My application needs to retrieve information about any published book based on a provided ISBN, title, or author. This is hardly a unique requirement---sites like Amazon.com, Chegg.com, and even software like Book Collector seem to be able to do this easily. But I have not been able to replicate it.
To clarify, I do not need to search the entire database of books---only a limited subset which have been inputted, as in a book collection. The database would simply allow me to tag the inputted books with the necessary metadata to enable search on that subset of books. So scale is not the issue here---getting the metadata is.
The options I have tried are:
I've tried to describe my approach in detail so others with fewer books can take advantage of the above solutions. But given my requirements, I'm at my wits' end for retrieving book metadata, so any pointers are greatly appreciated.
Metadata: Simply put, your book metadata is any data that describes your book—including title, subtitle, price, publication date, ISBN, and any other relevant information that readers use to find your book.
ISBNdb: The World's largest book database™ Get a FREE 7 day trial and get access to the full database of 32 + million books and all data points including title, author, publisher, publish date, binding, pages, list price, and more.
As the underlying identifier, your ISBN is the starting point to begin providing metadata. When you purchase an ISBN via Publisher Service, from either the Self Publisher Program ($55) or Publisher Program ($129), you get access to a title management portal.
An index is ancillary to the primary content of the authored work, whatever form that primary content takes (e.g., book, journal or newspaper article, website, blog, newsletter). As such, we must remember that the index is metadata.
Since it is unlikely that you have to retrieve the same 500 books every day: store the data retrieved from isbndb.com in a database and fill it up book by book.
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