Kindle editions in Librarything

I have several books that I own in paperback and in Kindle edition. These show up as duplicates in my library.

Is there anyway to mark books as ebooks rather than actual physical books (especially when adding books)? Is there anyway for them not to be marked as duplicates?

I wish there were more options for adding books that would allow you to search only in the kindle editions section of Amazon. That way you would not have to sort through dozens of physical editions of the book to find the electronic versions. I know you can add books by ISBN, but when you purchase the books on the Kindle it is a pain to have to go to a computer and bring up each book you have purchased to grab the right number.

Does anybody have any suggestions for managing ebooks on Librarything?

I have both books and ebooks in my library. I think the duplicate thing is because they have the same title, and are really the same book, just in different format.

If I am going to add an ebook I open another tab and go to the ebook page in Amazon and get the ASIN number. It is listed in product details where a regular book would have ISBN

IE: ASIN: B00351DSK0

I just copy the number, not the ASIN part, and paste the number into the book add slot on LT. I have my first choice search set to Amazon. It will usually pull up the Kindle edition with that number and then I add it.

I always use ISBN to add regular books, so that I never really have to search. Hate that.

If I have to add a regular edition and make it an ebook then I change the publication information (one of my display categories in my catalog), add tags to say ebook and kindle. Though now I have a couple through ibook, and one through B&N (pre-Nook).

ETA:

You could also set up a specific collection for Ebooks. I don't have enough so I didn't do that but it might help you if you have many and want to have them together.

@ hazysaffron,

I don't bother adding an ebook copy of a book I have in dead tree format. If I have two of the same book, the only one in my collection is the dead tree one. I have several actual duplicates, but not listed in my library, I only list the ebooks if I don't have it in dead tree.

And I don't bother listing EVERY book I have. For instance on my kindle I have the Complete Works of Jules Verne. I list that, but not all the books contained in that one volume. Same with the Complete Works of Shakespere, or O'Henry (of which I have the two volume set in dead tree). The Complete Dickens is another one, over 200 titles in that one, so I have every Dickens book ever written, but not listed seperately, just the complete volume.

If in the future I find a copy of a book in dead tree that I have listed in my library as an ebook, then I will probably delete the ebook, and just have the dead tree in my library. After I copy the start and end dates to the new one, of course.

As far as adding books, I just manually add all the ebooks. And copy the "cover" and manually add that as well. Besides most of my ebooks are Project Gutenberg books, downloaded from gutenberg.org, manybooks.net, or freekindlebooks.org. All books from those sorces are from Project Gutenberg anyway. I do have some ebooks from Amazon.com and Mobipocket.com, but not many.

Anyway, your milage may vary.

@ FicusFan,

I have never gotten that to work. I just add all my ebooks manually. maybe I ain't doing it right.

(Please excuse my horrible spelling, I need to go to bed)

Bill Masom

The primary reason I want to keep track of both versions is that I am slowly getting rid of the physical editions of the book. I don't like the clutter of having books everywhere so I am slowly switching over to ebook editions.

Thanks for the tip about fixing the covers on the ebooks. I have a lot of Mobi and Gutenberg books too.

I do still wish that there was a box or something you could check to restrict the search feature to ebook editions when you add books though...

Sometimes, if I put kindle in as a keyword, I will pull up the kindle version from the search. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Not sure why.

k4k

@ hazysaffron,

So your doing the basically the exact opposite of me. For you the Ebook is the primary, and the dead tree is the duplicate. I am building a dead tree library, and if in the future, I run across a volume in good shape of a book I have on my Kindle, I will buy that, add that to the library, while deleting the ebook version.

What I do, and I see I didn't explain very well early this morning, is that I have both a collection named ebook, and a tag for ebook. That way I can sort or search my library just for those, and display just those if I want.

Take a look at my library to see what I mean. I am not saying this is the best way to do it, nor the only way, just the way that works for me. Pull down the collections, and pick Ebooks. Or search the tag Ebook.

And I do agree that adding Ebooks to your library is a pain. Like I said, I just do it manually, as most of my books are from free, public domain, sites, and therefore can't be added automatically. Yes it is a lot of work, but one of the things I like about LT, is that it allows me to "play" with my books electronically.

Bill Masom

Read this on another forum earlier today. You can have a librarything account just for your e-book editions, and a separate for your dead tree editions. Or a different account for your Wishlist items as the other discussion was about. Just a thought...

I have a separate paid account for my wishlist (imaginaryFicus). It just depends on how important the idea of separation is to you.

I'm not interested (yet) in using two accounts to separate eBooks from printed books, but if I have duplicates, I usually just catalog the printed one. I've been using Collections and Tags to distinguish my eBooks from my printed books as well. Is anyone using other software to keep track of their digital books (such as Calibre)? I'm straining under the weight of duplicate activities in my life and really don't want to create extra work for myself, but I've collected a fair number of ePub editions for my Sony, some of which I've catalogued and some of which I have not.

Hazysaffron, I can sympathize on the clutter and the desire to purge some of the printed books in favor of eBooks. I've thought of doing that for some of my old classics, but then I run into issues of having editions that aren't available for free (e.g., copyrighted translations and special editions, etc.) that I would not want to get rid of in favor of the free eBooks. However, I am considering a purge soon of those books where that isn't an issue.

Thanks for the tip on the ASIN, Ficus. I just recently got an iPad, so don't own many Kindles yet, but it worked when I catalogued the ones that I purchased.

Happy to help Ludmilla. It is sometimes hit or miss, but mostly it works.

On purging paper books - I'm definitely doing that with some books, which makes room for paper books that I can't get as ebooks or that are just better on paper or that have sentimental value. Space for books is a constant challenge for me since they are my main addiction. I have especially high hopes for managing my manga collection via ebook as there can be 20 volumes for one story and that takes a lot of shelf space.

FicusFan: Your tip to use the Amazon ASIN was exactly what I was looking for. Brings the book right in with "Kindle Edition" listed in publishing details. I'm tracking every book I own, even if I have duplicates (I don't have a lot, like three or four paper books with duplicate Kindle editions). I'm keeping both just because I like my library record to be accurate. As I work to purge the paper books, I'll remove them from my library, but as long as I own them I'm keeping them in LibraryThing.

I've taken your suggestion and set up Collections for Print Editions, Kindle Editions, iBooks Editions, etc. Works really well to keep everything organized.

Thanks for the great tips!

Glad to be of help, joeyday. Enjoy !

I've noticed one downside of using the ASIN. Most have not been combined with the print edition, so they stand alone as unique works without the benefit of common knowledge and links to discussions for those books. Just food for thought for those who care about the social info that goes along with the data.

We're going to be releasing an Ebook adding feature as soon as we can get it out. (I'm guessing two weeks, and not entirely joking.)

One thing I'm surprised to notice. It looks like Amazon is exposing more of them directly through the ASIN. This was previously locked off from us. Have people found ASIN entry usually works?

That's good news, Tim.

I've only tried entering the ASIN for two or three Kindles, and it has worked so far.

Are there any plans to add Sony's ebookstore as a data source? I've noticed quite a few of the ePubs I've purchased from there have their own unique ISBNs, but haven't tried entering those yet.

Ludmilla, I just combine the ebook with its proper print version.

I too, have seen in the book an e-isbn. I tried it on Amazon to pull it up and it didn't work.

I have readers for borders, B&N and IPad as well as the Kindle, so I am not sure which non-Kindle it was.

timspalding: I've added a dozen or so Kindle editions using the ASINs and they've all worked flawlessly. So far they've all been combined properly with print editions, so I can't say I've run into the same problem as ludmillalotaria.

Yeah, I know I can combine the ebook with the print edition, but I have the eerie feeling it's going to open a can of worms. I've never actually combined editions before, and I'm hesitant (and admittedly too lazy) to start, especially if upgrades are in the works to fix the issue before I enter very many.

I think I'm going to find more works without this issue if I use the eISBN instead of the ASIN. For most of mine, the eISBN can be found under details at Sony's ebook store (and they match the eISBN on the copyright page of the Kindle editions I've purchased for the iPad).

As a rule of thumb, Amazon assigns an ASIN for eBooks that a publisher has not assigned a unique eISBN to. Amazon, Apple, (and soon) Google Editions are all urging publishers to assign a unique eISBN per digital product. Though if the book is old enough it will have just a 10-digit ISBN which should be the same as ASIN. Anything with a 13-digit ISBN or check digit code, will probably have an ASIN and ISBN (and hopefully eISBN).

I would *guess* that's why the ASIN sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Some books are tied to only an ASIN and others Amazon has manually swapped out the ASIN for a unique eISBN or linked them.

So far I've just been using tags to denote ebook and then format/reader (kindle, epub, iBooks, sony, etc.) I'm going to go back and try the ASIN for some of my kindle books to see what shakes out. Thanks for the tip! I may even create an ebook collection, for my LT library.

This is a great crazy complex topic and worthy of much more discussion!

FicusFan - are you using the Kobo Reader for Borders? If not, which one?

> trav,

I have an Ipod Touch and don't have any specific reader.

I have 4 apps for ereaders: Kindle, B&N (pre-nook - don't know if its the same now), ibook for Ipad, and one for Borders - don't know if its Kobo, Sony or the other one, or something different. I got it from Borders.com, don't think they give you options, its just one that you install.

An ebooks option is fantastic! (See msg #15 above). I do hope we see it soon, because my technique had simply been to add the tag "Kindle" to a regular entry.

@ timspalding - The Amazon ASIN thing is working great for me. However, there are quite a few ebooks I can't get on Amazon (or can't get for free), and I'm finding myself using Manybooks.net for them most of the time. Is there any possibility of hooking up with their database as a cataloging source? (In other words, as a choice under Search Where? in the Add Books section.)

EricaSJ - I had never heard of Manybooks.net. Thanks for posting about it. It looks to be pretty slick! How often do books get added to their catalog?

>24 trav: - Two other good places for ebooks are mobileread.com and feedbooks.com, in case you don't know about them. I have their catalogs on my kindle so I can download directly -- very convenient. They have a smaller selection than manybooks.net, but they are more careful about proofreading.

k4k

To piggy back on #25 krazy4katz, gutenberg.org is the mother load of free, public domain books. Most of the books on Manybooks.net are from gutenberg.org, just Manybooks.net has more formats available. I prefer the .mobi format over the Kindle format.

Another place to find free, public domain books is Archive.org. BUT----beware, not all books download and display nicely. I have found that it is very hit or miss with any of the books digitized by google. When in doubt, I open the kindle version with the kindle reader on my PC, check it out (formatting, OCR errors, and the like) before downloading it to my Kindle.

Your milage may vary.

Bill Masom

I have just tried to add 7 recent ebooks bought from Amazon and using the ASIN number without one of them being found here.

Can you post some of them?

Here are five that I remember, Tim.

B003MU9CV8
B002RI9ZPY
B002RHGYOA
B002RI9ZQ8
B003KK5RKK

I think the problem might be with Amazon.

I tried to use your first number to look up a book in the Kindle store. It says that nothing matches the number, but then it suggests a close match which is the book with that ASIN: Jasper Jones.

I copied the ASIN off the page to use as a search and it again said no matches.

Just went to add another book (B0040JHNZ2 - Fall of Giants), Tim, and it's not found.

There are a lot of places to get ebooks that don't give them an ISBN - like smashwords, lulu, b&n editions etc. Annoying :(

32.> Yes, it is. What I do is search Amazon using title, author, kindle edition and can often find them that way. Otherwise, use paperback or hardcover version when it can be found and then edit info to reflect ebook data instead. Yeah it's a bit more work than having ISBN or ASIN, but still less than having to enter the whole thing manually.

For independently published books, it's up to the author to obtain the ISBN. I have no idea how much is charged for that service, but I'm aware that it's not free.

Another Kindle book I just bought from Amazon where the ASIN (B004VM6494) did not come up on LT so I added the book manually,

Has there been any discussion on adding ASIN as a field on book pages?

>34 Murmurs:
Considering that Amazon is just one source, if they add ASIN, they need to add the unique identifiers in all possible sources that have one... which will end up in a mess. And the idea is LT to try to move away from Amazon as a a main source (thus the whole Overcat thing) -- not that it will happen anytime soon but....

I notice that if I enter the Amazon ASIN (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Standard_Identification_Number , but basically an Amazon eBook identifier), in Add Books, it's now pulling up. So for whomever in LibraryThing that added that, a big thanks. But I do notice that the cover is still not coming over, which is inconvenient.

No, covers are tied to ISBNs...

36>> Okay, now this is just a matter of personal taste, but I use this .jpg image of a Kindle. I keep it on my computer desktop and just upload it each time from the "Change cover image" link on the particular Kindle e-book's LT book page. It's an image I got from some Amazon site, I think, and I'm sure Amazon wouldn't object to my using it (since it's free advertising for the Kindle).

That link I gave you is to the image file that I uploaded to my own personal domain. If you want to use it, please download the image to your own hard drive and don't link to my domain, because I don't know how long I'm going to bother keeping the image file posted there.

I find this a more convenient way to depict my Kindle books on LT. I've created a separate "collection" for Kindle books in my LT "Your Books" catalog, but using that Kindle image for the "cover" is really convenient when I'm going through the "All collections" category and want a quick visual of what's a Kindle book rather than treeware.

> 37 AnnieMod

Obviously Librarything or Amazon implemented ASIN lookup, is there no lookup of covers? Does seem like there's some conversion tools:

http://www.asintool.com/asin-to-isbn.php

ASIN to ISBN, etc. So I would think it's possible.

>39 pwjone1:

Not in January when my comment was posted and ASINs were generally ignored:) Besides - possible and implemented in LT are two different things