[metadata download]Is it possible to get book price from amazon?

lousi · 05-09-2015, 05:52 AM

Hello,

I have brought many kindle books from www.amazon.co.jp and import them into calibre. The function 'edit metadata->download metadata and cover' works very well for data source amazon Japan. Is it possible to get the e-book's price from amazon as well? I can't find anywhere can add 'price' option but it is really visible on the amazon web page beside other parameters such as authors or publishers. I think it may be very easy to parse such information.

Anyway, just want to mention that the metadata of 'series' for all the kindle e-books from www.amazon.co.jp is always empty when I use 'download metadata and cover' function.

And I want to add amazon JP to 'get books->select store'.

~I'm not good at English, hope you understood my issues~~
Thank you.

kovidgoyal · 05-09-2015, 05:53 AM

No, metadata download can only download builtin (in calibre) data columns, price is not one of them.

Series download does not really work for amazon, since it does not keep series data in any consistent manner.

Inukami · 07-09-2017, 10:29 AM

@kovidgoyal

This is a very old post but it asking the same question.

In 2015, you mentioned that amazon metadata download can't get this information. It is now 2017, so is it possible? Or is there another work around to get this information that you know of? Any help would be greatly appreciated as I would find this information very useful :-) , otherwise I will manually need to add. :-(

kovidgoyal · 07-09-2017, 12:32 PM

No, it is still not possible.

davidfor · 07-09-2017, 08:39 PM

@Inukami: It might be possible to do what you want with the Import List plugin. This can retrieve lists from a web page and import the metadata either to existing books or new books. It has many examples for Amazon pages, but I don't know if it has one like you need and I can't check at the moment.

The plugin can also read other sources such as a CSV file. If Amazon has a way to export the lists with the details you need, that tends to be the simplest way to do it.

Inukami · 07-11-2017, 12:44 AM

@kovidgoyal: That is what I thought. Thank you for the confirmation again.

@davidfor: Thanks for your suggestion. It looks like the Import List Plugin may resolve the issue, however there are some possible problems as well.

CSV File: Amazon US does have a feature called "Order History Report" where you can export the data. Unfortunately I use Amazon Australia and Japan and they don't have this feature. If I use this link HERE or other methods, I can extract the data, but the price information doesn't seem to be included. iBooks also doesn't have a feature like this. I could maybe use Automator to automate and extract information from receipts but that could take a while and maybe not worth it. The majority of my books are in iBooks. If you can think of another easy way of getting this information, please let me know.
Import from Webpage: This could potentially solve my problem if it can extract the price information. Although the price that I bought compared to current price may be different, so this may not be possible. I may need to play around with this feature more. Please let me know if you can get it to work. I think the CSV method would be the easiest/best method.

davidfor · 07-11-2017, 01:33 AM

@Inukami: Sorry, if the history report or suitable web page isn't available to you, there isn't anything I can do. I don't know of any other source for the information. And for iBooks, I cannot help. I don't use it and have never bought anything from it.

If you find a source for the data, I'm happy to help you parse it with the Import List plugin, but without the source, there isn't anything I can do.

Inukami · 07-12-2017, 12:13 PM

@davidfor: What do you mean by source of data? I thought you could just paste the one of the amazon webpages for example and tell it was to import from that but more complicated than it appears. I'm not sure how to use the import from webpage especially when it starts talking about XPath expressions. Any help would be appreciated. Otherwise it looks like I may need to manually add or see if I can get automator to do it for me. I will have a major import to start with and manually adding could take a while, but after that it may not be so bad manually adding...

Thanks,

Inukami

davidfor · 07-12-2017, 09:33 PM

By "source of data", I mean a web page or file or something else that contains the information you want. From your previous post, there doesn't seem to be something that has the data you want in a suitable format. There doesn't seem to be a web page, and you said the purchase history extract isn't available to your accounts. I have no idea where to get the data you want. Until someone can point to it, there isn't anything I can do.

Now, if you do have a web page or other source with the data, then I can probably step you through parsing the source to import the data. But, it also needs the source to be suitable. Until I see it, I don't know. And if you are going to parse the receipts, it's probably not a task that the Import List plugin can help with.

Inukami · 07-12-2017, 10:06 PM

@davidfor: An example webpage source would be HERE. Most of the webpages look like this and it has the price information. So would this be enough as source? Use a page like this as default. But again the problem is the price may be different to what I actually paid so may not be viable anyway? Or would you need to put each webpages for each book? If this is so, then probably not worth doing it.

Regarding Automator, I think I can get it to find all the receipts and extract that information to CSV which could then be used with the Import List Plugin. I remember seeing someone doing something similar to this, so should be possible. I will need to play around a bit.

Inukami

davidfor · 07-12-2017, 10:26 PM

Using the books page as a source is not going to work very well with the Import List plugin. It is intended to be used with a page that has multiple books on it. With a single book, you would need to change the URL for each book and that would probably be worse than doing it completely manually.

To pull the price for a single book from a web page, you would need a plugin written to do it. You cannot use calibre's metadata source plugins as they can only update the core metadata and cannot update custom columns. There are several plugins that do get other metadata from different sites (Count Pages can get the page count from Goodreads and a Polish site, GoodReads sync can get shelf and reading status from Goodreads), but nothing that covers what you want. If you don't have the skills to do this, you can ask in the plugins forum in case someone is interested in doing it. It's not something I have any interest in. I have recently started recording the price I paid, but doing it manually is enough for me.

Using Automator sounds like the better choice (though I'm only guessing what it is based on the name and what you have said). If it can generate a CSV, then using Import List to import this is simple.

Inukami · 07-13-2017, 12:06 AM

Thanks for that information.

That is what I thought.

I will try Automator and if I have no luck there, I will need to do it manually, which will be very time consuming etc... but once it's done, won't need to again, and then after that won't be so bad.

I wonder if there is a way to show total amount spent on books... Probably just exporting the data and working it out with excel. It would be cool if we could have a "Total Amount Spent" next to the "Total Number of Books" but probably not worth it for @kovidgoyal.

I do wonder how much I have spent on books...

Inukami

davidfor · 07-13-2017, 12:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inukami

I wonder if there is a way to show total amount spent on books... Probably just exporting the data and working it out with excel. It would be cool if we could have a "Total Amount Spent" next to the "Total Number of Books" but probably not worth it for @kovidgoyal.

I do wonder how much I have spent on books...

I think the simplest way is to create a CSV catalog from calibre including the amount and then load up your favourite spreadsheet. But, I advice against it. You probably don't want to know the number

BetterRed · 07-13-2017, 04:18 AM

Silly question time

What about the Get Books feature, it has a column for Price. Note: I've never used the feature, let alone the column.

I can't get any prices from the Amazon AU store for love or money, even for well known local authors - dead or alive. Maybe one has to be signed in to an account.

But assuming it can be coerced into getting the prices, one could imagine enhancements (or an optional plugin based on existing code) to get pricing details of multiple books selected from a calibre library, with an option to save results to a CSV, or even update a price custom column directly.

BR

Inukami · 07-13-2017, 09:00 PM

@BetterRed, where did you find the price column under Get Books? I couldn't find it.

For older books, this isn't an option for me as price is shifting but for new books it would be a good idea...

Inukami

05-09-2015, 05:52 AM	#1
lousi Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2015 Device: kindle	[metadata download]Is it possible to get book price from amazon? Hello, I have brought many kindle books from www.amazon.co.jp and import them into calibre. The function 'edit metadata->download metadata and cover' works very well for data source amazon Japan. Is it possible to get the e-book's price from amazon as well? I can't find anywhere can add 'price' option but it is really visible on the amazon web page beside other parameters such as authors or publishers. I think it may be very easy to parse such information. Anyway, just want to mention that the metadata of 'series' for all the kindle e-books from www.amazon.co.jp is always empty when I use 'download metadata and cover' function. And I want to add amazon JP to 'get books->select store'. ~I'm not good at English, hope you understood my issues~~ Thank you.

07-11-2017, 12:44 AM	#6
Inukami Zealot Posts: 145 Karma: 12 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Australia Device: Mac Pro 2013 & Mini 2018, iPad Mini 4, iPhone 11, iBooks, K4Mac/PC	Using Import List Plugin to get price metadata @kovidgoyal: That is what I thought. Thank you for the confirmation again. @davidfor: Thanks for your suggestion. It looks like the Import List Plugin may resolve the issue, however there are some possible problems as well. CSV File: Amazon US does have a feature called "Order History Report" where you can export the data. Unfortunately I use Amazon Australia and Japan and they don't have this feature. If I use this link HERE or other methods, I can extract the data, but the price information doesn't seem to be included. iBooks also doesn't have a feature like this. I could maybe use Automator to automate and extract information from receipts but that could take a while and maybe not worth it. The majority of my books are in iBooks. If you can think of another easy way of getting this information, please let me know. Import from Webpage: This could potentially solve my problem if it can extract the price information. Although the price that I bought compared to current price may be different, so this may not be possible. I may need to play around with this feature more. Please let me know if you can get it to work. I think the CSV method would be the easiest/best method.

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05-09-2015, 05:53 AM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,856 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	No, metadata download can only download builtin (in calibre) data columns, price is not one of them. Series download does not really work for amazon, since it does not keep series data in any consistent manner.

07-09-2017, 10:29 AM	#3
Inukami Zealot Posts: 145 Karma: 12 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Australia Device: Mac Pro 2013 & Mini 2018, iPad Mini 4, iPhone 11, iBooks, K4Mac/PC	@kovidgoyal This is a very old post but it asking the same question. In 2015, you mentioned that amazon metadata download can't get this information. It is now 2017, so is it possible? Or is there another work around to get this information that you know of? Any help would be greatly appreciated as I would find this information very useful :-) , otherwise I will manually need to add. :-(

07-09-2017, 12:32 PM	#4
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,856 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	No, it is still not possible.

07-09-2017, 08:39 PM	#5
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,907 Karma: 47303748 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	@Inukami: It might be possible to do what you want with the Import List plugin. This can retrieve lists from a web page and import the metadata either to existing books or new books. It has many examples for Amazon pages, but I don't know if it has one like you need and I can't check at the moment. The plugin can also read other sources such as a CSV file. If Amazon has a way to export the lists with the details you need, that tends to be the simplest way to do it.

07-11-2017, 01:33 AM	#7
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,907 Karma: 47303748 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	@Inukami: Sorry, if the history report or suitable web page isn't available to you, there isn't anything I can do. I don't know of any other source for the information. And for iBooks, I cannot help. I don't use it and have never bought anything from it. If you find a source for the data, I'm happy to help you parse it with the Import List plugin, but without the source, there isn't anything I can do.

07-12-2017, 12:13 PM	#8
Inukami Zealot Posts: 145 Karma: 12 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Australia Device: Mac Pro 2013 & Mini 2018, iPad Mini 4, iPhone 11, iBooks, K4Mac/PC	@davidfor: What do you mean by source of data? I thought you could just paste the one of the amazon webpages for example and tell it was to import from that but more complicated than it appears. I'm not sure how to use the import from webpage especially when it starts talking about XPath expressions. Any help would be appreciated. Otherwise it looks like I may need to manually add or see if I can get automator to do it for me. I will have a major import to start with and manually adding could take a while, but after that it may not be so bad manually adding... Thanks, Inukami

07-12-2017, 09:33 PM	#9
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,907 Karma: 47303748 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	By "source of data", I mean a web page or file or something else that contains the information you want. From your previous post, there doesn't seem to be something that has the data you want in a suitable format. There doesn't seem to be a web page, and you said the purchase history extract isn't available to your accounts. I have no idea where to get the data you want. Until someone can point to it, there isn't anything I can do. Now, if you do have a web page or other source with the data, then I can probably step you through parsing the source to import the data. But, it also needs the source to be suitable. Until I see it, I don't know. And if you are going to parse the receipts, it's probably not a task that the Import List plugin can help with.

07-12-2017, 10:06 PM	#10
Inukami Zealot Posts: 145 Karma: 12 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Australia Device: Mac Pro 2013 & Mini 2018, iPad Mini 4, iPhone 11, iBooks, K4Mac/PC	@davidfor: An example webpage source would be HERE. Most of the webpages look like this and it has the price information. So would this be enough as source? Use a page like this as default. But again the problem is the price may be different to what I actually paid so may not be viable anyway? Or would you need to put each webpages for each book? If this is so, then probably not worth doing it. Regarding Automator, I think I can get it to find all the receipts and extract that information to CSV which could then be used with the Import List Plugin. I remember seeing someone doing something similar to this, so should be possible. I will need to play around a bit. Inukami

07-12-2017, 10:26 PM	#11
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,907 Karma: 47303748 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	Using the books page as a source is not going to work very well with the Import List plugin. It is intended to be used with a page that has multiple books on it. With a single book, you would need to change the URL for each book and that would probably be worse than doing it completely manually. To pull the price for a single book from a web page, you would need a plugin written to do it. You cannot use calibre's metadata source plugins as they can only update the core metadata and cannot update custom columns. There are several plugins that do get other metadata from different sites (Count Pages can get the page count from Goodreads and a Polish site, GoodReads sync can get shelf and reading status from Goodreads), but nothing that covers what you want. If you don't have the skills to do this, you can ask in the plugins forum in case someone is interested in doing it. It's not something I have any interest in. I have recently started recording the price I paid, but doing it manually is enough for me. Using Automator sounds like the better choice (though I'm only guessing what it is based on the name and what you have said). If it can generate a CSV, then using Import List to import this is simple.

07-13-2017, 12:06 AM	#12
Inukami Zealot Posts: 145 Karma: 12 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Australia Device: Mac Pro 2013 & Mini 2018, iPad Mini 4, iPhone 11, iBooks, K4Mac/PC	Thanks for that information. That is what I thought. I will try Automator and if I have no luck there, I will need to do it manually, which will be very time consuming etc... but once it's done, won't need to again, and then after that won't be so bad. I wonder if there is a way to show total amount spent on books... Probably just exporting the data and working it out with excel. It would be cool if we could have a "Total Amount Spent" next to the "Total Number of Books" but probably not worth it for @kovidgoyal. I do wonder how much I have spent on books... Inukami

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07-13-2017, 04:18 AM	#14
BetterRed null operator (he/him) Posts: 20,567 Karma: 26954694 Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Sydney Australia Device: none	Silly question time What about the Get Books feature, it has a column for Price. Note: I've never used the feature, let alone the column. I can't get any prices from the Amazon AU store for love or money, even for well known local authors - dead or alive. Maybe one has to be signed in to an account. But assuming it can be coerced into getting the prices, one could imagine enhancements (or an optional plugin based on existing code) to get pricing details of multiple books selected from a calibre library, with an option to save results to a CSV, or even update a price custom column directly. BR

07-13-2017, 09:00 PM	#15
Inukami Zealot Posts: 145 Karma: 12 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Australia Device: Mac Pro 2013 & Mini 2018, iPad Mini 4, iPhone 11, iBooks, K4Mac/PC	@BetterRed, where did you find the price column under Get Books? I couldn't find it. For older books, this isn't an option for me as price is shifting but for new books it would be a good idea... Inukami