fail to import isbns to Calibre and get the metadata

[Celialiu]

I have a large number of children's books and their isbns, and i need to import these isbns to the app Calibre then I can get the publication date, publisher, weights, cover image, reading age range of every book i imported and other information. But i tried several times to add books to Calibre by importing ISBNs and all failed, and i can't download the metadata and the cover of my books？How should i do? Can anybody show me the specific reasons and steps to do it?

[davidfor]

How did you try to import this data? Calibre will need at least a title and an author to go with the ISBN. Once you have that, when you try to download the metadata, most of the metadata source plugins will use the ISBN to find the book. If the ISBN is wrong, or incorrectly formatted, it might prevent the download. And of course, you need to use a source that has the ISBN on record.

For specific reasons it failed, the metadata download logs what it did. You would need to look at this, or post it for us to look at and work out why it didn't work.

[Celialiu]

Originally Posted by davidfor

How did you try to import this data? Calibre will need at least a title and an author to go with the ISBN. Once you have that, when you try to download the metadata, most of the metadata source plugins will use the ISBN to find the book. If the ISBN is wrong, or incorrectly formatted, it might prevent the download. And of course, you need to use a source that has the ISBN on record.

For specific reasons it failed, the metadata download logs what it did. You would need to look at this, or post it for us to look at and work out why it didn't work.

can you the screenshots of my steps?

[Celialiu]

Originally Posted by davidfor

How did you try to import this data? Calibre will need at least a title and an author to go with the ISBN. Once you have that, when you try to download the metadata, most of the metadata source plugins will use the ISBN to find the book. If the ISBN is wrong, or incorrectly formatted, it might prevent the download. And of course, you need to use a source that has the ISBN on record.

For specific reasons it failed, the metadata download logs what it did. You would need to look at this, or post it for us to look at and work out why it didn't work.

Here is the screenshots of my steps to import isbns. Calibre has the choice of adding from isbns, so i did this.

[thiago.eec]

Originally Posted by Celialiu

I have a large number of children's books and their isbns, and i need to import these isbns to the app Calibre then I can get the publication date, publisher, weights, cover image, reading age range of every book i imported and other information. But i tried several times to add books to Calibre by importing ISBNs and all failed, and i can't download the metadata and the cover of my books？How should i do? Can anybody show me the specific reasons and steps to do it?

First, you need to configure your metadata sources (Preferences > Metadata Download). For your first ISBN (9788558890243), this sources provided matches: Goodreads, Google, Amazon, Skoob Books.

9788558890243 > Opal Plumstead - Jacqueline Wilson & Nick Sharratt

[BetterRed]

Create a custom column to display the ISBN:



And then post a screen shot of the book list with that column.

Maybe the Add from ISBN didn't work.

BR

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Celialiu

Attachment 176296

Here is the screenshots of my steps to import isbns. Calibre has the choice of adding from isbns, so i did this.

In the last screen shot, one of those buttons is to display the details of the attempt to download the metadata. Clicking it will show the log of what was done. And any errors. One of the other buttons is to copy the log into the clipboard. Then you can post that for us.

But, trying just the first on in the list, I was able to get a match. The matches came from Google and Goodreads. Google is one of the built-in plugins. Goodreads is one you need to install.

Which gets us to @thiago.eec's post. You need to install or configure the metadata source plugins to do the searches. And look at the results in the log to see more about what happened.

[theducks]

My take.
ISBN-10 and EAN (978...) has a language part of the code (group)
in my case:
0- at the start says English title
I can't look for metadata at a site that does not support English books.
your book seems to have a language grouping of 978-8 (dash used for clarity only) The sites you configure mus support those (the Amazon plugin has a finer configuration as to which countries store to use)

[theducks]

My bad, some of those have English ISBN's

But the title is not ASCII (and to my untrained eye, the same. which can not be for a lookup) So, I think you created a 'perfect storm' by translating the title but using English ISBN

[thiago.eec]

Originally Posted by theducks

My bad, some of those have English ISBN's

But the title is not ASCII (and to my untrained eye, the same. which can not be for a lookup) So, I think you created a 'perfect storm' by translating the title but using English ISBN

Actually, both title and author is set by calibre as unknown to all the books before downloading the correspondent metadata. So, that's just unknown in his language (japanese? Chinese:
未知). Those are not the real titles yet.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by thiago.eec

Actually, both title and author is set by calibre as unknown to all the books before downloading the correspondent metadata. So, that's just unknown in his language (japanese? Chinese:
未知). Those are not the real titles yet.

When you add a book using an ISBN the dialogue presented includes this:

Enter a list of ISBNs in the box to the left, one per line.

calibre will automatically create entries for books based on the ISBN and download metadata and covers for them.

<snip>

That implies you don't need a title or author, yet the download always fails. using the default download settings - (Amazon, Google and Open Books).

I got this when I searched Amazon for 9788558890243 ==>> A Impossível Faca da Memória: Amazon.co.uk: Laurie Halse Anderson: 9788558890243: Books

BTW it failed on versions 4.8, 2.85 and 1.48 - hard to believe it has never worked.

BR

[theducks]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

When you add a book using an ISBN the dialogue presented includes this:



That implies you don't need a title or author, yet the download always fails. using the default download settings - (Amazon, Google and Open Books).

I got this when I searched Amazon for 9788558890243 ==>> A Impossível Faca da Memória: Amazon.co.uk: Laurie Halse Anderson: 9788558890243: Books

BTW it failed on versions 4.8, 2.85 and 1.48 - hard to believe it has never worked.

BR

It worked back in 2010 when I added entries for my entire paper library.
Since then, I have had little reason to try it as all my ebooks come with basic metadata.
But I can't believe more people have not run into this issue.

[Celialiu]

Originally Posted by davidfor

In the last screen shot, one of those buttons is to display the details of the attempt to download the metadata. Clicking it will show the log of what was done. And any errors. One of the other buttons is to copy the log into the clipboard. Then you can post that for us.

But, trying just the first on in the list, I was able to get a match. The matches came from Google and Goodreads. Google is one of the built-in plugins. Goodreads is one you need to install.

Which gets us to @thiago.eec's post. You need to install or configure the metadata source plugins to do the searches. And look at the results in the log to see more about what happened.

calibre, version 4.8.0
ERROR: Download failed: Failed to download metadata or cover for the selected book.

未知 (Failed metadata) (Failed cover)

[Celialiu]

Originally Posted by theducks

My bad, some of those have English ISBN's

But the title is not ASCII (and to my untrained eye, the same. which can not be for a lookup) So, I think you created a 'perfect storm' by translating the title but using English ISBN

all those books are english books and have english isbns

[Celialiu]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Create a custom column to display the ISBN:

Attachment 176304

And then post a screen shot of the book list with that column.

Maybe the Add from ISBN didn't work.

BR

How to create a custom column? Is the screenshot you posted from calibre?
and I want to know if i managed to import my books by isbns, can i get the mass downloads of the cover images, weights, price, and the reading age range of every book in my library? The 4 kinds of statistics are important for me, and i have tried in goodreads and librarything and libib, but they all cant offer mass downloads of cover images and dont have information about price and age range. If cant, then i would not waste my time on Calibre.