Have you ever ever needed a whole listing of all of the books to procure on Amazon? Do you wish to know that are bodily books, that are Kindle ebooks, and that are Audible books? Do you wish to slice and cube your Amazon e-book assortment by style, date bought, or creator?
My spouse did. She has hundreds of Kindle books and possibly as many Audible books. She has been an avid reader since she was a bit woman, and her e-book assortment, each bodily and digital, is a satisfaction and pleasure.
She’s additionally very analytical. A couple of months in the past — again once we had been saving her Kindle assortment for obtain to her pc earlier than Amazon’s restriction passed off — she realized she needed to know extra concerning the metadata of her assortment. She needed simple methods to search out teams of books, and to grasp what she had.
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The e-book listing downloader extension
So she took to the Google and did a ton of looking. Her quest landed her on the Chrome Extension web page of the Amazon/Kindle E book Checklist Downloader, which, shockingly sufficient, is an Amazon Kindle e-book listing downloader.
I made a decision to attempt it, too. Why not? I am all the time inquisitive about what goes on contained in the Gewirtz machine.
You possibly can set up it, and it gives you a brief listing of your Amazon belongings as an illustration. However if you wish to unlock the total energy of this nifty little device, you will should pony up a complete six digital George Washingtons. Yeah, for $6 for limitless makes use of, it is a worthwhile funding. It is all the time good to assist revolutionary programmers.
Putting in the extension asks for the same old scary listing of approvals. My recommendation is to disable this factor once you’re performed utilizing it, and solely allow it for the few occasions you are going to obtain a full listing.
Subsequent, click on the puzzle-piece icon in your Chrome toolbar, then click on the pin to pin the downloader to your toolbar.
You may see a bit A icon, and once you click on it, you will get a drop-down menu much like this.
In the event you click on the Get Books button, you will be given directions about the place it is advisable level your browser.
You possibly can run this extension on two particular Amazon pages. In the event you run it on the primary web page proven, you will get solely primary information, together with ISBN/ASIN, URL, Sort, Origin, Title, and Creator(s). Origin seems to be the place the e-book was acquired, however for me each document lists “buy.”
I like to recommend you select the second URL, as a result of that one generates a spreadsheet with a ton extra fascinating info. We’ll get to that in a couple of minutes, however first let’s do the downloading course of after which transfer on to manipulating the information.
If you buy the extension, you will wish to put your serial quantity into the code discipline. I am not totally positive why the makes use of remaining reveals “-4/null,” nevertheless it would not appear to affect efficiency.
Be sure to’re on https://www.amazon.com/yourbooks. Then click on the Get Books button. Please word that nothing will occur should you click on once more. Simply scroll the drop-down a bit bit and you will see this comforting little progress indicator.
You may know you are performed once you get a file-download dialog. Inform the downloader the place you need your spreadsheet, and also you’re performed with this section.
Wanting on the spreadsheet
It turns on the market’s a ton of data on this spreadsheet.
Information contains the next fields:
- ISBN/ASIN: That is the Amazon ID for the e-book.
- Hyperlink: Hyperlink to the gross sales web page for the e-book.
- Acquired Date: While you purchased it.
- RelationshipSubtype: Exhibits whether or not you bought it, are sharing it, it is a part of the Kindle Proprietor’s Lending Library (KOLL), and probably extra.
- RelationshipType: For me, each merchandise was listed as “proprietor.”
- Format: The format of the merchandise; we’ll look extra into this later.
- Title: The e-book’s title.
- Pages: The variety of pages.
- Listening Size: For the Audible books.
- Genres: The merchandise’s style.
- Subgenres: This had no information for me.
- Sequence Place: If a e-book is a part of a sequence, which e-book it’s in that sequence.
- Sequence: Named e-book sequence.
- (First) Creator: The primary creator’s title.
- All Authors: All authors listed for the merchandise.
You possibly can see how this may get fascinating. You are able to do so much with Excel and its information evaluation instruments.
I did consider utilizing Microsoft’s Copilot inside Excel to cut it up, however then I bought a take a look at the worth. I spend $99 per 12 months for Microsoft 365 Household for all of the apps and 5 customers. However simply to make use of the AI in Excel, I would should spend $20 per 30 days — an additional $240 per 12 months for a single added function. That is two and a half occasions the price of the entire workplace suite. I am sorry, however that ain’t proper.
However then once more, there’s ChatGPT. I do spend $20 per 30 days for the Plus account, however ChatGPT offers quite a lot of worth. To not point out my job includes writing about it on daily basis.
So, let’s feed the spreadsheet to ChatGPT and see what magic it will probably produce.
Analyzing Amazon metadata with ChatGPT
Let’s begin with a fast ChatGPT trace. ChatGPT will get very confused when the highest row of a spreadsheet would not include the names of fields. You possibly can cajole ChatGPT to concentrate to the proper row by telling it the primary worth, however I’ve discovered issues go a lot simpler should you simply chop off any pointless prime traces and current ChatGPT with header names as the primary row.
And that is what I did. I then proceeded to add the unmodified spreadsheet file as a substitute of the modified file, thereby complicated it. As one does. I began a brand new session with ChatGPT and uploaded the proper file.
I began off enjoying round with the format discipline. I advised it, “Tabulate the format discipline. Present me what number of of every is within the file. Make me a pie chart.” I bought again a pleasant pie chart, nevertheless it was a bit messy.
I requested it to tidy it up a bit by prompting, “Use labels, however give me a legend for something below 2%.” That turned out to end in a really workable chart.
As anticipated, the majority of my reads are on Kindle. However I did not notice I had about as many paperbacks as I do audiobooks. Cool.
Subsequent, we get to the realm I used to be most inquisitive about: genres. I instructed ChatGPT, “Tabulate the genres discipline. Present me what number of of every is within the file. Draw a pie chart representing style. Use labels, however give me a legend for something below 2%.” The outcomes had been fascinating.
It was not what I anticipated. First, I’d have sworn that I had vastly extra science fiction than both thriller or literature. However apparently, I purchased much more mysteries. The younger grownup slice is sensible. There are a variety of nice e-book sequence, like Tom Swift and plenty of books about steampunk and dirigibles which might be geared toward youthful readers. I do get pleasure from them.
I do not know how 3.4% may very well be romance. It is potential some e-book that appeared fascinating was in that class, my spouse purchased one thing on my account, or I downloaded it from a promotion totally free in my bit-piggy section. Who is aware of? Nonetheless, it is informative.
There may be extra info I used to be in a position to tease out of that information with ChatGPT. It requested me, “Would you want this visualized or grouped additional by theme or class?” My reply was sure, and I bought again this.
I needed to see if ChatGPT might give me a distinct tackle my e-book listing based mostly on the titles themselves, so I requested, “Primarily based on the titles of the books, present me a pie chart of the ten hottest themes.” I bought this again.
Weirdly, science or science fiction would not present up on that in any respect, though science fiction is usually lumped into the thriller or journey classes. Time is sensible as a result of I like time-travel tales.
And I am once more stunned by thriller’s prominence on this classification. In the event you mix thriller, mysteries, homicide, and comfy, we get 56% of my reads are mystery-related. However I had no thought I had that many. I’d have thought my Star Trek books would have smothered the opposite classes.
Lastly, I requested ChatGPT, “Wanting on the spreadsheet, what different fascinating info or insights are you able to floor for me?” This was enjoyable.
It is form of fascinating that my first Amazon e-book buy dates again to 1998 — nearly 30 years in the past. It is also fascinating, since I learn my Kindle books on daily basis, that my final buy was nearly two years in the past. Apparently, I have been working my manner by my assortment (which is, actually, a superb factor).
So there you go: a solution to dig by all of your Amazon reads and perceive a bit extra about what you are into.
What about you? Have you ever ever taken a deep dive into your Amazon e-book assortment? Had been you stunned by the variety of genres or codecs you’ve got amassed through the years? Do instruments like this metadata exporter make you rethink your studying habits or spark new concepts for organizing your digital library? And should you’ve tried ChatGPT or comparable instruments to investigate your individual information, how did it go? Tell us within the feedback beneath.
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