Adding ebooks

Hey there! I read a lot of ebooks, and I would like to use LibraryThing to track what I've read. But I don't seem to get it how to add ebooks. Especially when there was never a "solid/real" book before. (And I get my books from mobileread, so no kindle-asin (?) either). So e.g. I would like to add "The Hacker's Diet". It has a work page here (http://www.librarything.de/work/6487442), but every time I click on "Add to library", I am asked to choose a source, but there aren't any sources for a book that was never printed. So anybody here who knows what I could do? Thanks a lot!

If you can't find the book in any of LT's data sources, you can add the book manually.

I've recently started getting ebooks from the public library and I don't fuss too much about the publication info, just add what I can find whether it's Amazon's Kindle info or info for a print copy. BUT I do put it into an ebook collection and also tag it as an ebook. However, if you want super accurate publication information then use the manual add that is near the bottom of the add book page.

To do that, scroll down below you list of sources on the 'add books' page (reached by the tab at the top of the page). If you find the book in the catalogue of one of the people who owns it, it should be possible to copy and paste the information for each item from the book detail page.

Thanks! Helped a lot!

Even if a book is not in a physical form, it -should- have an ISBN (which is not the same as a Kindle ASIN that I know of.) Unless someone in government decided to change that.

6: Only commercial ebooks would have an ISBN (since the publisher has to pay to get an ISBN). So things like the Gutenburg Project books won't have an ISBN.

> 6

Unless someone in government decided to change that.

The "government" has nothing to do with who does/doesn't have ISBNs.

And not all commercial books (available for sale) have them - again, because they cost. So chapbooks, community cookbooks and the like usually don't have them, and a lot of ebooks fall into similar categories. So yeah, should, as an ideal (every publication "should" be uniquely identified by an ISBN), but in the real world - not so much.

And just to add that most of the fine books publishers don't use ISBNs either - if you don't sell through normal bookstores and sites like Amazon, you don't really need an ISBN either.

>6 gilroy:

Which government? Because ISBNs had never been mandatory in any country - you just need them if you want to use the resellers network.

I would like to add a dense 20 page document which is not listed when I search except in other languages. I would like to manually add it using the website I found for it. Where do I input the site url so patrons can access it? Or is this intended only for downloadable ebooks?

>11 OLVEasthampton: This site isn't meant to host ebooks. It's just meant for cataloging.
You can put a URL into your comments for your use.

>13 ArnaldoGonzalez01: Please read
https://www.librarything.com/privacy

https://www.librarything.com/about/authors

Spam messages get flagged quickly.

Got it. Thank you!

I have looked, albeit not very thoroughly, but I haven't found the answer to this question. Is there a way to import my Kindle library into Library Thing?

>17 elorin: Export the list into an Excel Comma Separated Values file.
Make sure the columns match the sample on the import sample from the import page EXACTLY.
Upload file.

If you don't have a way to export to an Excel file, you can create your own.

Otherwise, you need to search for them.

>18 gilroy: Thank you for the suggestion. I'm trying to find some way to view my entire list of Kindle books (1800+) to get it into a list. I don't see a friendly method for phone or PC/Laptop in the looking I've done.

I will keep this information in mind once I reach that stage.

For anyone who sees this thread looking for a solution, I believe I found mine for a windows computer with Excel installed.
1) Install the Kindle app on your windows computer.
2) Wait for it to sync.
3) If desired, open the Kindle app to make sure the correct number of books appears in the library.
4) Use the Windows button + R
5) Type %localappdata%\Amazon\Kindle\Cache and hit enter
6) Look for KindleSyncMetadataCache.xml and copy it to another location (or fiddle with it there if you'd like)
7) When you have the file where you want it, open it with Excel.
8) Sort out the columns per the LibraryThing import guidelines.
9) Save as a CSV file.

I don't believe my solution worked because all my file had in it was ASINs and no ISBNs. If anyone has suggestions of how to get around that please let me know.

If you create a file with no ISBNs in it, what gets imported is _exactly_ the data you have in your file. Then you can add stuff if you want. I do it that way intentionally (export from calibre to CSV (after setting the columns to match the LT import), do a little cleanup in the CSV and delete ISBNs, import to LT, add the ISBNs for the few books that have them to the LT record). I prefer my cleaned-up-in-calibre titles, authors, etc to what LT can/will find if I leave the ISBNs in.

But 1800 books is a _pain_ (did that with the first lot of ebooks, it took me a couple years to get them all cleaned up. I put them into a distinct collection so I could work on a batch at a time). Now I import 20-50 books at a time, when I've added that many to my ebooks. I still put them in Temp Working, it just makes things simpler - then use Power Edit to move them into "ebooks" and out of Temp Working once I've tidied them up.

>22 jjmcgaffey: This is only semi helpful because I don't understand all of it.
I have used the LT template. Is there a place to put the ASNs so they will import? Will anything other than the LT template columns import? Or just those columns? How do I put them all in a collection? Do I do that in the template file?

>23 elorin: The ASIN's won't import. There are really no good options for getting a Kindle library imported into LT if you want to capture the ASIN and have the Amazon Kindle edition data populate your records. See the following discussions to understand that this is a long running issue:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/112556
https://www.librarything.com/topic/348978
https://www.librarything.com/topic/291457
https://www.librarything.com/topic/259693

I imported my exclusively Kindle/ebook library from GR back in 2015 via a GR export file, found the resulting collection to be useless since I had to manually edit each book record to get the correct data and promptly deleted the whole thing. Tested various imports over a few months and eventually gave up trying to import my catalog and just started adding books one by one with Amazon as the source in 2016. With over a thousand Kindle books to add I again gave up a seemingly insurmountable task and stopped using LT for a couple years. I came back to LT at the end of 2018 and started tracking books in real time and manually adding titles read in previous years just to get them in My Books. I still have years worth of reads that have no read dates or tag info here on LT because...it all has to be done one at a time.

With what I know today, I would have told my 2016 self to write a script for the Add Books form to automate adding by ASIN using a spreadsheet list of every ASIN in my Amazon Kindle library as my database source.

My main reading tracking tool is Calibre which is complete and up to date with dates and tags because for years I used Goodreads Sync which mirrored my GR catalog that I started in 2014 and used through end 2018. I stopped cataloging on GR Dec 2018 and manually keep Calibre & LT synced from 2019 thru present.

In the words of the fabulous Thomas Sowell, "there are no solutions, there are only trade-offs" and this definitely applies to getting your Kindle library into LT.

You can use universal import to get a basic listing of your books added once you've populated the LT template but the import data is limited to those columns only. If tracking the ASIN is important to you, you'd have to manually edit each record individually to add it using an editable field as the ASIN field is not editable. Read through the topics I linked above and you will get a good understanding of the situation.

>24 Taliesien: Thank you! I will try the template without the ASINs (for the record would be nice but not important to me). I appreciate the thorough reply.

And adding your import to a collection is done on the import page - after you've uploaded your file, it offers a choice of sources (which you won't really use if you don't have ISBNs in the file), then Collections - it shows Your Library with a checkmark, just below that is Show All. You do need to have made the collection in advance in order to add your imported books to it. Below Collections is Tags - you can put on any tags you like and they will be applied to every book that imports. I do a date tag so I know when I imported a book - _import230921, for instance - and so that I can click that tag and deal with _only_ that import at one time.

I tried an upload September 4th and never got a profile notice so I assumed it failed. I prepared an upload today and to my surprise all of the books are in my library! Thank you to everyone who made suggestions and helped guide me inmy second, thwarted attempt. Should it become an issue in the future I am at least better armed!

Yeah, I've been having problems with the import - I've had to do it again each time, a couple days after the first falls into silence. Once the second one worked, once I did it four times then stopped for a couple days, tried again and it went through. So in your case the first one actually worked, eventually? Interesting. Long eventually, though.

>28 jjmcgaffey: Since I thought it didn't work, I didn't check for success. So I don't know how long that first attempt took.