Nytimes Books API

Name: Books API
Brand: Books API
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecMediaContent DeliveryapiKey6 EndpointsREST

Install Jentic One Beta

Connect the Books API to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Books API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.

Step 1: Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh

Step 2: Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with Books API.

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

GET STARTED

Start building with Books API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

For Agents

Look up NYT Best Sellers rankings, list metadata, and book reviews for any title or author across more than 50 list categories.

Use for: Find the current NYT hardcover fiction best sellers, Get the bestseller history for a book by its ISBN, Retrieve all NYT book reviews written by Michiko Kakutani, List every available NYT Best Sellers list category

Not supported: Does not handle book purchases, e-book downloads, or full-text article search - use for NYT Best Sellers rankings and critic reviews only.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use Books API for, with concrete tasks.

★ 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.

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.

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.

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.

Search Jentic for 'get NYT bestseller history', load the /lists/best-sellers/history.json operation, and execute it with author='Colson Whitehead'.

Key Endpoints

6 endpoints — the new york times books api provides programmatic access to nyt best sellers lists and book reviews.

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

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

Why Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

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.

Intent-based discovery

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.

Time to first call

FAQs

Specific to using Books API through Jentic.

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.