Issues with downloads

[dmichele76@gmail.com]

Good afternoon;

I have upgraded to the full version of the app and been copying book files from my calibre account to the micro SD for my Kindle Fire 7.  For some reason, about 10% of the books no longer have covers(they had covers on the initial download, done months ago before I had to wipe my card and try again), some have the author's name changed and 3 are not the original files that I downloaded.  All books had covers in Calibre and the meta data was updated for all books and authors were correct.

Any thoughts on why the covers are no longer visible and why the authors were changed?  How do I make it correct?

Michele

[kweckwor]

Hi Michele,

Depending on how you copy books from calibre to your device, any metadata (including covers) that have been updated in your calibre library may not be incorporated into the book files themselves. In calibre, updates to metadata and covers are maintained outside of the actual book files. If you are just copying books files from the file system to your device, then they may not have all details that you see in the calibre interface.

Calibre does not update book files with updates to metadata/covers by default. The "Polish Books" action can update book files to ensure updates to metadata and covers be written to the book files, so if you copy those files to a reading device after "polishing", they should contain up-to-date book information.

Alternatively, if you use the "Send to device" or "Save to disk" functions of calibre, that should also create book files that are updated with current book information. So that is another way to get book files on your reading device with up-to-date book information included in the book files.

Perhaps if you describe the approach you use to copy book files to your device, I can tell if my comments above are relevant or not.

Karl

[dmichele76@gmail.com]

Hi;

I am not able to connect my kindle directly to my computer (they don't recognize each other) so I remove the microSD card from the kindle and use a card reader to communicate with my computer.  I copy the whole book folder from the Calibre Library folder over tot he SD card, not just the epub file itself.  The whole book folder includes the following documents: cover(jpg file), metadata(OPF doc) & the book itself(epub file). After returning the microSD, I click on the barcode and update the book files.  Only on some of the books now missing a cover has the metadata been updated (the covers weren't on any of them) and they all date from 2018 & 2019.  For some as well the metadata that is in the Calibre file doesn't match what is now showing in the elibrary manager despite the fact that they contain exactly the same files as I am copying them wholesale at the author level to the sd card.

Michele

[kweckwor]

Hi Michele,

From your first post, you mention that you are using the full version of eLibrary Manager. The full version will load book metadata and cover from external files, but it expects the file naming convention that you get when you use the Calibre's "Save to disc" feature (or one of the variations of that). That action will produce three files by default (I think), which consist of the book file (.epub), the cover (.jpg) and the OPF (.opf). The file name for each is the same as the book file name with the specific file extension. So for example, in my library, I have a book called The Loch by Steve Alten. The 3 files I get when I use "Save to disc" are "Lock, The - Steve Alten.epub", "Lock, The - Steve Alten.jpg" and "Lock, The - Steve Alten.opf".

In the directory where Calibre manages its library however, it uses a different file naming convention. For each book, there is the .epub book file and 2 additional files called "cover.jpg" and "metadata.opf". If you simply copy those files to your SD card, then my tool won't load the cover and metadata information since the additional files don't have the same file name as the book file itself. And the book file won't necessarily contain the latest metadata if you've updated anything in Calibre after you loaded the book.

So what you should do is to use the "Save to disc" function to have Calibre copy book files from its library to your SD card. When you use that feature, I believe Calibre will actually inject the latest metadata and cover into the book file as well, so you shouldn't actually need the external files. So that approach should work for both Basic and Full. If "Save to disc" does not produce the 3 files as I mention above, or if it does not update the ePub file with the cover and metadata info that you see in Calibre, then you may need to check your Calibre settings for "Saving books to disc" to ensure that the right options are enabled.

Let me know if you have any issues getting that to work.

Karl