Audiobooks discussion
Audible
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Importing /searching books from audible.com
Great idea and it would really expand by bookshelf! I think I asked Audible if there was a way to export my library and the answer at the time was "no". They have their own social aspect to their site so maybe they want to keep the social aspect on site ?
Hi Chris, I'm not sure that there's a copyright to break here since I would not reuse the name audible. Actually, I already picked a name: facedible... facebook+audible.
Thanks for your feedback, William! It's true that there's no easy way but if the data is accessible using a browser, it can always be "scrubbed". As I said, not easy but doable.In the end, what Audible wants is to sell more audiobooks and if my site were to increase the buzz around audio books in facebook, they would achieve that goal. Everybody would be happy.
Sorry, I didn't read your post properly, I thought you were trying to loan your audible titles, my mistake for jumping to conclusions!!!
I think this is a great idea. I would especially love to have the reviews all together. However, it would be helpful to have a total audio rating plus a rating for the print book. This would help to judge which option to choose for this book. It may be necessary to list various narrators and the abridged and unabridged editions. Personally, I won't read the abridged editions, but there must be a market for them as well.I use FB daily so this would be great for me. I could see that Audible would benefit from the extra buzz.
Interesting idea, Jerome!
Please post if you come up with an application!
Carol/William/Alice,Thanks for the feedback.
I'll definitely let you (and the rest of the goodreads community) know.
Are you interested in being "beta testers"?
William wrote: "I'd be happy to beta test."Thanks William!
I will contact you as soon as I have something for you to look at.
I don't know if you ever started working on this, but I found this thread searching for exactly that app =)I am also a computer scientist (I know not exactly the same thing as a software engineer), and tried to find an easy way to scrub audible's mylibrary to get the info needed to upload to goodreads, but they don't seem to have the ISBN's anywhere handy, and goodreads requires them, so there needs to be a middle step it seems of automatically getting the ISBN given the book author and title...
Goodreads will handle Audible ASIN's, however ... those are only found at Amazon, under the Audible option!
I've been following this thread for awhile, hoping that eventually audible/amazon/goodreads would add features that would make it possible to somehow import your audible library to goodreads, but so far still no go. John, thank you for your response, but unless I'm missing something, you can search for books on Goodreads using the asin, just like you can search with the title or author or whatever, but you can't use the asin in an import file to add many books at once. It took me about 10 minutes to write a quick script (another computer-scientist here) to scrape my audible library and get all of the asin's, but I tried several different import file formats and none of them worked, though simply replacing asin's with isbn's did work, so I know it wasn't the files or any other error in the way I was importing, it was simply that asin's aren't acceptable as isbn replacements.
Also for the record, of the first 10 asin's I tried even in the search box of Goodreads, only 3 were found, while the other 7 books were easily found through titles, so clearly Goodreads is missing many asin's from its database.
My next step is to try to script something to get the isbn from the asin, but this is going to be a whole lot more complicated... Sigh...
Sherri wrote: "I've been following this thread for awhile, hoping that eventually audible/amazon/goodreads would add features that would make it possible to somehow import your audible library to goodreads, but s..."As Audible is an Amazon company and Goodreads severed ties, I don't think this is likely.
I looked at the Amazon web API and it looks fairly easy to code up. Run an item lookup on ASIN and ISBN is one of the fields returned. Basic Perl script could do it easily. Except for one thing - to use the API requires an associate ID, and an associate ID requires you NOT reside in NC or a few other states. So I can't even whip up a proof-of-concept script to do the conversion. Sigh... If someone in an eligible state wants to sign up for the Associate program and generate a key pair I can use, I'd be happy to tinker with a conversion script.
I don't think Good Reads would want this to happen. It's too long a story to go into now but Good Reads and Amazon (which owns Audible) severed ties a bit over a year ago and GR deliberately does not take data in any way from Amazon or its subsidiaries - in fact it is not allowed to do so as the agreement between the two companies which allowed it to happen previously is no longer in place. So even if someone does live in the right place this is not something that should be done without talking to GR administrators to make sure of the legal position.
Sherri -As the ASIN is found only at the Amazon page, I'd wager that it's often missing as folks couldn't be bothered to go there just to get that one piece of info, instead adding only from the Audible listing.
I'm with Bernadette that adding Audible books these days is really only "okay" for ones you've actually purchased, or have on your to-read (maybe) pile, on an individual basis; mass uploading seems like something GR and Amazon wouldn't be too happy about.
@Bernadette, @John - Why? I could go to Audible and get the ASIN of all 200 or so of my books by hand by wading through the My Library pages. I could then go to Amazon and look up the ISBN by searching on the ASIN and then copying from the book listing. I could take the ISBN and make a spreadsheet or CSV file, and then import that into Goodreads.Or I could write a Perl script to generate the XLS or CSV file automatically.
It'd probably be quicker for me to write the script than to wade through a listing of some 600 files by hand, and when it was done, other people could use the tool as well.
Why on earth would Goodreads care a whit how I create the CSV or XLS file?
One of us is misunderstanding something and if it's me, I'm happy to be thrown a clue. Otherwise, I reiterate my invitation that if someone wants to supply me with an associate ID and keys, I'll try automating this process.
Of course it would be quicker for it to be done this way but GR is specifically excluded from using Amazon's API to populate data on this site. This happened over 12 months ago and there are pages and pages worth of posts and information about it all - at the very least I would look it up if I were you (you'll need to visit the goodreads librarian group for details). In short GR was not prepared to do all the things Amazon demanded of it in return for use of its API so GR severed their ties and the result is that data here does not get populated via the Amazon API (there are other sources of book data such as World Cat and so on and that is what GR now uses instead of Amazon)
I doubt that using the API via an intermediary (i.e. you) is more permissible legally than GR using the API directly without an agreement in place. I would be prepared to be money that you providing such a tool for other people to populate data on GR is definitely outside what is allowed.
You could potentially be placing GR in legal trouble or at the very least risking your own account here so if it were me I'd at least make contact with a GR administrator before proceeding so as to avoid putting myself or the site in legal trouble.
I doubt that using the API via an intermediary (i.e. you) is more permissible legally than GR using the API directly without an agreement in place. I would be prepared to be money that you providing such a tool for other people to populate data on GR is definitely outside what is allowed.
You could potentially be placing GR in legal trouble or at the very least risking your own account here so if it were me I'd at least make contact with a GR administrator before proceeding so as to avoid putting myself or the site in legal trouble.
When this came up among the librarians after the Big Divorce, I asked about whether that meant we couldn't add any ASIN (Amazon) books, and was told (something to the effect of), "No, you can add (those missing) books to your own My Books collection." I'm assuming you mean that your script would be for folks to do just that, Rob. In my case, I don't (generally) add ASIN books here until I'm ready to review them; even if I did add all of the "missing" ones I've purchased, that would only be a couple of dozen or so, at most.
Hi John, I haven't looked through my Audible collection to see how many are from other publishers, but I assume most or all of them have an ISBN. My intent was simply to convert as many ASIN to ISBN as possible from the Audible "My Library" page. This would, of course, have any number of legitimate uses for anyone who wishes to catalog their collection outside of the walled garden that Audible provides, merely one of those being to create a Goodreads import list. However, as there seems to be controversy to discussing this in these forums, I'll pursue it in other venues.
Thanks, Rob. Personally, I think I get what you mean, and it might well be a useful tool, but one that might not be "officially" encouraged here.
I wished there was a way to link these 2 sites (Goodreads and Audible)...I am constantly switching between them. With them wanting you to import your Amazon book puchases into Goodreads it seems like they could just make it easy for us and let us import our Audible audio books as well!
Totally agree! Now that Goodreads and Audible are both owned by Amazon... and there is a direct import of Amazon-purchased books into Goodreads, I'm surprised they haven't done the same for Audible. Maybe they will soon? I don't have the time or inclination to sit and read physical books these days. But I am able to keep "reading" by always having Audible books on my iPhone. So commuting or on the plane, I'm able to read again.
So nothing came of this in the end then, that's a shame
Btw, though it may or may not be relevant at this point, you do not need to go to Amazon to find the ASIN. The Audible ASIN for an Audible book can be found at the end of the Audible site URL for the audiobook - and it, for whatever reason, is not the same as the AMazon ASIN for the same audiobook. Goodreads entries, in my experience, usually (but not always) reference the Audible ASIN.
Yes I find it strange that they could not import both in. I also think that Goodreads should add in "I want to listen to" as well. So we can take the compiled list that separates the paper copies from the audio books.I have a typed list of all my audible and purchased cds and cassettes. Very time consuming I would love to see the feature of adding a drop down of Listened books! Want to create a new bookshelf of my audio books but I have nearly 200 between audible and bought. Mostly because I am a listener these days than reading.
need help testing let me know
I'd like to +1 this thread. Has anyone contacted GR support?
I'm not a moderator, but I'm sure Audible would like to know. There is a thread for "Ask Audible" in the Audiobooks group. An Audible rep checks in on that one.
Hi. I have a growing collection in my audible library, and I'm wondering if there has been any noise from our overlord about integrating audible titles into Goodreads ;)
Adrian wrote: "Hi. I have a growing collection in my audible library, and I'm wondering if there has been any noise from our overlord about integrating audible titles into Goodreads ;)"Hi Adrian. We have submitted your feedback in regards to integrating our app with Goodreads. Our development team is currently looking into this. We appreciate your feedback and feel that this would be a great feature. Feel free to email us your suggestions as well at greatideas@audible.com. Thanks!
I wanted to a simple way to add all my Audible books since I have over 250 Audible books at this point, and I think I have found a workable solution! Step one: Install the AudibleManager (https://www.audible.com/sw?pageFlowTy...)
Step two: Download all your audiobooks to your computer through the AudibleManager.
Step three: Set windows media player as the default for playback in AudibleManager(Edit->Options->Desktop Playback)
Step four: select all your audiobooks in the AudibleManager, right click, and select play. All your audiobooks should now be added under "music" in your windows media player library.
Step five: follow these instructions to be able to export your windows media library to excel: http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/wmp...
(The WMP9 Series Winter Fun Pack 2003 contains a useful tool called Media Info Exporter. This tool can easily export WMP media library to Excel, Word, Access, HTML and XML formats. The Winter Fun Pack though originally written for Windows XP, works fine in Windows 7/Vista.)
Step six: Once you have the media info exporter installed, select "All Music" from the dropdown, and click the "Export" button. An excel sheet should now open with all your WMP music on it. You can now easily delete all non-audiobooks, and delete all columns other than the book titles. Now save the excel sheet as a .csv file.
Step seven: Sign in to your Goodreads account. Select "My Books" at the top of the page. Select "import/export" on the left side of the page under the "tools" section.
Step eight: select the "Browse_" button and navigate to your .csv file you just created. Now select the "Import Books" button.
Step nine: Sit back and wait. Hopefully it all imports properly.
Disclaimer: I've only just now completed this and I'm now waiting to see if Goodreads imports my list. But I'm happy that I have at least found an easy way to get all the Audible books exported nicely.
I really hope this works, and I really hope this helps somebody else!
Wow that's a lot of steps! But definitely workable. I hope to give it a try soon. Thanks for posting the instructions!
Here's an alternative way to use excel to develop a list of books by author and title from your audible library. Complicated, but not THAT hard. Step 1: Open your audible library, select to view books from "All Time" and with the largest number of items per page you can. I was limited to 200 items per page. Press Ctrl-A to select the whole page, open a blank excel spreadsheet and copy it in. It will take a few minutes. All following steps are in excel.
Step 2: Press Ctrl-A to select all, right-click and "delete hyperlinks" (usually at the bottom of the list of actions." It's very annoying to try to select a cell and get carried off back to a browser. This step prevents that.
Step 3: Select all again and unmerge the cells. (It's on the "Home" tab under "Merge cells."
Step 4: Press F5 to get a "goto" box, select the "Special" button in the lower left, then select "Objects" (at the bottom of the list) and press Okay. You'll be taken back to your sheet with all pictures and other junk selected. Just press the delete key and they'll be gone! Here's a helpful link http://www.extendoffice.com/documents...
Step 5: Delete the top 20 or so lines from the page, down to the column headers ("Title" "Author" etc.)
Step 6: Delete all the columns to the left of the "Title" Column and all the columns to the right of "Author" (unless you really want to keep the length and/or purchase date... it doesn't hurt anything.
Step 7: Select the remaining columns and "Filter" them (found on the Home tab under "Sort and Filter." You could just sort here but you get some extra points for using filter. :-)
Step 8: Select the filter pulldown for the author column (it's a little triangle in the label cell) and sort a-z. All the rows that don't have an author name in them will show up below the authors. If you're just making a list of books, you don't want ANY rows without an Author listed, so select those rows and delete them! DONE! (unless you have multiple pages of books.)
Step 9 (maybe): Create a new worksheet and repeat steps 1-8 for each page of books in your library. Then Cut/Paste all the info (except the column headers) onto your first page. Now you're Really Done!
You can use the filter pulldowns to sort by author or title or to select just the books by a given author, and so forth. I have no idea how to import this into a goodreads list, unfortunately.
Hope this is useful.
John wrote: "Here's an alternative way to use excel to develop a list of books by author and title from your audible library. Complicated, but not THAT hard. Step 1: Open your audible library, select to view ..."
Thanks John! Does this work on the wish list as well? I'm assuming not. The wish list is the one I really wish I could sort more.
Actually, the steps are almost identical. In step 1 you don't seem to have to select the time range and number of entries per page, but my wish list was short. In step 5, I had 22 rows to delete before the column headers.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes!
John wrote: "Actually, the steps are almost identical. In step 1 you don't seem to have to select the time range and number of entries per page, but my wish list was short. In step 5, I had 22 rows to delete ..."
I still have the 2002 version of Excel, so it's not working well for me. Someday I'll bring my work laptop home and see if I can get it to work. Thanks!
Posting here because google found it when I was looking for a way to do this. Not finding anything, I wrote a script to extract this stuff to CSV in a format that can be imported into goodreads.A few notes:
- It's probably very brittle, might not work with your library (e.g. if you have types of content I haven't encountered), and will probably break when Audible make changes to their web interface
- goodreads officially won't let you import a book without ISBN, and ISBN's are not available from Audible. Supplying an ASIN instead seems to work so I included that, but nearly half of my books failed to import with no explanation (ASIN not on record I guess)
- EDIT: I made a better version, tested on Chrome and Safari this time, see post below.
Now you should be able to copy the CSV data, save it in a file and import it into goodreads (or open it in Excel, or anything else that reads CSV).
I can't guarantee any level of support for this either, but feel free to ask if you have any issues and I'll do my best.
I just noticed today that I had the option to import my Amazon book orders into goodreads and got excited as I was hoping this would include my Audible purchases since Audible is owned by Amazon but apparently not. It's a step in the right direction hopefully the Audible side of things is next.
Paul wrote: "Posting here because google found it when I was looking for a way to do this. Not finding anything, I wrote a script to extract this stuff to CSV in a format that can be imported into goodreads.A..."
Hi Paul, Thanks for sharing! Unfortunatly I couldn't get the script it to work. I saved the script as the URL just like you mentioned and ran it once I was on my audible page. Nothing showed up in my downloads or my clipboard. Wasn't sure where the information would be. Maybe it's cause I'm on a Mac?! ..or using Safari.
Here's another script that makes it easier to copy data from the "Library" page in Audible. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
I would be very interested in testing your programs. I've been spending quite a bit of time lately figuring out how to sync up my audible library to Goodreads. I've been using the app Bookcrawler to try to create a master db of books where I can pull data from Audible (Library and Wishlist), Amazon (Purchased and Wishlist), Goodreads (To-Read and other Bookshlelves) and the update Goodreads and LibraryThing.
Biggest issues have been each applications separate definition of tags, categories, shelves, wish lists and being able to pull all the data I want - including edition and narrator.
I'm not sure Bookcrawler is the best db to have locally on my iPhone. I would be happy with excel if I could get a way to sync up all my dbs.
Thank you for spending your time on this issue.
New version (this one works in Safari and is a lot easier to use too)Go to https://jsbin.com/pujeje and just drag the blue box that says "csv" into your bookmarks bar. Then:
- go to your library and let it load
- click the bookmark and wait - it will automatically select "All Time", then bodge in an option to show 99,999 items per page and select that - can take a while on large libraries
- watch the top of the page - it will give a couple of status updates and then add the CSV data in a box. It should select all the text automatically ready for copying - you should be able to just press Cmd/Ctrl + C, but if that doesn't work select the text and copy it as normal.
John wrote: "Here's an alternative way to use excel to develop a list of books by author and title from your audible library. Complicated, but not THAT hard. ..."John, I know I'm coming late to this party, but I spent about an hour logging my books into excel... but was only about 1/3 of the way thru.... then I saw your post, and tried it... took less time to do all of them, (and part of that was because I messed up and had to do a page over... maybe 2 pages...) than it took to do that first 1/3... good grief... wish I'd seen this earlier... <><
Is there a way to import the audible wish list to my "want to read" shelf?
Scott wrote: "Is there a way to import the audible wish list to my "want to read" shelf?"Hi Scott, your Audible library is currently not linked to your Goodreads account. We have let our team know that this is being requested, though!
Yes! Audible: please let us know when this happens.
Also, I feel that the search feature of audible.com is a bit weak. It’s much better than what it used to be but I think someone could do something better and more intuitive to use. It would combine the ratings of the audible.com audio books along with their paper/kindle counterparts from amazon.com, and other online book vendors.
I was planning on writing (I’m a software engineer) such applications (virtual bookshelf and easy/powerful search engine) on my spare time but before starting I wanted to see if there was any interest in having such applications.
I can think of many other features but I don’t want to spoil your appetite… :-)
Please let me know what you think.
Thanks.