Cover Image URL's are inconsistent from API: review/list

[Brad]

I noticed yesterday evening that some of my books were returning 404's for their image URL's. After a bit of investigation it seems that the API call to review/list is returning a different URL structure for some images.

For example:
(works) http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156...
(doesn't work) http://www.goodreads.com/images/books...
(doesn't work) http://www.goodreads.com/images/books...

Going to the actual pages (e.g. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29...) shows the proper image/URL.

[Michael]

I'll look into this shortly.

[Brad]

Michael wrote: "I'll look into this shortly."

Thanks Michael, appreciate it :)

[Michael]

I've found the issue, and patched it, so it should make the next release.

Those images we don't have permission to show (we don't have permission to redistribute amazon and barnes and noble images via our api), so you'll be getting a placeholder image for those.

[Brad]

Michael wrote: "I've found the issue, and patched it, so it should make the next release.

Those images we don't have permission to show (we don't have permission to redistribute amazon and barnes and noble image..."

ah damn, thanks michael :)

[William, Goodreads engineer]

Are there other restrictions from Amazon and Barnes and Noble where you can't share the data through the API? I have noticed some other missing data when working with books.

Our data sources have changed a lot since this thread was opened. We no longer use Amazon-supplied data, except for a handful of books only available as Kindle e-books.

However, we must still follow our data partners' licensing rules, which means that book records retrieved with our API will continue to omit some fields. Moreover, because book records can include data pulled from multiple sources, individual fields within a book (e.g., cover image, publisher name) might have different restrictions; and which fields come from which sources will vary from book to book.

The upside is that our code can now check the data source for individual fields, so we can supply you with as much information as we can for each book. The downside is that there's no simple answer to the question, "Which book fields can I retrieve through the API?" The available fields will vary from book to book, and they can change over time as new data are imported from our partners or updated by our librarians.

I'll update the documentation to address this.

[Allan]

I hate to resurrect an old post, however, If getting these items via the API is a no go... why are we able to get the same images via an RSS feed of our user's book shelves?

Just seems inconsistent.