importing csv text file with ASIN

imported text file of ~ 5000, 4200 had isbn, 800 had asin (numbers and letters beginning with 'B' eg ',B000Q0U38I'. Those 800 did not survive even though a manual add works. Used the recommended csv format. Message was to the effect that 'no books were found in the file'.

example entry from csv file:
"Life the Universe & Everything 1ST Edition","Adams, Douglas",1982,B000Q0U38I,","HARMONY BOOKS Hardcover",,,,

The ASIN numbers are Amazon's internal numbering for non-ISBN books. Short of checking these numbers against Amazon, none of the other data sources would use these numbers. They are not universal identifiers like the ISBN-13, ISBN-10, or LCCN.

In your example of the Douglas Adams book, it is recent enough to include an ISBN. How (or from what program or system) was your CSV file created?

The import script can look for ISBN numbers because they follow a particular pattern. It is probably not set up to look for ASIN numbers.

The records on Amazon with an ASIN but no ISBN are probably cases where the seller did not include the ISBN data even though it is available for many of the more recent (post-1966) books.

James Keeline

using that ASIN, i went to add books, entered 'B000Q0U38I' into the text field and pressed search.
it immediately returned as being found on amazon.com. i added to my collection then edited and found
much information filled in including dewey and LC. -no ISBN

As far as i can tell this identifies the book that i have.

So my question still is how can I get Add Book import to at least attempt to look these types of
entries.

Thanks for your reply!

You found the book because you're using Amazon as the source but it won't work for any other source. You can't expect LT to cater to every idiosyncratic id number that each company wants to use.

I did search LT - manual add book. LT found it and reported that it found it on amazon.com.

At this point, i can only conclude that the parsing software for import looks for a purely numeric field or null
field and throws non compliant record away.

LT can find IDs of this type on manual add book, try this one yourself - 'B000HKRRHC'.

Did you notice the Source selector under Search Where on the Add Books page? You must have it set to Amazon. I tried your ASIN from msg 3 using a couple of library sources, including Overcat, and it didn't find anything.

It passes whatever is in the Search field to whatever source that you've selected. ASINs work for Amazon but don't work for anything else.

I am having trouble with importing my books from goodreads it always gives me an error page.

We're working on better ASIN support, specifically for Kindle books. The great problem with them is that they don't have a specific numerical signature, like an ISBN. You have to know they're an id beforehand. We're working on it.

>8 timspalding: Hi Tim, Any news on this? I'd like to import a few thousand kindle ebooks into my library, and I have the ASINs for them, but the bulk upload doesn't allow or recognize this. How can I do this?

Alas, we don't yet offer ASIN import. I'm not sure how tricky it would be, but I suspect this will get reviewed when we get to updating the "Add books" page for LT2 (LibraryThing's current, major site redesign project).. we'll be sure to announce any changes on that front, of course.

As someone who has been banging on about improving the import for literally years, and who has absolutely zero use for ASIN, I will be somewhat annoyed if this request gets quickly granted ("quickly" being "in a matter of months") while all the other easily importable fields remain unloved.

I have no use for ASINs too, but I just searched for https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000Q0U38I and the ISBN code for the book is shown in the page. I think that if someone wants to get them, they may run a script which retrieves them.

>11 lorax:

I understand Lorax and I think exactly the same.

While I do not disagree with >11 lorax: in principle, not having a proper handling of ASINs reduces the ability of LT to complete with Goodreads and other similar platforms for users (and from there shareable reviews - which they need for their model to work) - Amazon.com (like it or not) is everywhere with their ASINs (including for paperbooks now that the ISBN13s starting with 978 are exhausted in most US-based ISBN services (publishers still have them as blocks but new ranges are 979s). Amazon's API search had never been ISBN-based, it was always ASIN based - but that was masked somewhat for paperbooks because for the 978 ISBNs, the ASIN was ISBN10. You still can search by ISBN on Amazon of course but most implementation would go for the easier search (Aka the ASIN based ISBN10 one).

So in a way getting the ASIN import to work is the extension of the ISBN import - aka the lookup based on ID.

Just saying.