book-research

Book & audiobook research

Look up books, authors, reviews, and audiobooks across Goodreads and Apple Books as normalized JSON from the Crawlora API — no scraping book-catalog pages.

When to use this skill

• "What's the rating / reviews for this book?"
• "What has this author written?" (bibliography, quotes)
• "Give me a curated list" (Goodreads genre/lists pages).
• "Find this on Apple Books / is there an audiobook?"
• "What's charting on Apple Books right now?"

Setup (one-time)

• Get a free Crawlora API key (2,000 credits/mo, no card) at https://crawlora.net.
• export CRAWLORA_API_KEY=sk_your_key_here
• All requests: x-api-key: $CRAWLORA_API_KEY against https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1. Missing/invalid key → 401.

How it works

1. Goodreads — /goodreads/search (q) to find a book/author id, then /goodreads/book/{id} (+ /reviews, /editions) or /goodreads/author/{id} (+ /books, /quotes). /goodreads/genre/{name} and /goodreads/list/{id} (browse via /goodreads/lists) cover curated browsing.
2. Apple Books — /apple-books/search (term) to find a book id, then /apple-books/book/{id} (+ /reviews, /similar) or /apple-books/author/{id}. Audiobooks mirror this: /apple-books/audiobook/search → /apple-books/audiobook/{id} (+ /reviews, /similar), with /apple-books/audiobook-series/{id} and /apple-books/series/{id} for series. /apple-books/charts shows what's popular by country/genre.

Full endpoint list, methods, and params: reference/endpoints.md.

Calling the API

# Goodreads:
scripts/crawlora.sh /goodreads/search q="Project Hail Mary" | jq '.'
scripts/crawlora.sh /goodreads/book/54493401 | jq '.'

# Apple Books:
scripts/crawlora.sh /apple-books/search term="Project Hail Mary" | jq '.'
scripts/crawlora.sh /apple-books/charts | jq '.'

Raw curl fallback:

curl -fsS -H "x-api-key: $CRAWLORA_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1/goodreads/author/1221698.Andy_Weir" | jq '.'

Endpoint reference

See reference/endpoints.md for every Goodreads and Apple Books endpoint this skill uses.

Examples

• Author bibliography: /goodreads/author/{id}/books (or /apple-books/author/{id}) for a full backlist, cross-checked against /goodreads/book/{id}/reviews for reception.
• "What should I read next?" — /apple-books/book/{id}/similar or a Goodreads genre/list page for recommendations in a category.
• Audiobook vs. print check: /apple-books/book/{id} alongside /apple-books/audiobook/search for the same title to see if a narrated edition exists.

Notes & limits

• Credits / pay-on-success: billed only on 2xx; free tier 2,000 credits/mo. Key at https://crawlora.net.
• Public data only — public catalog/review pages.
• Security: key lives in CRAWLORA_API_KEY only — never hardcode, query-param, or commit it.
• Detail endpoints need the platform's own id — resolve via .../search first if you only have a title/author name.
• Reviews and lists are paginated (page/limit) — walk pages for full coverage.