# Open Library ISBN Bibliographic Lookup

> Open Library ISBN Bibliographic Lookup is a paid API for AI agents from x402-datashop-production.up.railway.app, paid per call via x402, $0.002/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-15).

Resolves an ISBN-10 or ISBN-13 to a normalized bibliographic record including title, authors, publishers, publish date, page count, subjects, and cover image URL from Open Library.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://x402-datashop-production.up.railway.app/v1/books/isbn
- Price: $0.002/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-15
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/open-library-isbn-bibliographic-lookup-40ff2834
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_tdqwk3V2hPEDagDC3jWrB

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 open-library-isbn-bibliographic-lookup-40ff2834
```

Example prompt: Can you pull up the full bibliographic details for the book with ISBN 9780140328721 — I need the title, authors, publisher, publish date, and cover image for a product listing.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need structured, normalized bibliographic metadata for a known ISBN — particularly for catalog management, e-commerce product listings, used-book pricing, or library systems. It tolerates hyphenated and space-separated ISBN formats, caches results for 7 days for efficiency, and only charges for successful lookups. Prefer this over scraping Open Library directly or using general search APIs when ISBN is known and structured data is required.

## Known failure modes

- Unknown or unrecognized ISBN returns HTTP 400 (not charged)
- Malformed ISBN string (non-numeric, wrong length after stripping hyphens/spaces) returns 400
- Open Library has no record for a valid but obscure ISBN — returns 400
- Network timeout if Open Library upstream is slow
- Rate limiting or payment failure prevents request from being processed

## How this service works

Resolves an ISBN-10 or ISBN-13 to a normalized bibliographic record from Open Library (Internet Archive): title, authors, publishers, publish date, page count, ISBN identifiers, subjects and cover image URL. Query: ?isbn=9780140328721 (hyphens/spaces tolerated). Unknown ISBNs return 400 (not charged). 7-day cache. Built for catalog management, e-commerce listings and used-book pricing agents.

## Output

A normalized bibliographic record containing: book title, list of authors, publishers, publish date, page count, ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 identifiers, subject tags, and a cover image URL sourced from Open Library. Unknown ISBNs return a 400 error without charge. Results are cached for 7 days.

## 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",
      "HEAD",
      "DELETE"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object",
     "required": [
      "isbn"
     ],
     "properties": {
      "isbn": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "ISBN-10 or ISBN-13 (hyphens/spaces allowed)"
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/open-library-isbn-bibliographic-lookup-40ff2834/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from x402-datashop-production.up.railway.app](https://www.zero.xyz/host/x402-datashop-production.up.railway.app/llms.txt)