Add automatic updating of read status on GoodReads

[GarethBlain]

🗣 Context

Add automatic updating of read status on GoodReads (https://www.goodreads.com/)

💬 Narrative

It would be great to be able to link a book you're listening to to a GoodReads book when it's added to BookPlayer.
That way as you start reading a book it could have the started date automatically marked on GoodReads then as you progress the percent complete could be updated.

I often find that after a few years I can't remember what book in as series I was up to when the author releases multiple new books so Good Reads is a great way to track that but only if you remember to mark them as read! This would hopefully easily allow us to track them. Maybe even allowing future stuff like recommendations from GoodReads. 🤷‍♂️

📝 Notes

I suspect this linking would need to be done manually initially at least as there are often multiple copies of a book on there with similar names. For example I find Audiobooks are often books 1, 2 & 3 of a series and have the same name as the first book. A nice simple search UI or even initially just a way to add a GoodRead Book ID to your Audio Book when you first open it in the app.

[pichfl]

We are planning to revamp how meta data for books is handled in the app which would in theory make it possible to store and edit the necessary link inside an ID3 field.

While I do see the value in this idea, I'm not very keen to support a service owned by Amazon.

[GarethBlain]

I did not know GoodReads had been acquired by Amazon. 😳That's disappointing as Amazon always destroy and never reopen all public APIs. Nest for example! 😢

[pichfl]

😞 sadly so, yes.

[pichfl]

After quick research I found out that GoodReads does no longer provide public access to an API since December 2020 (Source), which makes such an integration very hard to maintain (or would violate the TOS of Goodreads).

[GarethBlain]

Yes agreed this isn't an ideal solution knowing that.
I still like the idea of being able to automatically store a list of books that have been/are being listened too for future reference. Ideally with some kind of ISBN (or Audiobook equivalent?) so it could be used to link back so something like Goodreads but one that hasn't be destroyed.

[pichfl]

I do like the idea as well. ISBNs are issues for all kinds of media, even audiobooks and do indeed make a good unique identifier. We could store them in a custom ID3 field on the actual files.

There is LibraryThing which has APIs but I haven't tried them yet.

[GarethBlain]

I did come across that after the horrific news Amazon has GoodReads. I’ll leave this idea here then. ☺️