So I need some help because I have followed the instructions to the letter of the law and I am still struggling with creating these shelves.
After experimenting a little I can now see books on the Aura HD. What is interesting is that if I send the books as .epubs, they show up no problem including covers. If I covert them to KEPUBs, I get a collection with books that have no cover and show Unknown Author.
This DOES NOT produce:
Series Title, # and Title.
Found out the answer and here it is for anyone else with issues:
Actually, what I noticed is that the only thing you need to do (provided calibre is configured for automatic metadata management) is:
1. Send books in question to the device.
1. Eject device
2. Disconnect USB cable
3. Wait for Kobo to process new books
4. Reconnect Kobo and allow calibre to sync metadata.
5. Eject device and enjoy.
This will both fix the small square book cover and simultaneously sync the correct series information, in the library views you'll see the name of the series and the index in a format like this:
<Book title>
<Series> - <Index>
<Author>
It seems that with the copying of books along with their metadata to the kobo reader the series information is ignored and/or erased after the initial processing and sometimes the cover isn't shown correctly. 2nd metadata-only sync should fix this...