# Book Metadata – Author Lookup

> Book Metadata – Author Lookup is a paid API for AI agents from exchangerebel.com, paid per call via x402, $0.005/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-13).

Retrieves bibliographic metadata for a book author identified by an OpenLibrary author ID

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://exchangerebel.com/toll/books/author/OL23919A?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.005/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-10-13
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/book-metadata-author-lookup-e118fa68
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_fvnyKMVyxc8dPRdwsgZMY

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability book-metadata-author-lookup-e118fa68
```

Example prompt: Can you pull up the author metadata for the Open Library author OL23919A — I need their name, bio, and birth/death dates?

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need structured author biographical metadata keyed by an OpenLibrary author ID. It is ideal for enriching book or library datasets with canonical author information, building reading apps, or supporting literary research workflows where Open Library is the authoritative source. Prefer this over a general web search when you need clean, structured data rather than free-form text.

## Known failure modes

- Invalid or non-existent author ID returns a 404 or empty result
- Open Library upstream API unavailability causes timeouts or 5xx errors
- Author ID format mismatch (e.g. missing 'OL' prefix or suffix 'A') returns no data
- Payment failure or insufficient USDC balance blocks the request

## How this service works

book-metadata-author

## Output

Returns structured bibliographic metadata about the author, likely including their full name, birth and death dates, a biography, links to external identifiers (Wikipedia, Wikidata, ISNI, VIAF), photo references, and a list of associated works — all sourced from the Open Library database.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "GET"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object"
    }
   }
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/book-metadata-author-lookup-e118fa68/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from exchangerebel.com](https://www.zero.xyz/host/exchangerebel.com/llms.txt)