canonical: https://jentic.com/apis/nytimes.com/books-api # Nytimes Books API The New York Times Books API provides programmatic access to NYT Best Sellers lists and book reviews. Agents can retrieve current and historical best seller rankings across more than 50 list categories (hardcover fiction, nonfiction, children's, advice, graphic novels), look up an individual title's appearance history, and pull reviews written by NYT critics. Results include ISBNs, author names, publishers, weeks-on-list counts, and Amazon product URLs, making the data immediately usable for book recommendation and discovery experiences. ## For AI agents Look up NYT Best Sellers rankings, list metadata, and book reviews for any title or author across more than 50 list categories. ## Scope Does not handle book purchases, e-book downloads, or full-text article search - use for NYT Best Sellers rankings and critic reviews only. ## Capabilities - Retrieve the current Best Sellers list for any of the 50+ NYT list categories - Look up a book's full Best Sellers ranking history by ISBN, author, or title - Fetch the overview snapshot showing top 5 entries across every active list - Enumerate every available Best Sellers list name with publication frequency - Pull NYT critic reviews filtered by author, ISBN, title, or review date - Retrieve a historical Best Sellers list snapshot for any past publication date ## Use cases ### Best Seller Rankings Widget Power a website or app widget that displays the current NYT Best Sellers list for a chosen category, refreshed weekly. The Books API returns ranked entries with title, author, publisher, ISBN, weeks on list, and rank-last-week, so consumers can show movement arrows and historical context. A typical integration pulls one list (e.g. hardcover fiction) and caches the response for the week between publications. Example prompt: Fetch the current 'hardcover-fiction' list via /lists/{date}/{list}.json with date='current' and return the top 10 titles with ISBN-13 and weeks-on-list. ### Book Discovery and Recommendation Build recommendation flows that combine bestseller signal with critic reviews. Agents can search /reviews.json by author, title, or ISBN and merge each title's bestseller history from /lists/best-sellers/history.json to highlight critically acclaimed books that also gained commercial traction. This is useful for editorial newsletters and reading-suggestion bots. Example prompt: For ISBN 9780525559474, call /lists/best-sellers/history.json then /reviews.json?isbn=9780525559474 and return ranking peak plus the most recent critic review excerpt. ### Historical Bestseller Research Retrieve any past Best Sellers list by publication date for research, journalism, or trend analysis. The API accepts dates back to the list's earliest archived issue and returns the full ranked entries as published that week, supporting historical comparisons and decade-long trend studies. Example prompt: Pull the 'paperback-nonfiction' list published on 2010-01-03 via /lists/{date}/{list}.json and return all 15 entries with author and rank. ### Agent-Driven Book Lookup via Jentic An AI reading assistant agent uses Jentic to discover the NYT Books API at runtime when a user asks about a title's bestseller history or critical reception. Through Jentic's intent search, the agent locates the right operation, loads its schema, and executes the call without the developer wiring the endpoint by hand. Example prompt: Search Jentic for 'get NYT bestseller history', load the /lists/best-sellers/history.json operation, and execute it with author='Colson Whitehead'. ## Key endpoints | Method | Path | Description | | --- | --- | --- | | GET | /lists/{date}/{list}.json | Get a Best Sellers list for a specific date and list name | | GET | /lists/names.{format} | List every available Best Sellers list with metadata | | GET | /lists/overview.{format} | Top entries across all current Best Sellers lists | | GET | /lists/best-sellers/history.json | Full ranking history for a book | | GET | /reviews.{format} | Search NYT critic book reviews | | GET | /lists.{format} | Retrieve a Best Sellers list by name | ## Key resources - **Best Sellers Lists** — Current and historical ranked lists across 50+ categories, accessed by list name and publication date. - **List Metadata** — Catalogue of every available list with publication frequency and earliest available date. - **Bestseller History** — Full ranking history for any book by ISBN, author, title, or publisher. - **Book Reviews** — NYT critic reviews searchable by author, ISBN, title, or review date. - **List Overview** — Snapshot of the top entries across every active Best Sellers list for a single date. ## Why Jentic - **Setup:** Wiring the NYT Books API by hand means appending your api-key to the query string against api.nytimes.com/svc/books/v3 and handling the list and review request plumbing yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import the NYT Books API from the API Directory, store the key once, and your agent calls it. - **Permission scoping:** The Books API is read-only, so scope the agent to the operations it needs, such as fetching a bestseller list or a book review, and leave the rest out. You choose the operations it may call, so it only reaches the endpoints you list. - **Credential handling:** Your NYT api-key is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected as the api-key query parameter at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context. - **Discovery method:** Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'get NYT bestseller list' or 'look up a book review', and Jentic returns the matching Books API operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs. ## Related APIs - **NYT Movie Reviews API** — Sister NYT API for film reviews and Critics' Picks instead of book reviews. - **NYT Top Stories API** — Pulls top NYT articles by section, including the Books section, alongside bestseller data. - **NYT Semantic API** — Resolves authors and titles to NYT controlled-vocabulary tags for richer linking. ## FAQ ### What authentication does the NYT Books API use? The Books API uses an API key passed as the api-key query parameter on every request. Sign up at developer.nytimes.com to provision a key. When called through Jentic, the key is held in your Jentic One instance and injected per-request, so the agent never sees the raw secret. ### Can I get the full historical bestseller ranking for a specific book? Yes. Call GET /lists/best-sellers/history.json with isbn, author, title, or publisher as query parameters. The response includes every list appearance, week-by-week ranks, weeks on list, and the publishing house for each title. ### What are the rate limits for the NYT Books API? NYT enforces 500 requests per day and 5 requests per minute per API key across the developer portal APIs. Plan list polling on the weekly publication cadence rather than continuous polling, and cache responses between publication dates. ### How do I retrieve this week's hardcover fiction list through Jentic? Search Jentic for 'get NYT bestseller list', load the /lists/{date}/{list}.json operation, and execute it with date='current' and list='hardcover-fiction'. The response returns the ranked entries with ISBN-13, author, weeks on list, and rank-last-week. ### Is the NYT Books API free to use? Yes. The NYT Developer Network offers the Books API at no cost for non-commercial use within the published rate limits. Commercial or high-volume use requires contacting the NYT licensing team directly. ### Which Best Sellers lists are available through this API? Call GET /lists/names.json to enumerate every active list, including hardcover fiction, hardcover nonfiction, paperback trade fiction, advice how-to and miscellaneous, children's middle grade hardcover, young adult hardcover, graphic books, and combined print and e-book lists. The endpoint also returns each list's publication frequency. ### Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the NYT Books API? Yes. Because you self-host Jentic One, your own rules decide which of the NYT Books operations the agent may call, so you can allow just fetching a bestseller list or a book review and leave the rest out. The API is read-only, so the agent can never write, purchase, or modify anything, and it only reaches the endpoints you list, such as /lists/{date}/{list}.json or /reviews.json. Your NYT api-key stays inside your own instance and is injected at request time, so the agent scope you define is the only access it has.