Have you ever ever wished an entire record of all of the books you acquire on Amazon? Do you need to know that are bodily books, that are Kindle ebooks, and that are Audible books? Do you need to slice and cube your Amazon guide 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 little bit lady, and her guide assortment, each bodily and digital, is a pleasure 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 came about — she realized she wished to know extra in regards to the metadata of her assortment. She wished straightforward methods to search out teams of books, and to know what she had.
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The guide record downloader extension
So she took to the Google and did a ton of looking out. Her quest landed her on the Chrome Extension web page of the Amazon/Kindle E-book Record Downloader, which, shockingly sufficient, is an Amazon Kindle guide record downloader.
I made a decision to strive it, too. Why not? I am at all times interested in what goes on contained in the Gewirtz machine.
You may set up it, and it will provide you with a brief record of your Amazon belongings as an illustration. However if you wish to unlock the total energy of this nifty little device, you will must pony up an entire six digital George Washingtons. Yeah, for $6 for limitless makes use of, it is a worthwhile funding. It is at all times good to assist revolutionary programmers.
Putting in the extension asks for the standard scary record of approvals. My recommendation is to disable this factor whenever you’re achieved utilizing it, and solely allow it for the few instances you are going to obtain a full record.
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 little bit A icon, and whenever you click on it, you will get a drop-down menu much like this.
When you click on the Get Books button, you will be given directions about the place you’ll want to level your browser.
You may run this extension on two particular Amazon pages. When you run it on the primary web page proven, you will get solely fundamental knowledge, together with ISBN/ASIN, URL, Sort, Origin, Title, and Writer(s). Origin seems to be the place the guide 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 attention-grabbing data. 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 info.
If you buy the extension, you will need to put your serial quantity into the code subject. I am not completely positive why the makes use of remaining exhibits “-4/null,” but it surely would not appear to influence efficiency.
Be sure you’re on https://www.amazon.com/yourbooks. Then click on the Get Books button. Please observe that nothing will occur when you click on once more. Simply scroll the drop-down a little bit bit and you may see this comforting little progress indicator.
You may know you are achieved whenever you get a file-download dialog. Inform the downloader the place you need your spreadsheet, and also you’re achieved with this part.
Wanting on the spreadsheet
It turns on the market’s a ton of knowledge on this spreadsheet.
Knowledge consists of the next fields:
- ISBN/ASIN: That is the Amazon ID for the guide.
- Hyperlink: Hyperlink to the gross sales web page for the guide.
- Acquired Date: Once you purchased it.
- RelationshipSubtype: Reveals 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 guide’s title.
- Pages: The variety of pages.
- Listening Size: For the Audible books.
- Genres: The merchandise’s style.
- Subgenres: This had no knowledge for me.
- Collection Place: If a guide is a part of a collection, which guide it’s in that collection.
- Collection: Named guide collection.
- (First) Writer: The primary creator’s identify.
- All Authors: All authors listed for the merchandise.
You may see how this may get attention-grabbing. You are able to do rather a lot with Excel and its knowledge evaluation instruments.
I did consider utilizing Microsoft’s Copilot inside Excel to cut it up, however then I bought a have a look at the value. I spend $99 per yr for Microsoft 365 Household for all of the apps and 5 customers. However simply to make use of the AI in Excel, I might must spend $20 per thirty days — an additional $240 per yr for a single added characteristic. That is two and a half instances 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 thirty days for the Plus account, however ChatGPT offers an excessive amount of worth. To not point out my job entails writing about it every single day.
So, let’s feed the spreadsheet to ChatGPT and see what magic it might 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 comprise the names of fields. You may cajole ChatGPT to concentrate to the appropriate row by telling it the primary worth, however I’ve discovered issues go a lot simpler when 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 subject. I instructed it, “Tabulate the format subject. Present me what number of of every is within the file. Make me a pie chart.” I bought again a pleasant pie chart, but it surely was a little bit messy.
I requested it to tidy it up a bit by prompting, “Use labels, however give me a legend for something beneath 2%.” That turned out to lead to a really workable chart.
As anticipated, the majority of my reads are on Kindle. However I did not understand I had about as many paperbacks as I do audiobooks. Cool.
Subsequent, we get to the realm I used to be most interested in: genres. I instructed ChatGPT, “Tabulate the genres subject. 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 beneath 2%.” The outcomes had been attention-grabbing.
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 smart. There are a selection of nice guide collection, like Tom Swift and plenty of books about steampunk and dirigibles which might be aimed toward youthful readers. I do get pleasure from them.
I do not know how 3.4% could possibly be romance. It is attainable some guide that appeared attention-grabbing was in that class, my spouse purchased one thing on my account, or I downloaded it from a promotion without cost in my bit-piggy part. Who is aware of? Nonetheless, it is informative.
There’s extra data I used to be capable of tease out of that knowledge 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 wished to see if ChatGPT may give me a distinct tackle my guide record 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 smart as a result of I like time-travel tales.
And I am once more stunned by thriller’s prominence on this classification. When you mix thriller, mysteries, homicide, and comfortable, we get 56% of my reads are mystery-related. However I had no concept 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 attention-grabbing data or insights are you able to floor for me?” This was enjoyable.
It is form of attention-grabbing that my first Amazon guide buy dates again to 1998 — virtually 30 years in the past. It is also attention-grabbing, since I learn my Kindle books every single day, that my final buy was virtually two years in the past. Apparently, I have been working my method via my assortment (which is, actually, a very good factor).
So there you go: a method to dig via all of your Amazon reads and perceive a little bit extra about what you are into.
What about you? Have you ever ever taken a deep dive into your Amazon guide assortment? Have been you stunned by the variety of genres or codecs you’ve got collected over time? Do instruments like this metadata exporter make you rethink your studying habits or spark new concepts for organizing your digital library? And when you’ve tried ChatGPT or related instruments to investigate your individual knowledge, how did it go? Tell us within the feedback under.
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