`gptel` supports perplexity, among many others.
Is there really not some API out there that knows about all published books? Paid, if necessary?
I think there are, the author says so, but according to author they don’t make clear if a book is a new edition, translation, etc of a previously published book. So getting a list of published works wherein “A Book Title” is a single result and “A Book Title 2nd edition”, “A Book Title 3rd edition”, etc are not listed in addition to “A Book Title”, doesn’t exist. I would think it’s possible to write a layer of logic that takes a list of published books and removes extra editions, translations, etc to get what the author wants but perhaps the problem is more difficult than I realize
When is a book the same as another?
The author believes that LLMs are toys and sets out to show that you can get some useless results if that's what you're looking for. Tiresome polemical exercise, but it does have the virtue of brevity.