calibre help with getting covers

[moose_tracker]

So I am trying to take books I got from B&N and download onto pc. I used Calibre to add info & covers to the books that didn't have them. Then I used send to device..  they go over but the covers do not show up when looking at the books on the device..

Now I went back to Calibre and chose, from the drop down for device "Show books from main memory of device".. From here the covers display.

What am I doing wrong?

[gstone]

Under Preferences\Output Options in Calibre;

1. Put a checkmark next to No default cover.
2. Put a checkmark next to Preserve aspect Ratio.
3. Press Apply at the top left corner in that window.
4. Remove the ebooks from your nook.
5. Disconnect the nook from your computer to reset the library.
6. Copy the ebooks to your nook again.

If the ebooks still do not display a cover from Epub to Epub in Calibre. If the ebooks use DRM Calibre will tell you so and cannot make the conversion. Repeat steps 4-6 for the affected ebooks that Calibre can make the conversion.

[moose_tracker]

Thanks,

I tried it, still no covers.. 

No DRM, they are all B&N purchases.. No Amazon.. From what I understand with B&N if it questioned my right to the data, they would ask me for my name & CC card to verify on the first book I opened after transfering.

[Ya_Ya]

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moose_tracker wrote:

No DRM, they are all B&N purchases.. No Amazon.. From what I understand with B&N if it questioned my right to the data, they would ask me for my name & CC card to verify on the first book I opened after transfering.

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But they probably are DRMed. 

I've never sideloaded a B&N ebook, so I don't know how they would appear on my NOOK, but I have quite a few sideloaded DRMed ebooks from other sources.  Some show covers, most don't.

[gstone]

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moose_tracker wrote:

Thanks,

I tried it, still no covers.. 

From what I understand with B&N if it questioned my right to the data, they would ask me for my name & CC card to verify on the first book I opened after transfering.

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Where are the ebooks stored on your nook? They should be in My Files\Books. If they are anywhere else (i.e. My Files\)  you may have selected the wrong default device. I ran into this when I switched from the N1E to the N2E. For the N2E it is best to select Nook Color as the default device.

The nook will not ask for account information if the nookbook was purchased on the same account the nook is registered too.  Not all nookbooks use DRM but the majority do.

To determine if an ebook uses DRM double click on it in Calibre. If Calibre balks then it uses DRM.

If the ebooks do not have DRM then there is no reason not to perform the conversion from Epub to Epub. This will create a new Epub file that will display covers on the nook.

[moose_tracker]

Thanks,

You are right they are DRM.. So even though it is your book and you have a right to it, if they are sideloaded Calibre will not put the cover back on them?? That  is sad, as I would like to download all my books, and sideload them rather then trust the B&N Cloud backup..

Calibre only gave 3 options for B&N Nooks.. Nook tablet, Nook Color & Nook & Nook Simple Reader.. Since the NST is not an NT or NC, I just guessed it to be option #3..

[Ya_Ya]

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moose_tracker wrote:

You are right they are DRM.. So even though it is your book and you have a right to it, if they are sideloaded Calibre will not put the cover back on them?? That  is sad, as I would like to download all my books, and sideload them rather then trust the B&N Cloud backup..

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Mine are all synced wirelessly to my NOOK, but I use NOOK for PC to download them all.  They're actually all on both my personal and work computer, actually.

Then I've imported all of my books into Calibre, so that's a second backup and I know some have saved a copy of their backup to a USB drive.

Sideloading does lose covers most of the time, but that doesn't mean you can't also have them saved via NOOK for PC and/or Callibre.  

Have you tried sideloading from the NOOK for PC application?  Do they show covers if they come in that way?  (Grasping at straws; perhaps the PC app communicates with the device somehow?)

[gstone]

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moose_tracker wrote:

So even though it is your book and you have a right to it, if they are sideloaded Calibre will not put the cover back on them??

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Wrong. Calibre did not remove the cover art.

Of the 380 or so nookbooks I have only a few did not initially display cover art when sideloaded using Calibre. Those generally included cover images that were too large for the nook to display. One was 1000x1600. After checking "No default cover" in Calibre preferences, the program resized the image to something the nook could display. Another had a corrupt image file which was also corrected in Calibre by downloading a new image.

When you download directly from B&N, the nook does not rely on cover images supplied with the nookbook but appears to also download a seperate thumbnail to display the cover.       

[gstone]

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Ya_Ya wrote:

Have you tried sideloading from the NOOK for PC application?  Do they show covers if they come in that way?  (Grasping at straws; perhaps the PC app communicates with the device somehow?)

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My experience with Nook for PC and ADE is that they put the ebooks in the Digital Editions folder which the nook doesn't even check for the All and Books view filter. I only see those books in the My Files view which does not display cover art.

[moose_tracker]

Well what I have are 5 books (I am a new nook person).. And have not accumulated much as I am still in "test" phase of if I am going to keep it..

1) A Grand Murder  - .99 cents   -

        Leave active in the cloud - Cover

        Straight sideload - No cover

        from Calibre..  (even after finding a cover for it) No cover

        from Nook PC .. (true goes into my files, but still shows up in the library..) No cover

2) Murder Trims the Tree  - .99 cents   -

        Leave active in the cloud - Cover

        Straight sideload - No cover

        from Calibre.. (even after finding a cover for it) No cover

        from Nook PC .. (true goes into my files, but still shows up in the library..) No cover

3) The Ring  - Free Friday book

        Leave active in the cloud - Cover

        Straight sideload - No cover

        from Calibre.. (even after finding a cover for it) No cover

        from Nook PC .. (true goes into my files, but still shows up in the library..) No cover

4) Eye of the Witch  - .00 cents   -

        Leave active in the cloud - Cover

        Straight sideload - Cover

        from Calibre.. Cover

        from Nook PC ..  Cover

5) The Death Clock  - .00 cents   -

        Leave active in the cloud - Cover

        Straight sideload - Cover

        from Calibre.. Cover

        from Nook PC ..  Cover

So Basically anything Free (and no DRM) brought over it's own cover.. Anything with a DRM.. No cover

[MacMcK1957]

FWIW you can google plug-ins for Calibre that can be used to unDRM books.  It may be that if you unDRM, you can then load to the Nook with the covers.  I haven't tried it myself because I only sideload non-DRM.

[moose_tracker]

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MacMcK1957 wrote:

FWIW you can google plug-ins for Calibre that can be used to unDRM books.  It may be that if you unDRM, you can then load to the Nook with the covers.  I haven't tried it myself because I only sideload non-DRM.

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Thanks, but I don't think I want to go into "pirating" legalities just to get a cover on it , .. Also I have not looked at peeling off DRM for epubs, but I did look at it for Amazon (Thought I was just looking at how to convert).. there were like 5 programs you needed to pull it through to squeeze the DRM off of it.. It was a definite.. “No, Thank you!!”..

[gstone]

You listed the Free Friday book The Ring but I think you meant The Inside Ring.

1. Right click on this image and select copy.
2. Open Paint and select Edit\Paste.
3. In Paint Select Image\Crop
4. Save the file to your desktop as a JPG.
5. Rename the file to match the name of the ebook filename on your Nook. Assuming the ebook filename is The Inside Ring - Mike Lawson.epub; the image filename should be The Inside Ring - Mike Lawson.jpg
6. Copy that file to the folder .docThumbs on the same nook drive the ebook is on.

You may have to restart the nook to get the image to display. If this works then you need to contact Calibre about the problem and this workaround. They had to make a similar adjustment for the original nook last year.

[moose_tracker]

Thanks.. I tried, but one piece I couldn't do which may have caused it not to work..

• Open Paint and select Edit\Paste.
• In Paint Select Image\Crop
• Save the file to your desktop as a JPG.

I didn't have Paint.. I do have PaintShop pro..  It has a crop tool, but will want to know what you are cropping (in/out)..  So I admit to skipping this and just trying to copy your .jpg and rename it(I did a copy paste of the file name to make sure all was entered correctly), then loaded it into the .docthumbs.. (You are right, the two with covers do have covers are in this area, the ones without covers do not have a matching jpg).. then I turned the device off and on..

Is there something you can describe to me as to what I want to do to get this to crop?? I do think you are onto something, but maybe I need to resize it or something?

[gstone]

Paint is part of Windows and why I suggested that program. If you are using an Apple I don't know what the corollary is for that operating system or how that application behaves.

I haven't used PSP for years now and not since Corel purchased the program but I'll try.

In PSP there is a tool called Magic Paint Brush that is used for selecting similar colors. The default should be for contiguous selection rather than selecting all instances of the same color.

Use that tool in the white area of the image. This should put a dotted line around cover or highlight everything except the cover image.

From the menu Edit (or there may be one called Selection) select Invert Selection.

Use the crop command on the currently selected area then save the file in jpg format.

By croping the image you are resizing it to something the nook can use.

The image I posted is the one used on the B&N website for this book. I didn't download that particular Free Friday book and don't know what is actually in the epub file itself. If the book were still free I would download it and take a look.

[moose_tracker]

Thanks.. I now know what you were trying to have me crop   that helps.. I do have windows.. Just don't use the MS default, so forgot it's name.. I thought "paint" might be the Adobe $600 to $1000 image software..

I will now have to wait until I get home from work, but I don't think there was any white boarder to crop, I think I would have guessed at that had I seen it..

[gstone]

I just checked the image I posted and it doesn't appear to need croping. If you had used Paint it would have needed to be croped. I only looked at it in Paint rather than the image editor I normally use because I didn't know what programs you have. If you use Windows you have Paint.

JPG should work. If it doesn't try saving it in PGN format.

[moose_tracker]

Sorry took me longer to get to this. I did try the crop. No good. I found somewhere it was mentioned to make the diminsion 590 * 750 pixels.. tried that..  No go.. Stubbornly not going to give me my covers..

Well thanks for trying to help me. But, I give up! 

[Byteguy]

The Nook will NOT read covers that aren't in the the epub file.  Not at all.  Trust me, I've tried.

The epub is a encrypted zip file containing all the images a lot of XML/HTML and another copy of the cover.  The XML/HTML points to that copy of the cover like this:

<body>

<div>

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" version="1.1" width="100%" height="100%" viewBox="0 0 485 706" preserveAspectRatio="none">

<image width="485" height="706" xlink:href="cover.jpeg"/>

</svg>

</div>

</body>

The Nook only likes the tag one way.  

This is perfectly valid XML:

  <image xlink:href="cover.jpeg" width="485" height="706"/>

but, it won't work with the Nook and you'll get a generic cover.

Reconverting with Calibre changes it back to the standard format that the Nook likes. But, you can only do that on unlocked files.

Sorry, trying to save a new picture in the same directory will never have any impact.  The only way to fix a cover is to change the information in the epub file.

[moose_tracker]

That makes sense, but what doesnt make sense is why a book with a DRM can not carry the book cover and XML code to work with the cover in it's epub file..

So since it's encrypted, any way to open it with out corrupting it?  How did you get to peak inside?