems to me that for the website you guys are getting the information from another edition if that one doesn't have one. Or am I wrong? Couldn't the same thing be done for the API?

It's as if the API and the website weren't getting the information from the same place

[Michael]

We get our data from a wide variety of sources, and much of it comes with very specific, our website, and our API honors these complex licensing agreements.

We do sometimes automatically show book description data from other editions, but not page num or pub date.


Depending on your use case, the amazon book meta data APIs may serve some users needs better, but they come with their own baggage.

[Yoly]

Aww, that sucks :(
Thank you for the information.