[GUI Plugin] Author Watch

[vasbinde]

Overview:

Author Watch is a Calibre plugin that tracks a list of favorite authors -- independent of what you already own -- and checks for new releases and books you don't yet have, cross-referenced against your Calibre library. It replaces the need to manually bookmark author pages or repeatedly search retailers to see what's new or what books you are missing from your favorite authors.

CRITICAL NOTE: This plugin was developed with Claude AI, based on my requirements, UI design, etc. I am a technology industry veteran, with decades of experience in systems, integrations, etc. However, my expertise in the actual syntax of programming ended in the era of COBOL, Visual Basic, Ada, Fortran, and even AppleSoft BASIC. As such, I used Claude to develop the back end Python code for this solution, based on my requirements. I use this solution daily in my use of Calibre and do work with Claude to correct issues when I find any. At this point, I consider this tool to be fairly feature complete for my purposes and would like to share it with the wonderful audience here. Please note that as I am not a Python expert, any defect fixes or enhancement requests would need to go through either Claude or another, human, Python expert. Please keep that in mind if considering the use of this plugin.


Recent Update (v2.6.2 - 2026-08-12):[*] Added "show already owned" toggle into missing books list, along with a summary of books that are hidden from view if we already have them in Calibre.[*] Added visibility into books that are missing vs. matched as present already in to the Diagnostics window.


Key Features:

• Track any number of favorite authors, with per-author notes, genre, and a 5-star rating
• Two data sources: Apple Books (via iTunes) for most authors, and Amazon/Kindle Unlimited for exclusive authors
• Real publication dates (not just years) for accurate "new release" detection
• Same-name author disambiguation -- correctly tells apart two different authors who happen to share a name
• Language filtering, checked against each book's actual detected language
• A permanent verification cache, so repeat checks are fast and don't re-fetch data unnecessarily
• "Ignore" support for omnibus/collection editions, so component books don't keep showing as missing
• Multi-select actions -- check several authors, or detect several Author URLs, in one action
• A combined "All Missing Books" view across every tracked author
• Export/Import to back up your configuration or move it to a new computer

LICENSE:

This plugin is released as fully open source. You are welcome to use it for any purpose, as long as credit is given to this original solution.

DOCUMENTATION:

A complete set of documentation with screenshots is attached as a .DOCX and .PDF file.

Version History:

Spoiler:

# Author Watch — Version History

*Current version: 2.6.2* 2026-08-12


## 2.6.2 — Sequential row numbers and an owned-books summary

- Fixed confusing row-number gaps in both Missing Books windows: hiding already-owned matches previously left Qt's default row numbers as-is (e.g. 2, 3, 4... 7, 9), which looked like missing data even though nothing was actually missing. Row numbers are now always sequential (1, 2, 3...) for whatever's currently visible.
- Added a summary line ("N books already owned and filtered from display") shown whenever the already-owned toggle is off and there's at least one owned match being hidden — disappears automatically once the toggle is checked.

## 2.6.1 — Fixed a crash in the new already-owned toggle

- Fixed a real crash (`NameError: name 'QCheckBox' is not defined`) when opening Missing Books: the new already-owned toggle used `QCheckBox` without it being imported. Also scanned the whole file for any other missing Qt imports — found none.

## 2.6.0 — Full visibility into the two-stage matching pipeline

- Author-Match Diagnostics now shows **both** stages of the process, not just verification: every book that passes author/language matching now also gets a logged "Missing" or "Already Owned" result, so you can immediately tell whether a book is absent from Missing Books because of a parsing/match problem or simply because you already own it.
- Both Missing Books windows (per-author and All Missing Books) now have a **"Show already-owned matches"** toggle (off by default) that reveals books the plugin correctly matched to the author but that are already in your library — previously these were silently discarded before you ever saw them.
- Already-owned rows get a distinct look: lighter grey, italicized text, a dedicated **Status** column showing "✓ Owned" or "○ Missing" (icons shown once the toggle reveals both kinds together), and no purchase/Get-Books links (nothing to act on for a book you already have).
- The Tracked Authors grid's "Missing" count now correctly counts only actually-missing books from the now-richer cache (which stores both missing and owned matches together).
- Along the way: caught and fixed a stale column-index bug in `AllMissingBooksDialog`'s Action-column click handler (still pointing at the old index after the Status column shifted everything over), and made the owned/missing flag robust to row sorting and removal (stored on the cell itself, not a separate row-indexed structure that could desync).

## 2.5.x — Unified header-state persistence, and three real bugs found through it

- **2.5.4** – The Missing cell's clickable-link styling now only appears where it's actually clickable (the main window), not in Preferences; fixed a related ordering bug that would have broken this styling on the main window's first render too.
- **2.5.3** – Clicking the Missing-count cell in the Preferences screen (which has no access to Calibre's main window) now shows an explanatory message instead of silently doing nothing.
- **2.5.2** – Fixed a real data-corruption bug: a header state saved under an old column count (before the Library column existed) was being restored onto the new column count, corrupting the whole row display. Fixed by keying saved state to the exact column count, so a mismatched state can never be restored again.
- **2.5.1** – Fixed a crash (`no attribute '_table'`) caused by `restoreState()` firing save signals before the table reference was assigned.
- **2.5.0** – Replaced a hand-rolled sort/order-only persistence mechanism with `QHeaderView.saveState()`/`restoreState()`, applied consistently across all four grids (width, order, and sort together).

## 2.4.x — Full publication dates everywhere, All Missing Books polish

- **2.4.1** – Widened the Published column, which was still sized for a bare 4-digit year.
- **2.4.0** – Added the missing Library (Libby) column to "All Missing Books"; upgraded "Year" to full publication dates everywhere (with correct chronological sorting, not alphabetical on the display text).

## 2.3.0 — Multi-author aggregated checks

- Multi-select "Missing Books for Selected Author" now runs one real aggregated check across all selected authors (reusing the same Results summary as "Check Favorite Authors Now"), instead of opening one dialog per author and blocking on any author with nothing new.

## 2.2.x — Apple Books language verification

- **2.2.4 / 2.2.3** – Fixed the Missing Books progress dialog not appearing at all, then appearing as a blank unpainted window, for non-exclusive-author checks.
- **2.2.2** – Fixed diagnostics always showing "Match" for any detected language, even when it didn't actually match the selected filter.
- **2.2.1** – Extended Author-Match Diagnostics and the HTML-dump tool to cover the Apple Books path too (previously Amazon-only).
- **2.2.0** – Real per-book Apple Books page language check for non-exclusive authors, using the same generic verification cache built for Amazon.

## 2.1.x — Ignore feature, multi-select, and a real selection bug

- **2.1.1** – Fixed the Ignore button itself only processing the first selected book, not all selected books.
- **2.1.0** – "Ignore Missing Book" (right-click or button, per-book, for Omnibus/Collection editions); multi-select support for Missing Books and Detect Author URL; fixed a real bug where the selected author was lost after either action (row indices going stale after a table rebuild).

## 2.0.0 — Major: real publication dates

**2.0.0 (decision)** – Dropped the `curl_cffi` experiment entirely after further real-world testing showed 100% success with plain `urllib` combined with the verification cache. The plugin has used only `urllib` since, with no vendored dependencies — fully multi-platform again.

- Extracted real publication dates from Amazon product pages (previously only a known-titles-diff heuristic).
- Switched exclusive authors' "new" detection to real date-vs-cutoff logic, matching non-exclusive authors.
- Extended the verification cache to include publication date.

## 1.20.x — Resolving the Amazon-blocking question

- **1.20.2** – Fixed a real co-authored-book bug: only the first author's ASIN on a page was ever checked, so a tracked author listed second (or later) on a shared book could be wrongly flagged as a mismatch.
- **1.20.1** – Flipped the default to `urllib`-first based on that result.
- **1.20.0** – Real controlled A/B test: `curl_cffi` got blocked by Amazon where plain `urllib` succeeded on the same book immediately after. Added a "Force urllib" toggle for controlled testing.

## 1.11.3 – 1.19.x — HTML diagnostics, and the Amazon-blocking investigation

- **1.19.0 – 1.19.4** – Vendored `curl_cffi` directly into the plugin zip (no separate install needed); fixed a chain of real packaging bugs along the way — a zip-import path-detection bug, compiled extensions being unable to load from inside a zip at all, and a missing `.dist-info` folder needed by `curl_cffi`'s own version check.
- **1.18.0** – Experimental `curl_cffi` TLS-fingerprint-impersonation fetch method added.
- **1.17.0** – Confirmed a real Amazon anti-bot CAPTCHA gate (via saved HTML dump) as the root cause of intermittent fetch failures.
- **1.16.0 – 1.16.1** – Filter box above the Tracked Authors grid (author/genre/notes); added a clear (X) button.
- **1.15.1** – Fixed column-order persistence (was saving sort/order but not surviving reopen).
- **1.15.0** – Permanent per-book verification cache (author ID + language), skipping re-fetches on future checks.
- **1.14.0** – "Detect Author URL for Selected": auto-fills when unambiguous, prompts only when genuinely ambiguous.
- **1.13.1** – Fixed star-click hit-zone alignment, enabled column drag-reorder, switched to Calibre-style edit-on-second-click, added sort persistence.
- **1.13.0** – Click-to-rate stars; Export/Import moved fully out of the main window; Preferences split into "Tracked Authors" / "Backup and Diagnostics" tabs.
- **1.12.1** – Window geometry persistence across all dialogs.
- **1.12.0** – 5-star Rating column (typed digit); Export/Import All Data.
- **1.11.5** – Diagnostics-menu toggle and Save-HTML toggle moved out of the main window into Preferences only.
- **1.11.4** – Removed retry logic after confirming it didn't help (a deliberate CAPTCHA gate, not probabilistic).
- **1.11.3** – Optional raw-HTML-dump diagnostic tool for inconclusive fetches.

## 1.x — Foundation (Amazon/iTunes dual-source architecture)

**1.10.0 – 1.11.2**
- Real language filtering for exclusive authors via a product-page HTML attribute.
- Shared thread pool across a full check (not one pool per author).
- Retry logic for Amazon's "generic Amazon.com" placeholder page.

**1.8.0 – 1.9.3**
- Same-name author disambiguation via `data-authorasin` product-page fetch (the "John Smith" case — two different real authors sharing a name).
- Author-Match Diagnostics viewer built after two earlier silent-failure attempts.
- Concurrent ASIN verification via a thread pool.

**1.0 – 1.7.x**
- Initial plugin: track favorite authors, check new releases against the Calibre library.
- iTunes Search API for non-exclusive authors; Calibre's own Get Books (Amazon Kindle store) for KU/exclusive authors, after direct Amazon scraping was tried and consistently blocked.
- Author-field matching added to both paths (fixed cross-author contamination in search results).
- Non-modal dialogs, autosave-on-edit, Notes/Primary Genre/Libby integration, New/is_new column, title-filter boxes, results-filter dropdown (New or Missing / Missing only / New only).

[Terisa de morgan]

First of all, thank you for the plugin, I think I'm going to use it a lot. In any case, I've got a comment:

• Some amazon books put the series in front of the name. In those cases, the plugin doesn't recognize the book in your library. Example: Kathi Daley's books, The Inn at Holiday Bay: Verification in the Video -> Verification in the Video

As I say, thank you again.

[sgmoore]

Was trying this out, but it is not bringing some details I would have expected.

For example, I added John D MacDonald and set the amazon author url to https://www.amazon.com/stores/John-D...hor/B000AQ52CK

When I check for missing books it only brings up one book.

If I use Apple (by unticking the amazon exclusive box), then it brings the same book up along with 13 others including this one https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-...er/id887496700

But that book is also on amazon and under the correct author name see https://www.amazon.com/stores/author...2-5fdd68033b69

Why doesn't it appear when using amazon?

Another minor issue is - if I use the 'Get Books' option on any of the books that do appear, it doesn't just find that book, but lots of false positives. (I realise that may not be your fault as the 'Get Books' filtering does not make sense to me, but perhaps you can find a way around this issue)

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by sgmoore

Was trying this out, but it is not bringing some details I would have expected.

For example, I added John D MacDonald and set the amazon author url to https://www.amazon.com/stores/John-D...hor/B000AQ52CK

When I check for missing books it only brings up one book.

If I use Apple (by unticking the amazon exclusive box), then it brings the same book up along with 13 others including this one https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-...er/id887496700

But that book is also on amazon and under the correct author name see https://www.amazon.com/stores/author...2-5fdd68033b69

Why doesn't it appear when using amazon?

I had the same problem - the plugin didn't find any new books on Amazon at all, although they're definitely there when I search by the author name. As there are many Amazon-only authors I'd like to watch for, this makes the plugin pretty useless to me.

[vasbinde]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

First of all, thank you for the plugin, I think I'm going to use it a lot. In any case, I've got a comment:

• Some amazon books put the series in front of the name. In those cases, the plugin doesn't recognize the book in your library. Example: Kathi Daley's books, The Inn at Holiday Bay: Verification in the Video -> Verification in the Video

As I say, thank you again.

If the book title varies beyond a certain amount, the detection will not be able to match the book.

Can you include a screenshot of the book diagnostics grid after you perform a check for missing books? That would help a lot to determine what part of the "fuzzy" matching was not fuzzy enough. :-)

Thank you for your help!

[vasbinde]

Originally Posted by sgmoore

Was trying this out, but it is not bringing some details I would have expected.

For example, I added John D MacDonald and set the amazon author url to https://www.amazon.com/stores/John-D...hor/B000AQ52CK

When I check for missing books it only brings up one book.

If I use Apple (by unticking the amazon exclusive box), then it brings the same book up along with 13 others including this one https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-...er/id887496700

But that book is also on amazon and under the correct author name see https://www.amazon.com/stores/author...2-5fdd68033b69

Why doesn't it appear when using amazon?

Another minor issue is - if I use the 'Get Books' option on any of the books that do appear, it doesn't just find that book, but lots of false positives. (I realise that may not be your fault as the 'Get Books' filtering does not make sense to me, but perhaps you can find a way around this issue)

I do not have anything by John D. MacDonald in my library. However, I added the author into the on mine, but had the plugin choose the author URL by clicking on "Detect Author URL for Selected". The author URL it chose was slightly different from the one you pasted in, "https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B000AQ52CK/allbooks". I then clicked on "Missing Books for Selected Author". I am showing 10 books missing using the Amazon search: Screenshot attached. I also see the same results when I manually paste in the URL you have here for the author.

In looking at the diagnostics screen, I see the results shown in the other screenshot.

Can you take a screenshot of the diagnostics screen and add it so I can see what the plugin is matching or not for that author? Thank you for your help!

[vasbinde]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I had the same problem - the plugin didn't find any new books on Amazon at all, although they're definitely there when I search by the author name. As there are many Amazon-only authors I'd like to watch for, this makes the plugin pretty useless to me.

Can you please take and attach a screenshot of the diagnostics screen for an author or two so that I can run the tests on my end to compare? Thank you for your help!

[vasbinde]

I have realized something as I went through all of this: authors with massive back catalogs do not have all of their books appear through "Get Books" - the built-in Calibre tool for scraping ebook sellers. As such, my Amazon exclusive checks are missing some times more than 50% of the author's data.

Given that, I have been investigating how to manually suck down all of an author's pages, parse them, and cache the results so that we do not miss anything. Once that is complete, I'll begin running tests on that myself.

This will be a new function that is off by default, but added in to the forthcoming version 3 of this plugin to allow for much more data to be pulled directly from Amazon.

Hopefully posting this soon!

[vasbinde]

Made a lot of progress tonight until Amazon's anti-bot checks kicked in. I was able to pull in the entire truckload of books from a specific author that I use as a test case. However, there was a bug in the code that I wanted to address that caused audiobooks to show up as "Inconclusive" in the diagnostics results, rather than a status of "Mismatch - Audio Book" instead.

After changing that and testing again, I am now encountering the annoying Amazon anti-bot checks.

I will also see if I can add Fantastic Fiction as another data source.

[Terisa de morgan]

I've found another issue (I'll add the diagnostics later for the previous one). I've added one author to my list: Karen Rose, and it's mainly finding books by Karen Rose Smith....

[vasbinde]

Unfortunately, the option I wanted to try, similar to the Import-List plugin, was to use Fantastic Fiction. That now has a silly anti-bot JavaScript check that pukes all over any attempt to pull down an author page (HTTP 202 Error). This prevents that site from being used entirely. Back to the drawing board.

[sgmoore]

Originally Posted by vasbinde

Can you take a screenshot of the diagnostics screen and add it so I can see what the plugin is matching or not for that author? Thank you for your help!

See attached screenshots after I changed the Url to https://www.amazon.com/stores/author...Q52CK/allbooks

As well as not being able to detect the author name, there should be at lot more books than shown here. 200 in all or 86 English Kindle books.

That Url is one of those web pages that loads more as you scroll down in the browser and so perhaps it is only returning you some (15) of the books.

BTW, I'm not seeing anything in the author_watch_html_dumps despite enabling that option.