Amazon Add Books failures

Creating a new bug report for this, since previous reports were about a specific national Amazon—this one is for all of them together.

Amazons currently not working as an Add Books source:
- Brazil (AWS.InvalidAssociate)
- Japan (AWS.InvalidAssociate)

We're looking into it and will post updates when we have them. Sorry for the trouble, folks.

I've subsequently got China and Spain to return results again, finally. Maybe just lots of throttling, considering I tried each search thrice before posting this report.

I'm very happy to fix this bug soon. I’ve not been able to add books using amazon.co.jp for a month. I'm sorry in a selfish hope.

I also appreciate your effort to fix the bugs. I use amazon.co.jp too. Sorry for being helpless.

I'm experiencing this again yesterday and today trying to add books from the .co.jp Amazon.

For reference the previous thread I can find is:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/267073

From what Tim says there it sounds like .mx is indeed a lost cause.

>5 lorax: Yes, unfortunately, it's been confirmed that we can't get Amazon.mx up and running again. I'll see that it gets removed from our list of sources.

Please please, I hope you can get the issue with Amazon JP sorted soon.

amazon.co.jpでadd booksできなくて困っている日本人ユーザーの方へ

わたしはこのサービスを利用して7年目のヘビーユーザです。
すでに2ヶ月間、本が追加できずに困っております。
はじめ1ヶ月は回復していないか毎日動作確認していましたが、いっこうに直る気配がないため、近頃は諦めモードです。

2ヶ月の間に、150冊ほど本を読みました。
自分のラブラリーに追加ができないので、わたしはamazon.co.jpの「ほしい物リスト」をつかってしのいでいます。
他の方はどのような代替手段を御利用ですか？
おすすめがあればどうか教えてください。

>8 ozakira: We're still working on a solution for Amazon Japan, unfortunately. In the meantime, if none of our other Add Books sources work for you (you can see a list of them by clicking "Add from 2257 sources" under "Search where? on the Add Books page), you can always add items manually by clicking the "Add manually" link. This will give you a blank form where you can enter as much or as little detail about your book as you like.

It's been almost a month after the first post, but the problem about AmazonJP still seems to remain as same. For those who have been using Librarything as their reading list, this would be a critical situation. Could you at least inform us current progress and estimated time to solve this problem?

Is there really no other source for adding Japanese books? That would seem to be the 'critical' situation. Having a single point of failure outside of LT's control is foolhardy.

>11 lorax: Not much in the way of Japanese sources:

Amazon Japan all media
Amazon Japan books
Amazon Japan movies
Amazon Japan music
Amazon Japan music and movies
American School in Japan
Hokkaido University of Education
Okayama University
Sapporo University
Tokushima University
Waseda University

We've tried to get National Diet Library connected, but no luck so far. It is possibly the IDEAL source for Japanese books. For those in the "Library Add Books Sources Maintenance" group: https://www.librarything.com/topic/260076

Of those listed by lesmel, only one (Tokushima University) is currently working at some level but not perfectly in terms of coverage. Based on this point, it is reasonably assumed that most Japanese LT users have depended on AmazonJP as their main (almost sole) source to add Japanese books to their lists.

If you can't find a source, you can always add a book manually. The option is at the bottom of the left-hand column of the add books page.

The person above writing in Japanese said that he read 150 books in 2 months, and it would be too much labor if he needs to add all those books manually. Japanese users did appreciate having AmazonJP as source, and they do need the source (or any alternative sources that function as AmazonJP) to appreciate LT just as other users in other parts of the world do.

>13 yosu: When you say "currently working at some level" -- do you mean connection failure, search failure, or no results (i.e. the library doesn't have the book you are searching for)? My testing so far:

American School in Japan seems to work (returns results) consistently for single word; but not ISBN and not multi-word or phrase searches.

Hokkaido University of Education seems to work (returns results) consistently for single word, phrase, and ISBN searches.

Okayama University seems to work (returns results) consistently for single word, phrase, and ISBN searches.

Sapporo University seems to work (returns results) consistently for single word, phrase, and ISBN searches.

Waseda University fails completely -- no connection. I will try to find new connection details.

>15 yosu: If all you want is to add the title and author to your library then adding manually isn't any more work than using a source. Adding more fields would take more time, but those fields are often wrong when using Amazon as a source so they have to be checked anyway. So I don't think that having to add manually should be a deterrent.

It's only very recently that we got any Austrian sources, so I have added lots of books manually. It's really not that big a hassle. Amazon has gotten better, but there used to be so many errors that adding manually was faster than using Amazon. (Still the case for older books, in my opinion.)

Obviously it would be good for there to be better Japanese sources, but LT can only do what the available sources allow.

>16 lesmel: It's not quite certain about how you tried, but none of the above seem to respond to words like 社会学(sociology) or ISBNs of Japanese books like 9784198934415 (a textbook about religion, published by a middle-scale Japanese publishing company). Tokushima University responded to some ISBNs, but not others.

>17 jjwilson61: It doesn't seem that most LT users started using LT just "to add the title and author" to their reading list. If that was true, a spreadsheet would have fulfilled the need. Japanese users did appreciate having LT's adding function using sources, and now they are suffering from losing it. (Personally, I appreciate this function so that I instantly can see what books are shared by others.)

And yes, AmazonJP would have wrong fields that need to be corrected, but that is a different problem from losing a source which covers most of Japanese books with their titles and ISBNs.

>18 MarthaJeanne: What is not certain is whether AmazonJP is no longer a functional source or not. If yes, LT should remove AmazonJP from the list (just like they did to AmazonMX). The progress is not clear, and AmazonJP still appears as a source which confuses Japanese LT users (although some of them are about to give up waiting for the fix).

>20 yosu: (Personally, I appreciate this function so that I instantly can see what books are shared by others.)

That has nothing to do with whether the book has been added manually or not. OK, maybe a little since if everyone adds from the same source its more likely that they'll be auto-combined, but then maybe not, since Amazon often adds a lot of junk to their titles.

>19 yosu: It could be that 社会学 produces too many results for the sources. I did encounter that problem.

If you will provide some words and/or ISBNs, I will do some testing on the sources I mentioned. I also have been hunting for other Japanese sources that use z39.50.

>23 lesmel: I've been testing the sources with books on my list, and found that the coverage of each source varies a lot. Also, new books seem to be covered by none of the existing sources (except AmazonJP when it was functioning). Here are some examples I have tried:

-創造の方法学 (ISBN: 9784061455535)
-アフリカ経済論 (ISBN: 9784623041602)
-ソフィーの世界―哲学者からの不思議な手紙 (ISBN: 9784140802236)
-虐殺器官 (ISBN: 9784150309848)
-3月のライオン (1) (ISBN: 9784592145110)
-グリーンネイバーフッド (ISBN: 9784881242339)
-ネイバーフッド台北 (ISBN: 9784908406089) *corrected
-MEZZANINE VOLUME 1 SUMMER 2017 (ISBN: 9784908406096)

Also, no source covers new books like this:
-問題解決大全 (ISBN: 9784894517806) published Nov 20th

>24 yosu: Results of my testing (using Sapporo Uni) from your examples:

創造の方法学



アフリカ経済論



ソフィーの世界―哲学者からの不思議な手紙



虐殺器官


.
.
.
No results
3月のライオン
Sapporo Uni has SOMETHING with that title...just not sure it's what you want. Also, not sure why it doesn't show in the LT results.



グリーンネイバーフッド
ネイバーフッド台北

問題解決大全 -- Is this the same book: https://calil.jp/book/4894517809? And this: http://iss.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000067-I000208084-00? As I mentioned, I'm still hunting for alternate sources that could be added to LT. This may require LT staff to add some connections that aren't z39.50. Maybe. Or for LT staff to contact source libraries formally.

Reply to #8 ozakira
私もＡｍａｚｏｎ　Ｊａｐａｎからの追加のサービスのヘビーユーザです。
残念ながら、ここは教育機構の図書室です。（カイロ大学文学部日本語日本文学科の図書室＝有料ライフタイムアカウント）。
今まで3500部ぐらいの登録は完成ですが、登録の進めない状況になっております。
この問題が解けられるまで待つ期間が永くなったら、他の手段への利用になりますが、仕方ないようです。
さて、ご質問への答えですが、私本管理プラス（無料）には問題がありません。アマゾン・ジャパンからのデータ・インポートは可能です。また、ウェブ・ユーザー・インタフェースもあります。（Ｐｅｒｌプラグ・インをサイトにてインストールしたら、現存のローカル・データがサイトにコピーされ、コンピューターがオフラインでもウェブ上利用できます。
既に試したが、（いつもと違って）日本式ＩＳＢＮしか受け取れないようです。（４ＸＸＸＸＸＸＸＸ）
今度は、978ＸＸＸＸＸＸＸＸＸＸを入力すれば空きなページになります。
でも、ただ2部のみ試したから、まだ確認できません。（978のインポート可能な本について試した時は、2部だけであって、より多くの本のインポートも試したら確認できるようです。でも、日曜日までオフラインになりますから、あの時はこの機能をテストするつもりです。
ダウンロード・リンクなどはこちらです。
http://awplus.jp/cgi-bin/dl/page.cgi?symbol=am&id=shihon

他に、コレクターズ（collectorz.com)（無料・有料のプランあり）も日本の書籍のデータ輸入が可能です。ほとんどの本のデータを輸入するが、ソースはアマゾン・ジャパンではありません。

Reply to #12 lesmel
can you explain to me technical problems preventing you adding NDL as a source?
I had suggested some Japanese sources in the past (NDL included) , but didn`t get any reply yet.
I can contact them in Japanese, so that we can add it.

Thanks

reply to #12 lesmel
Waseda seems to be not working now..
Other sources seems to be new for me, I`ll add and try them next week, as I`ll be offline these days.
But, the most important Japanese sources are Amazon Japan, NDL, (as well as other sources that not supported by LT but supported by other Japanese apps).

reply to: # 24 yosu
Please re-try using Japanese ISBNs (4XXXXXXX) and see if you`ll get the same result.

>27 cairoartsjp: I think ccatalfo and davidgn both tried to add NDL but couldn't get a connection. They can probably give you more details.

>29 cairoartsjp:
I tried the sources with Japanese ISBNs but unfortunately, the results were the same.

Here are some examples which are not covered by any of existing (working) Japanese sources:

-3月のライオン (1) (ISBN: 9784592145110) - the one shown on lesmel's post was a different one
-グリーンネイバーフッド (ISBN: 9784881242339)
-ネイバーフッド台北 (ISBN: 9784908406089) - ISBN was wrong on my previous post
-MEZZANINE VOLUME 1 SUMMER 2017 (ISBN: 9784908406096)
-問題解決大全 (ISBN: 9784894517806) https://calil.jp/book/4894517809?
-土井家の「一生もん」2品献立 (ISBN: 9784062716338)
-きょうの料理 わたしのいつものごはん (ISBN: 9784141992493)
-ナガサキインサイトガイド (ISBN: 9784062166348)

>26 cairoartsjp:
Thank you for your reply.

"私本管理" is maybe good application. It's new to me! But unfortunately, I have no Windows OS, so I cannot try...
"collectorz" is not free. I want a temporary substitution of LibraryThing, so it's a little MOTTAINAI for me. I'll wait a little bit more for recovering this issue, and I hope to be able to add books using other source of japanese books (ex. https://openbd.jp/) in LibrarryThing.

>30 lesmel: As far as I could tell, there was a problem connecting to the NDL from LT's IP address, but I was able to connect without a problem from my own. Tested again today, and nothing has changed. The best guess I have is that the NDL IP-blocked LT specifically at some point in the past because they were getting too much traffic from here. But that's not an official answer; I'd need ccatalfo to confirm it.

I and others are looking into other options as time permits, but it's a busy time of year.

Openbd.jp looks interesting. I've brought it up to be investigated.

Reply to: #33 davidgn

I`ll wait for confirmation so that I can talk to them.
Is LT`s IP "74.201.105.14" a private IP or a shared IP in a shared hosting plan?

Reply to: #32 ozakira
I`ll look for a temporary alternative for you, if any.

Reply to: #31 yosu
i`ll test these with my system tomorrow and will tell you if it finds them.

Hi, story for being late.

- I couldn`t find the source named "openbd.jp" in LT sources.
- in reply to #31, your materials are found in my system, as it uses Amazon JP database.
- The problem here is LT connecting to Amazon.. My system as well as other Japanese systems (free/ paid) have no problems connecting to it. This problem is on LT`s side.

Other software offer import from Rakuten Japan as well as other similar large sites.. these are very useful and will find every single Japanese book published after 1980 or 1990.. But these are not supported here because these protocols are not supported in LT

>36 cairoartsjp: Thanks for testing.

openbd.jp is not yet a source here on LT. I mentioned that it looked like an interesting suggestion to investigate adding (after it was suggested in >32 ozakira:), but no decision has been made on whether it would be possible or desirable to add it.

There's been some progress in troubleshooting the NDL. It might not be an IP-block after all, but a change in available record syntaxes. My guess is that supporting NDL will probably require additional coding to support XML records. As of now, I have no timeframe for when the necessary changes might be implemented. Also, please keep in mind that this may not be the only problem with NDL, as I was unable to investigate the issue further. ccatalfo will no doubt make an announcement when there is further news, good or bad.

As far as Rakuten Japan: they don't use the Z39.50 or SRU protocols as far as I know. I'll mention it though.

Any chance of this being sorted any time soon? Adding stuff manually is such a pain.

This post suggests it's possible. https://www.librarything.com/topic/286698#6377470

ccatalfo, any comment?

>39 kuuderes_shadow: >40 davidgn: I have National Diet Library *mostly* working - what's holding it up now is character encoding problems (what else?!).

Possibly we could move forward with it and tackle them as we find them.

I will check and see how deployable the changes are currently.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/287073

There was another report of a broken amazon link over the weekend, but this is the first of the broken amazon link reports I could find/remember...

Re: Amazon JP

I was able to find and add my Japanese titles with Amazon.com without any issue. I searched by ISBN. Of course, not all the data is there so I have to manually add authors and published dates.

And end up with abominations like this: https://www.librarything.com/work/14418173/editions ?

No thanks.

"adding book" search on amazon.ca doesn't work- I have to go to amazon.com

I can't seem to find the thread where my colleague Loranne (or possibly Chris C.) posted this, but the issue with amazon.ca is a known one, and I believe devs are working on repairing it. Please do use amazon.com in the meantime, sorry for the trouble.

+1 for amazon.ca issue, failing to search books with "InvalidAssociates" request.

So, they cut us off because nobody had ordered a book from Amazon.ca in 180 days. We applied again, and they rejected us. We have to apply again, now, and see if they'll let us through. This is one reason I need to redo the Quick Links--it should offer Amazon.ca when someone is in Canada.

FWIW, we have a written contract with Amazon that includes the stipulation that they can't do this without special notice and a wind-down period. I have a promise from them not to cut us off too. But an agreement with a very high-level executive don't filter down to such a thing. The last time I had to pull that thread, it was a hassle, and it required taking the time of someone so high up, they didn't know who to tell. It cost a lot of political juice--and we need what we can get there.

And then we got rejected again, for another reason, automatically, a few months later.

Grumble.

Anyway, we're going to apply again. And we're getting ProQuest/Bowker data in place, so we have some other options.

>50 gilroy: So, they cut us off because nobody had ordered a book from Amazon.ca in 180 days

Order a book every six months – something useful at the office that can be expensed.

As the old vaudeville routine goes, just “Pay the two dollars”.

>48 timspalding: Couldn't you include a scanned copy of that contract with your application?

>50 gilroy:

I tried leaving comments about it in the application. This sort of thing is read by a wage slave in a second-world county who has a quota, if it's not just read entirely by computers. I've tried including my contact's name, bits of the contract, please to contact me, etc.

>49 civitas: Definitely a good idea, especially if we don't get our links revamped in the near future.

>49 civitas:

That's probably the simplest approach, assuming amazon.ca allows ordering from and shipping to US addresses.

If ordering a book through an LT link is the problem holding up the .co.jp site too then I can consider it a civic duty to treat myself every 6 months (assuming, as >53 lorax: said above, they'll ship to me. I know I can't order kindle version using a U.S. address which is annoying.)

macsbrains amazon JP does indeed ship to the US (but only the new stuff that ships directly from them, not anything used or from the marketplace, you need a proxy for that), but just as an FYI you have to use EMS shipping, which can get pricey.

No updates? I confirm again ability using LT alternatives importing from Amazon Japan.

- Did developers here try registering as an Amazon Associate separately for each locale?

- Did developers here try checking this page? (Search the page for: AWS.InvalidAssociate using CTRL+F)
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/ErrorMessages.html

- LT logs should contain error details returned from Amazon Japan in Japanese, I can translate it to English.

Assuming the devs are complete incompetents is an interesting approach to a bump.

lorax #57
We are speaking about a problem that is hard even for professional developers.. I didn`t mean incompetency.. just giving a hand for help.

Amazon.co.jp still doesn't work. I come back after a long hiatus to my 10+ year old account with over 5.5k volumes of Japanese manga and it's all unusable. Adding manually the 50+ books I bought while in Japan would take far too much time.

Has there been any progress on this? It's been almost a year now that we've had no working Japanese sources bar a couple of universities. This isn't exactly some minor and insignificant issue.

Currently getting a lot of RequestThottled for amazon.co.uk

I've already reported this bug one year ago.
わたしがこのバグを報告して１年が経過しました。
I love LT. So, I hope LT doesn't disregard Japanese users.
LibraryThingに、日本語ユーザを軽視しないでほしいと願います。

amazon.fr does not work either. When importing titles from amazon.com the accents are not transcribed.

>63 celiahukins: That's a separate issue than what's been detailed in this bug report (this is about data sources for which adding books currently isn't possible). Please create a new bug report, and include more detail: specific examples of books you've added that show this problem, in particular.

Any update on the problems with Amazon JP? I just tried to add some new books last week and after a couple searches returning with "RequestThrottled" was able to get one successful search and add a single book, but dozens of search attempts since then have all failed.

What's actually the root cause of this? Do we have some implausibly low search quota with them or something? I can understand any number of difficult issues holding up the Amazons having InvalidAssociate errors, but RequestThrottled seems like it would be an easier fix. I think many of the users in this thread would be less frustrated if we could know more of the specifics of the problem and a rough probability of it ever getting fixed.

(Also I am a professional programmer, so if it's just an issue of time/manpower I would be willing to contribute.)

to: usageunit #65
The problem persists here, but it works fine everywhere else..
They say the problem is with Amazon Japan.. but I successfully tested other services using Amazon Japan as their source.

to usageunit #65:
Have a look at #56 and #57 : When I tried giving them a hand they considered this as an insult.

Me also an programmer.

>67 cairoartsjp: Because you were insulting

>65 usageunit: The most recent updates seem to be falling into the following thread:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/303767

Confirming >69 gilroy: here. We're still waiting on word from Amazon Japan. It's not something that's fixable on our end, at this point, but has to be approved on theirs. The issue is due to our Affiliates account being denied access.

>70 lorannen:

We are indeed waiting for approval from Amazon Japan.

Hello,
Happy holidays
I tested Amazon Japan and it`s working now.
Hope the problem with other amazons are fixed as well. You tell it when you try testing.

Thanks for the heads up! Confirmed that I also happily added several books with no trouble. I don't remember how long it has been since I last tried.

I'm still getting "RequestThrottled", both with Amazon Japan books and Amazon Japan all media. Is there something you have to do to get it to work?

Having tried every day since my previous message, I managed to actually add something for the first time today. Then it throttled again on attempting a second book.

It seems that the only addable books are those which are sold on Amazon.com as well. In fact, recent books which are still not sold on Amazon.com cannot be found with their ISBNs. Also, fewer data can be retrieved from this source (e.g. author, year, page, etc. are missing). This could be happening because Amazon.jp started to cover the products sold on Amazon.com.

edit: What appears to be happening is this:
- Everything that had been searched for on Amazon Japan before it went down is now working again.
- Everything else is NOT working, UNTIL someone searches the book via another source, whereupon when searching on Amazon Japan it actually just retrieves it from that other source - and counts as you having added the book from there rather than from Amazon Japan. This process usually does not retrieve the author name (so this has to be added manually) and occasionally garbles the title (e.g アウトブレイク・カンパニー萌える侵略者13 comes out as ã'¢ã'¦ãƒˆãƒ-レã'¤ã'¯ãƒ»ã'«ãƒ³ãƒ'ニー èŒãˆã'‹ä¾µç•¥è€...13).

Yosu 76
Thank you, This explains why most Amazon Japan searches return English results.

Update: Amazon Japan no longer working.

Update: Amazon Japan works now (but returns English subtitles)

I hate to revive an old thread, but this still seems to be an active issue. I'd really like to use this service, but with half of my collection being in Japanese it's very inconvenient to manage all of the inconsistent (or nonexistent) data across non-Amazon Japan results. Is there any possibility that this issue will be resolved? Thank you.

Now it seems that Amazon JP imports work, but there are books that I have to enter manually despite being available at Amazon JP.
No problem with other Japanese services importing from Amazon JP to their systems.

Examples of mentioned books:
(I was not able to find them in "Amazon JP add book feature" using ISBN/title/keyword but they do exist there).

https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/%E4%BA%95%E7%AD%92-%E4%BF%8A%E5%BD%A6/dp/406158877...

https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/%E7%B4%B0%E5%B7%9D%E5%91%A8%E5%B9%B3/dp/4865592407...

https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/%E9%81%A0%E8%97%A4%E5%91%A8%E4%BD%9C-ebook/dp/B00B...

https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/%E5%90%89%E5%B7%9D-%E5%88%A9%E4%B8%80/dp/412201735...

I did a workaround and it worked. It solves the problem mentioned in #82 as well as the main problem.. in addition, all grabbed information are in Japanese (so, you won`t get the title in English, for example).

I use another application to copy and paste the information (and the cover) to LT. It`s free and easy to use.

I know it may not be legal to refer another applications here, so, I`ll figure a way to share it with people who are interested. (outside of LT)

Anyway, I`ll not mark this as fixed because the solution uses an external application.

It's also not much of a workaround if only one person knows how to do it.

The new JP source (or maybe I didn't know about it until now) seems to work properly and provides more details than current Amazon (both .jp and .com) does. However, it does not seem to cover anything but academic realms (which ordinary university libraries would commonly cover). Plus, no one can predict how long the source can survive since it's up to the library/university to allow LT to access them. (There were some university libraries in JPN which decided to shut the access from LT in the past.)