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Kobo ISBN imports fail
Dec 23, 2021
Thanks to Instagram, I know Nadia is a Kobo user, so I hope this problem can be added to to the to-do list: Trying to add digital editions by using the ISBNs listed on Kobo's site fails so often that successes are surprising
Comments
I had another dozen or so to import over the last few days. Final failures (attempts ending with a "We were unable to import your book") still outnumber successes, and imports where more than 50% of the data is omitted form the majority of the rest, but the one thing I did discover is that problem is not unqiue to FF. I tried in Chrome and had exactly the same result.
robinwalter The only part that is unique to FF are the "silent failures" without seeing the notification. And that issue was not limited to imports for FF, but anywhere where such similar flash notifications had to show up!
Just updating this to say that it is still problematic - " we are unable to import this book" has cropped up several times in the last few weeks, and incomplete imports are the norm. I've done another dozen or so today, and only 1 was complete and correct. The others were missing more information than they import - missing cover, blurb, page info, series info. All were attempted AFTER first checking that the ISBN listed on Kobo's page was not already in the TSG database, and none of the "import by ISBN attempts were made in Firefox
robinwalter Thank you for the update, Robin!
Hehe. In general, we're continually working on improving the importer! Thanks for this suggestion, Robin!
Is there any ETA for an improvement to this situation? I'm still running at around 75-80% failure rate for importing by ISBN
We've recently done a bunch of work on our importing system. Have you tried it out and do you consistently get notifications saying we couldn't find your book?
The most common results are as follows, they account for 75-80% of my attempts to add a book just by ISBN
A new failure occurred repeatedly last night, with two attempts failing "silently. No error messages, no book added (either incomplete or incorrect), simply nothing happening at all - the progress bar worked across the screen then disappeared, leaving the ISBN still showing in the import field as in the second screenshot ("Trowie Mound")
A check of the emails received from me in the last 2-3 weeks (inlcuding the last 24 hours) will show the frequency with which these problems are happening for me.
The "add by ISBN" probably works without issue for me aprroximately 20-25% of the times I try, just enough to tempt me to keep trying when I'm feeling too lazy to add manually ( which works 95% of the time)
I think we're dealing with this with you via support (and if not, we should be), because it sounds like there's a bug, which means you're not seeing the flash messages explaining what's happening (and the fact that the ISBN stays in the field is suspect also).
It's probably just the AI telling me I should stop whingeing and apply to be a librarian.