[uf-new] Is there a draft for a 'book' microformat?

Mon Apr 16 07:22:03 PDT 2007

Greetings,
Im new to the list here - but am very interested as to what is on the 
horizon for microformats. As I have been researching and using 
microformats, I can immediately see their benefit - and the need for 
more (in different areas). I have also been reading about structured 
blogging and the strides being made there.
My question is (as I haven't been able to find an answer yet) - is 
there a draft for a 'book' microformat? Not like 'boom' where it has 
information about the 'guts' of a book - but a book microformat for 
the entity itself. For instance, a book as a title, summary, price, 
author(s), publisher, etc. As the developer of www.barbourbooks.com, 
I have been looking to see something like this get developed for an 
array of reasons:
1. As a publisher, we often need to the ability to send out 
information on specific books. Much like the Amazon API lets me pull 
book information from their website, there are many others who would 
like the same for their site (without having to have an API or 
knowledge to build from the API). Authors want syndication, re- 
sellers want syndication, etc.
2. We have authors who would be very interested in syndicating their 
books to their website - but have no clue how to get the information 
with minimal effort or redundancy (IE: Always having to check out 
site for updates to books/prices/etc).
3. Users are constantly searching our site for specific books and 
information related to the books. The goal of microformats to re-use 
existing technologies ((x)HTML, CSS, etc), and to make it both user/ 
machine friendly makes this a perfect avenue. Just as with hReview or 
hCard (adr) - we want to make a decentralized service that helps 
people find exactly what they need. If there were a standard for 
books like this, searching on an ISBN would be much easier to find 
price comparisons and even reviews related to that book.
4. As a developer I have the need to export in different formats, not 
to mention the need to syndicate the information across multiple 
sites. I would like the 'subscribe' ability of the book listing to be 
something that could be used without much time on other developers part.
Overall, I think it would be beneficial and I am still searching for 
what is available (if any). I know that hReview will eventually 
(hope) move to more specifics with the 'type' attribute to include 
'book' - so this would extend well from that. Same is true for author 
information, that could be a vcard extended from the root element of 
a book - allowing re-use of already existing principles in place.
I hope someone can point me in the right direction.....
Peace,
Nate Klaiber
http://nateklaiber.com