Audiobook preview links and Bookshop.org links go to search, why?

When I first launched Shepherd, I tried to make direct links to Bookshop.org using the ISBN for bookshop.org in the USA and UK. This did not work.

Recently I have added an audiobook preview link, and that also goes to search. I am working to make it smarter, but currently, it is pretty basic. 

Why are these basic links?

• Bookshop.org is new and doesn't have a fancy inventory system that sends book editions that are not in stock to the ones they do (Amazon is pretty fancy and good about switching old ISBNs to new ones). So people were getting 404 errors because that book didn't exist in Bookshop.org because they didn't stock it, or it was not the edition of that book they had in stock. I also have no idea which ISBN to link to since I didn't know what edition they stocked (books have lots of different editions. People would get a page error due to the differences between the ISBNs of different book editions and ISBN differences in the USA and UK. 
• For the audiobook preview link, we don't yet know which ISBNs are audiobooks and which are not. That is something we now have access to but have to build an entire system to build that list and figure out how to check if that bookstore has it in stock. For now we just make an easy link. 

Building a system to fix these problems is going to be time-consuming and expensive.

We don't have the financial resources to do this right now.

We have 70,000 books in our system, and managing all the editions of each of those books is incredibly complex (we might have 500,000 ISBNs and ASINs in our system for those 70,000 books).

So, for now, we changed it to link to a search at Bookshop.org for the book and author. That way, I know it will work and not show a 404 error.

This means the Bookshop.org links will always appear for a book, even if the book isn't in stock at that bookshop.

In the long term, I want to come back and improve these links to make them smarter. But I can't do that until we have more financial resources. 

What do we have to build to do that?

1. Some type of checker to determine which ISBN Bookshop.org has and check that they have that book. That is hard to do.
2. We also have to organize ISBNs to determine which ones are for audiobooks and which ISBNs are for books in different regions so that we can link to audiobooks in the USA with one ID and to the UK with another ID (also very hard to do). I am working to improve the audiobook preview link, but not sure yet if that is feasible. I will know shortly in February or March 2024. 

Building a complex solution to this problem would take a lot of money and time. We don't have the financial resources or time to do this right now.

I'll update this page in 2024 and 2025 as I know more about the above two projects. 

P.S. Would you like to help us build features like this faster?

I launched a membership program for founding members at the urging of authors and readers. 100% of the money goes toward developing new features, and my goal to hire a full-time developer in 2024 or 2025 (currently, we only have one part-time developer).