Kindle book ASIN, Amazon Standard Identification Number — a 10-character alphanumeric code (e.g., B00ZV9RDKK), is the unique ID which allows people and scripts to easily identify the book and version (as there are often many versions of the same abook). In other words, different kindle book, different ASIN.
What is a Kindle Book ASIN and Why Do We Need to Find It
Each ASIN maps to one specific product listing on Amazon. For books, the Kindle edition and the print edition of the same title usually have different ASINs (the print version often uses the ISBN as its ASIN instead).
The Kindle book ASIN is important because it's the key Kindle uses internally to track "what book is this" — separate from title/author text, which can vary or be localized.
New tools for storing, organizing and managing, as well as playing the files, locally on the PC or personal devices have emerged of late, and have lots of user friendly features. Additionally, many file management tools can be used to better organize media files and back-ups, based on tags in the file metadata.
One example, is Calibre, an open source application, which allows us to store their backed-up ebooks, and access our personal library, from our PC and personal wireless devices, on and offline, using a variety of free reading apps. It displays our personal library, with book covers, and publishing information, and allows us to sort by genre, tag, year, author, narrator, and even apply maturity ratings and parental controls. Tools like Calibre, use the metadata of the file to identify the title, author, year, and other elements of the book's information for managing the files, and some even download the cover images, tags and even maturity ratings, automatically, from free, open source databases online. For this to work, the metadata needs to be there.
The ASIN, being a unique ID, is almost 100% certain to provide the correct information about that specific book, from the online book databases, and allow the local file storage tools to automatically get the correct book information, without manual intervention, or additional file tagging.
Note: For print books, Amazon usually just reuses the ISBN-10 or ISBN-13 as the ASIN (which is why print ASINs are often recognizable ISBNs). But Kindle ebook ASINs are Amazon-generated and don't correspond to any ISBN — they're pure arbitrary identifiers.
3 Methods to Find Kindle Book ASIN
Method 1. Amazon product page URL.
The easiest method to find Kindle book ASIN is to check the URL of the book's. The ASIN is the 10-character code starting with "B0" located right after /dp/ or /gp/product/.
Method 2. "Product details" section on the listing page.
Another method is to scroll down on the Amazon product page to Product details / Additional details — the ASIN is listed explicitly as a labeled field.
Method 3. KindleSyncMetadataCache.xml -- data source for an offline ASIN-to-title lookup
After we opened or downloaded one book via the Kindle for Windows/PC/Mac app, the Amazon server will deliever a file named KindleSyncMetadataCache.xml, which is keyed by ASIN.
It shows all of books' metadata in one file, includes: Title, author, and other bibliographic metadata for each entry; Sync/download status flags; file size and a content type/format indicator (e.g. KFX vs older formats).
Where to find the KindleSyncMetadataCache.xml on Windows Mac?
| KindleSyncMetadataCache.xml file location | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Windows (legacy Win32 Kindle for PC) | %LOCALAPPDATA%\Amazon\Kindle\Cache\ |
| 2 | Windows (new Kindle for Windows / MSIX Store app) | %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\AMZNKindle.AmazonKindleReadingApp_m1sc522ngdk36\LocalState\Classic\Data\Cache\ |
| 3 | Mac OS | ~/Library/Application Support/Kindle/Cache/ |
Batch Write Kindle Book ASIN to Book Name and Save Offline Copies(EPUB Version)
Above methods do work, but if we wish an effective method to batch write the Kindle ASIN to the real book files and save them as local copies as an offline backup, we must use other tools.
Here I recommend you try to use the Epubor Ultimate tool. It helps automatically import the downloaded Kindle books from the Kindle Win Mac app.
What's better, it will scan the local KindleSyncMetadataCache.xml and then write those metadata information into each book file. There is no need for us to find the downloaded kindle files from kindle location, and we won't have to export the xml file to other third-party mapping tools to organize them.
Launch the Epubor Ultimate and click on "Kindle" tab (at the left side of its main UI) to refresh the kindle library. From there we can find all of the downloaded completed books.
As a matter of fact, when we want to recognize the kindle book ASIN, we indeed want to save kindle books as drm-free format files so that we can organize Kindle easily. This tool helps! Drag books from the left area to the right area, select ePub as output format then start the conversion.
The output folder will pop up quickly and save our Kindle archives as drm free. What's better, these files carry ASIN inside their own binary header. I mean, file names already contain the ASIN embedded inside them.
Now drag the books from the output folder to calibre library for better management, the ASIN metadata has already been written to each converted book file!
Automate batch rename the File's Name to Title_ASIN_nodrm.epub
Though the converted well books by Epubor Ultimate contain the ASIN information, but if we want to rename the files' name so that we can directly recognize the ASIN from the files' name, we can rename them to Title_ASIN.epub, by following guide or steps below.
Since the ASIN isn't in the filenames yet, we'll need to pull it from each epub's internal metadata (the .opf file inside every epub, which is just a zip).
Open CMD window, type powershell and press Enter.
Paste this whole block and press Enter.
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.IO.Compression.FileSystem
Get-ChildItem -Path "C:\Users\***\Ultimate" -Filter *.epub | ForEach-Object {
$zip = [System.IO.Compression.ZipFile]::OpenRead($_.FullName)
$opf = $zip.Entries | Where-Object { $_.FullName -match '\.opf$' } | Select-Object -First 1
$reader = New-Object System.IO.StreamReader($opf.Open())
$content = $reader.ReadToEnd()
$reader.Close(); $zip.Dispose()
$title = if ($content -match ']*>([^<]+)') { $matches[1] } else { $_.BaseName }
$asin = $null
if ($content -match '(?is)<[^>]*identifier[^>]*opf:scheme="(?:MOBI-ASIN|ASIN|AMAZON)"[^>]*>([A-Z0-9])<') { $asin = $matches[1] }
elseif ($content -match '(?i)name="Amazon ?ASIN"[^>]*content="([A-Z0-9])"') { $asin = $matches[1] }
elseif ($content -match '\b(B0[A-Z0-9])\b') { $asin = $matches[1] }
if ($asin) {
$safeTitle = ($title -replace '[\\/:*?"<>|]', '').Trim()
$newName = "$_$_nodrm.epub"
Rename-Item -LiteralPath $_.FullName -NewName $newName
Write-Host "Renamed: $($_.Name) -> $newName"
} else {
Write-Host "No ASIN found: $($_.Name)" -ForegroundColor Yellow
}
} 
(Replace your PC's username; If you have changed the output location of Epubor Ultimate tool, replace -Path to yours, and then copy and paste the commaind into CMD powershell.)
This powershell command does work, and there is no need for us to rename the book name as ASIN one by one. Organize your local library now.
Angel Dan has covered software online marketing for more than 10 years. She joined Epubor since 2013, covering content writing, affiliate marketing, global brand expansion, video marketing, and business development.
