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Update on Amazon
So... it looks like Amazon.co.uk has still not approved our accesskey. And Amazon.com perma-banned us a while ago, with no way to even discuss it. After the warning period expired, I tried creating a new ID, and it was deleted because it was "associated with a recently deleted account". I might be able to get Amazon.co.uk to work, but that's a lot of work for me, to not get amazon.com and to likely get banned again. So... for now we have to do without Amazon. Here's how:
- you can search (as always) the BookMooch database
- you will have to "hand enter" a book if it's not in the bookmooch database yet. http://bookmooch.com/m/add_manually I did some research and I have an idea for a work around. It's going to take a bit of re-enginering from me, but my idea is:
I'll write a browser toolbar widget (like the moochbar http://bookmooch.com/moochbar )
so you can search on Amazon.com itself, and
when you find the book you want, tap the "moochbar" and it'll copy the data from the Amazon web page you were on. :DSo... hold tight guys, I think I can find a workaround to Amazon's API. -john
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John Buckman
4 years ago
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Comments
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YAY! Thank you for working on this!
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Thank you for the update!
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Thank you for your effort- we miss mooching!
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That's great! Thanks
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Thanks John, for keeping this site going! :)
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Thanks for working on it, what about using a google books search instead of Amazon ?
My teenager tells me it is much more thorough.
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Yay! I can enter books again! The mooch bar does not seem to work on Chrome, so I'm using hand entering. One comment is that this puts books directly into inventory, so if I'm trying to add to wishlist, I then have to delete and add. Could there maybe be an option to Add to Inventory or Add to Wishlist?
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What is Amazon's problem anyway?
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This is a great site. Thanks for your work, John!
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Thank you!! I love your site. I just cataloged my entire collection and found so many books to add to my inventory. I just added manually.
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first, thank you for working on this site all these years. second, might it be possible to plug into some other book search API? ...maybe something like LibraryThing could power the search?
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ok
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Could there maybe be an option to just Add to Wishlist, as Alison Ashtor says above? Please fix the Add to Wishlist, as you have apparently fixed Add to Inventory. Thank you. Alison Fuller
typeplace@aol.com
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I still think that working with Datacrow can be a good idea. Datacrow has accessed a number of databases (so WorldCat would be a good one - it might sidestep the Amazon issue too as they still seem to be accessing Amazon) but also it has modules for films and CDs. So we could have BookMooch also be CD Mooch and Video / DVD Mooch. https://www.datacrow.net/ It would also deal with the criticism that Amazon is a behemoth destroying small businesses (which we are supporting to the exclusion of alternatives, which in my case means almost none of the Finnish books I list are included). The only thing I am unsure of is the revenue model that BookMooch has operated under. Sure there are voluntary donations and also some clickthru sales from Amazon. BUT if Amazon is blocking that... I think that the DataCrow people would be worth speaking with. For myself I think it can make some sense to allow people to share their book collections as NOT moochable, lendable, swappable or you can only read it in their homes. I think that BookCrossing aims at this to some extent. I do think that the points system is an incentive. When you spent loads of money buying and sending books - it is nice to be able to get books in return. This is my biggest annoyance - almost all the books I want are in the USA and I find that people there largely will not send - they send only in their own country. This also means that people do not mooch my books - I would guess a quarter are on wishlists that are in my inventory. Anyway good that John continues to work on BM.
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Honestly, Amazon (UK and US) often leaves something to be desired for me. Many times the book description will be completely blank or really have no information in it at all. No book description or any other information.
Nothing that anyone here can do anything about of course, but it is annoying.
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For the second time, I posted a comment on using something besides Amazon and it was deleted. Why?
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Thank you so much for your effort, John!! I will do what I can as I can...as I know you will as well! YOU ARE APPRECIATED!!
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Thank you so much for working on this for us John, and for continuing to support this site.
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I would imagine that Amazon doesn't want to work with BookMooch because they want to make it difficult to trade books. They want us to buy them from them so they're going to be difficult to deal with.
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But I want to enter a bunch into my Wishlist. What do I do?
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Alison, go to Browse Bookmooch, enter author or book then hit “show unavailable” and you can wishlist it from there. Someone posted that suggestion and I tried it today and I can finally wishlist again!
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Hi. Thank You for your great work. I hope one day people will realize that there is no just Amazon in the world. Amazon is phagocyte that eats up all its competitors and small business and deploys many other deceitful tactics. Amazon has been boycotted by the Ethical Consumer Association due to its abhorrently poor ethical record, Yet, there are alternatives. From Bookfinder to Biblio, we don't need to pretend that without Amazon we can't live. I bothers me that I try to avoid Amazon at all cost, that hard working people with higher moral standards feel forced to having to give in to its luring traps. Keep up the good work! ;-)
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Where have all the recent books gone ? Why is the list blank ?
Is it just me ??
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Cindy M: Thank you, but that doesn't work. I think you left out a few steps.
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Alison:
Open Bookmooch
Tap ‘browse’
You will see ‘search Bookmooch for a book’. Enter the book or author and tap ‘search Bookmooch’.
If your book is not on the available list, look at the top of the screen and you will see ‘Show unmoochable’. Tap that link.
It will list books and if you find the one you want tap the blue title and it will take you to the ‘wishlist add’ screen.It’s not fast, but I added 25 books to my wishlist today using that method.
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Thanks for all of your hard work!
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To Cindy M: That procedure worked! I managed to add 3 out of the 9 I had listed to my Wishlist. Thank you, and maybe he'll get it fixed one of these days. Alison Fuller
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John - why does the site suddenly list as "recently added" books owned by people who are inactive users ?
For example, "Maximum Overdrive" which is a recent book in the UK.If you are going to be looking at some code changes can you also do something about removing all the inactive users ?
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How hard would it be to use someone like Powell's OR Barnes & Noble? Also, there is the new Bookshop.org place run by Ingram. I wonder if they have an API?
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John what happens when you enter the isbn number and a different book comes up? I've checked my numbers 3 times and I am still having it happen.
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Can you explain why when you enter an ISB number the book that comes up is not the book you have entered? I've checked my numbers several times and it still happens. It says that number is in the system however it is not right.
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To me this moochbar method doesn't work ... I tried to use it looking for a book (9788845293542) through amazon.it.
If I try to add it in "wishlist" and "save for later", it gives me message "No book data was found for that ASIN ".
If I try to add it in my "inventory" instead it seems to work (always giving a form with no data apart from the ASIN) but then I look in the inventory and I can't find it ... but if I try again it gives me the message "You are now offering this many copies of this book: 2 ".
However, in search of the ASIN code, the book is still not present in the database.
I hope this situation can be resolved soon, with manual insertion it seems a return to 10 years ago ... :(
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Why on earth would Amazon ban Bookmooch?
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Not to do with this issue but further to my comment from a month ago - someone has just mooched a book of mine that was shown in the recently added section. The only problem is I added it months ago !
How does the recently added coding work ?
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Does anyone else have the same book posted? They might have posted it recently but then when the moocher went to pick someone to request it from, they picked you.
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Good luck, John. Thank you for all the effort.
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If you can do that would be brill.
For now happy to hand enter.
Keep us posted
Thanks
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Also just thought, I use Good reads to get book info. That has a really good catalogue. Could you tap into that? Just an idea, I admit I don't know much about computers so it may not be poss.
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Hi - I could not see a specific forum thread for the issue of removing inactive members. I thought once I waited a reasonable amount of time to receive a reply from a member, I could cancel, the cancelled member would be put on Vacation and then removed from BM? I do not see that happening.If I search books by location, the same members that are inactive for over 3 years (I have cancelled since they are not active here) are still showing as having the books available. Is there a workaround this? Thanks
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There is a forum thread for inactive accounts that you'll find here  Inactive Accounts Clean-up ProjectAssuming you can even find the forums any more. It doesn't seem like anyone ever gets removed from BM - there are some members who have been inactive over 2000 days.
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Hi hikari, the inventory should be removed as long as you give the reason for cancellation as "the book owner never responded"
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I wonder if the mechanism to put people on vacation isn't working right. I have a moocher who isn't marking a book as received. Normally I can force it after 6 weeks, but the button isn't showing up. I didn't use the remind button when I sent them the tracking info, just the email option. Either way, it has been 6 weeks since I would have sent the email and still no button. This would not put them on vacation, but if one feature isn't working, there could be others.
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I may have lucked onto another way to list your books.
Last weekend I decided to list 3 paperbacks. None of them showed up on ISBN searches. They showed up fine on a search under the author name.
Was not finding a way to list mine -- yet.
I clicked on a button near the bottom of a book listing that said, Give Your Book.
THIS led to having to List my copy first! Success!! Whoo hoo!
Other books had a line for Wishlists -- clicking on this brought the same sequence of operations to get my book listed.
So, what I recommend is that you put everything you could possibly want on your Wishlists, so that a potential giver can list it.
There ya go. I might or might not be brilliant, but I have my moments.
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Hi 3ookHappy, I think people will still run into the same issues, whether they're adding something to a wishlist or to give away- the ISBN13 search isn't working most of the time, and newer books won't come up because US Amazon isn't connected, so there's still the limitations. I've had the most luck with searching for title and author, and then looking for the edition I have on hand and giving my copy that way. If the book has the ISBN10 on it, strangely, it usually comes up by the ISBN search. Weird.
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does not find it with 10 for me though. e.g. 0989375862 The Footman and I (The Footmen's Club) Paperback – May 23, 2020
by Valerie Bowman does not come up.
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It's most likely too new- in my experience, it's pretty impossible to find anything that was published after the link to amazon.com was severed, unfortunately.
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I have experienced that too. If I see something in the new book reviews in my paper, it is not listed yet.
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Carol you only list 8 books and you say you will only send to your own country so that is probably why no-one is mooching from you. I also see you have 11 points so you could mooch 11 books in the USA or 3books from outside.
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re Carol - you also don't have any information listed regarding the condition of your books. The more info you give moochers the more likely they are to take one of your books.
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There is a way to add images but I think it's either in the "review" or "condition notes" (I can't remember)- there should be something in the forums somewhere about it. I don't believe there's any way to put it in the cover photo spot, however, since that's piped in from Amazon.uk
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Hello bookmoochers. How's everyone doing? Just an opener to say hello to the community and to all who make BM possible!
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I like bookcrossing.com
It's more about just giving books away and tracking them as they travel but there is lots of functionality and opportunity to get books you want too.
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As many times that I have left books, I have never seen a book anywhere with or without a Bookcrossing label on it. I have left books in the library of cruise ships, After less than a day later, my book was gone &
more was added.
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I have seen bookcrossing books I did not take and mooched book crossing books too. I also list them to be mooched away - as you will see in my inventory.
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Thank you
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