Books API

Name: Books API API
Brand: Google Books API
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecMediaContent Deliveryoauth251 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Search Google Books, retrieve volume metadata, and manage authenticated user bookshelves, reviews, and reading positions across 51 endpoints.

Quickstart

Get started with Books API in minutes using your preferred integration method.

# Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf)
{
  "jentic": {
    "url": "https://api.jentic.com/mcp",
    "auth": "oauth"
  }
}

# Then ask your agent:
"search Google Books by title or isbn"

# → Jentic returns the GET /events tool with parameter schema, agent executes.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with Books API API.

Search the Google Books catalog by title, author, ISBN, or full-text query

Retrieve detailed volume metadata including descriptions, ratings, and preview availability

Manage user bookshelves by adding, removing, and listing volumes per shelf

Track and update a reader's last-read position within a specific volume

GET STARTED

Start building with Books API API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

The Google Books API gives applications structured access to the Google Books repository, covering volume metadata, full-text search, bookshelves, reviews, and personal library management. It supports public catalog discovery as well as authenticated user-library operations such as bookshelf manipulation, reading position tracking, and offline metadata sync. The API is widely used to build reading apps, library tools, citation utilities, and book recommendation features.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use Books API API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Reading App Catalog Search

Power a consumer reading app's search experience by querying the Google Books catalog for matches against a user's free-text query, returning titles, authors, cover thumbnails, and preview availability. The Books API exposes the same index that powers books.google.com, so apps avoid building and maintaining their own metadata corpus. Integration is typically a single GET against /books/v1/volumes with a query string.

Search /books/v1/volumes for q="isbn:9780547928227" and return the title, authors, and thumbnail URL of the top result.

Personal Library Management

Let users curate their Google Books bookshelves directly from a third-party reading app, supporting add, remove, list, and reorder operations on shelves like Favorites, Reading Now, and To Read. The API authenticates with OAuth 2.0 user credentials and respects existing privacy settings on each shelf. This eliminates the need to duplicate library state in a separate backend.

Add the volume id zyTCAlFPjgYC to the authenticated user's bookshelf 3 (Reading Now) using the mylibrary endpoint.

Citation and Bibliography Tools

Build a citation generator that resolves an ISBN or free-text reference to a fully populated bibliographic record including authors, publisher, publication date, page count, and ISBN-10/13 identifiers. Researchers and writers use this to auto-fill citation styles such as APA, MLA, or Chicago without manual entry. One volumes lookup yields enough data to format most major styles.

Look up volume metadata for ISBN 9780062316097 and format an APA-style citation from the returned title, authors, publisher, and year.

AI Agent Reading Assistant via Jentic

An AI agent uses Jentic to discover the Books API's search and library operations and acts as a reading concierge — finding next-read recommendations from a user's existing bookshelves, fetching previews, and updating reading position as the user finishes chapters. Jentic isolates the user's OAuth token in its vault so the agent never handles raw credentials. End-to-end integration takes under an hour through Jentic search-load-execute.

Through Jentic, search for the books_volumes_list operation, load its schema, and execute a query for q="subject:fantasy" maxResults=10.

Key Endpoints

51 endpoints — the google books api gives applications structured access to the google books repository, covering volume metadata, full-text search, bookshelves, reviews, and personal library management.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/books/v1/volumes

Search the Google Books catalog

GET

/books/v1/volumes/{volumeId}

Get metadata for a specific volume

GET

/books/v1/mylibrary/bookshelves

List the authenticated user's bookshelves

POST

/books/v1/mylibrary/bookshelves/{shelf}/addVolume

Add a volume to a user bookshelf

POST

/books/v1/mylibrary/bookshelves/{shelf}/removeVolume

Remove a volume from a user bookshelf

GET

/books/v1/myconfig/getUserSettings

Retrieve the user's Books settings

GET

/books/v1/volumes

Search the Google Books catalog

GET

/books/v1/volumes/{volumeId}

Get metadata for a specific volume

GET

/books/v1/mylibrary/bookshelves

List the authenticated user's bookshelves

POST

/books/v1/mylibrary/bookshelves/{shelf}/addVolume

Add a volume to a user bookshelf

POST

/books/v1/mylibrary/bookshelves/{shelf}/removeVolume

Remove a volume from a user bookshelf

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

Google OAuth client secrets and user refresh tokens are stored encrypted in the Jentic vault (MAXsystem). Agents call the Books API with scoped, short-lived access tokens issued by Jentic — raw client secrets never enter the agent's context.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic by intent (e.g. 'search Google Books by isbn') and Jentic returns the matching volumes operation with its parameter schema, so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the discovery document.

Time to first call

Direct integration: 1-2 days for OAuth client setup, consent screen, and token refresh handling. Through Jentic: under 1 hour — search, load, execute.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Complementary

Google Drive API

Store and share user files, including PDFs and EPUBs alongside Google Books metadata.

Choose Drive when the agent needs to store or retrieve a user-owned file; choose Books when working with the Google Books catalog or bookshelves.

Alternative

Google Custom Search API

Generic web search API that can include book results but lacks structured bibliographic fields.

Use Custom Search for broad web discovery; use Books when you need ISBN, author, or publisher fields in a structured response.

Complementary

YouTube Data API

Surface book-related video content (author talks, reviews) alongside Books metadata.

Pair with Books when an app or agent enriches a title with multimedia context.

FAQs

Specific to using Books API API through Jentic.

What authentication does the Google Books API use?

The Books API uses OAuth 2.0 for authenticated user-library operations and accepts an API key for public catalog reads. When called through Jentic, the OAuth token or API key is stored encrypted in the Jentic vault and the agent receives only scoped access — raw credentials never enter the agent context.

Can I search for a book by ISBN with the Books API?

Yes. Send a GET to /books/v1/volumes with the query parameter q=isbn:9780547928227 (substituting the target ISBN). The response includes the title, authors, publisher, page count, and preview availability of any matching volume.

What are the rate limits for the Google Books API?

Google enforces a default of 1,000 queries per day per project for the Books API, with per-user limits applied on authenticated calls. Higher quota can be requested via the Google Cloud console. Track usage in the API dashboard before scaling integrations.

How do I add a book to a user's bookshelf through Jentic?

Use the Jentic search query "add a book to a Google Books bookshelf" to discover the mylibrary.bookshelves.addVolume operation, load its schema, and execute it with the authenticated user's shelf id and the target volumeId. Run pip install jentic to get started.

Is the Google Books API free to use?

Yes, the Books API is free for the default daily quota. Some operations require an authenticated user (OAuth 2.0) but there is no per-call charge from Google for catalog or library access.

Can the Books API return full text or only previews?

The API returns metadata, snippets, and preview URLs but does not stream full book content. Where the publisher allows, the volume response includes a viewability field and a preview link to books.google.com for in-browser reading.