Nytimes Books API
Browse all Nytimes APIs✓ Official Vendor SpecMediaContent DeliveryapiKey6 EndpointsREST
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.
The New York Times Books API provides programmatic access to NYT Best Sellers lists and book reviews. Agents can retrieve current and historical best seller rankings across more than 50 list categories (hardcover fiction, nonfiction, children's, advice, graphic novels), look up an individual title's appearance history, and pull reviews written by NYT critics. Results include ISBNs, author names, publishers, weeks-on-list counts, and Amazon product URLs, making the data immediately usable for book recommendation and discovery experiences.
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.
1
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 | sh2
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 instanceJentic 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
Enumerate every available Best Sellers list name with publication frequency
Pull NYT critic reviews filtered by author, ISBN, title, or review date
Retrieve a historical Best Sellers list snapshot for any past publication date
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
GET
/lists.{format}
Retrieve a Best Sellers list by name
Why Jentic?
Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.
Credential isolation
The NYT api-key is stored encrypted in the Jentic vault. Jentic injects it into the api-key query parameter at execution time so the agent context never holds the raw key, and the same credential is reused across all NYT APIs registered to the workspace.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search Jentic with phrases like 'get NYT bestseller list' or 'look up book review'. Jentic returns the matching Books API operation with its parameter schema, so the agent calls /lists/{date}/{list}.json or /reviews.json without browsing the developer portal.
Time to first call
Direct integration: half a day to wire the api-key, handle rate-limit responses, and parse the list/review payloads. Through Jentic: under 15 minutes — search, load, execute.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
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 the Jentic vault 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.
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