Nook Color: Tips For Displaying Sideloaded Book Covers On NOOKcolor - Page 12

emt · 05-01-2011, 08:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I agree! I thought that they would not allow it - no matter how much people griped - simply to control an incentive to purchase their B&N content. I am very happy with the added home screen feature since the majority of my books are sideloaded.

And, for an extra treat, your downloaded apps will also be shown on the home page - neat!!!

jhempel24 · 05-16-2011, 11:54 PM

Okay, so here's my problem with sideloaded content, and I don't quite know what's going on here.

I have a rooted (via manual nooter) 2.1 Nook Color. I can put books on my NC via Calibre and they'll show up in the library. If I download an ePub from the web, and place them in the /sdcard/my files/books folder, they DO NOT show up.

However, if I download the books through Aldiko, and then move the EPUB FILE, not the folder, it will show up in the library although with a different cover, I'm guessing I need to do an epub to epub conversion to get that, it might just be displaying the first page.

What does Calibre do that moving the file will not? And why would it show up after Aldiko downloads it and moves it. I have a feeling there is something missing from just the ePub and I can't figure it out.

Frannieann · 06-21-2011, 10:35 AM

OK, so after scouring all the various forums and spending weeks figuring this out, I thought I would post this for those of you that are technically challenged like me. So, without further ado, here are step by step instructions on how to make those stubborn sideloaded book covers show on your Nook Color. I know this process seems long (it's really not) and it REALLY works.

1. Hopefully, you have already downloaded and installed Calibre in order to convert and/or add books to your Nook Color per my previous post. If not, then go to http://calibre-ebook.com/download and download and install the program. If you need to know how to add books to your Nook Color, then there a separate post for that.
2. Go to http://code.google.com/p/sigil/ and download SIGIL. This is a program that Google developed that allows you to go in and fix the Metadata on a file.
3. Leave both programs open at the same time.
4. Go into Calibre and find the book that does not have a cover. Click on it one to highlight it.
5. At the top of the screen, click on the CONVERT BOOKS button and then CONVERT INDIVIDUALLY.
6. In the upper left hand corner, the INPUT FORMAT should already read EPub as you should have already imported and converted all your files to EPub as needed.
7. In the upper right hand corner, set the OUTPUT FORMAT to EPub as well. I know this seems somewhat redundant, but trust me, this process works.
8. Even if your book cover shows here, if it is not pulling through to the Nook, you need to complete this process. Leave the Calibre screen as it is, and go to the web and find your book cover.
9. You can do this several ways. You can go back to the site you obtained the book from and see if it is there. You can also check the publishers website or a booksellers website (a couple of good websites for this are allromanceebooks.com or fictionwise.com). Once you have found your cover, you want it as big as possible. If you go to the publishers or a booksellers website, typically, if you click on the image, it will pop up a little bigger.
10. Right click on the image and then on SAVE IMAGE AS. Find your desktop and then click on ADD NEW FOLDER. Call the folder what you want (I called mine Calibre Bookcovers). Wherever you put it or whatever you call it, the point is to be able to find it quickly and easily again and again.
11. The image should download as a JPG. This is very important. The Nook DOES NOT recognize any type of image except for JPG, so do not download GIF files or any other sort of pictures, they will be useless for this purpose.
12. At the bottom of the screen, click on the FILE NAME line and rename your picture. This is important as once you are in Calibre, the picture themselves will not show, only the name with a little generic picture next to it.
13. Go back into your screen in Calibre and in the middle of the screen, click CHANGE COVER IMAGE.
14. Go onto your hard drive and find your book cover. Click on it and then click OPEN.
15. Click the OK button at the bottom of the pop up. Calibre will now do a conversion.
16. Once that is done, go into Sigil. Click the OPEN button.
17. Go onto your computer hard drive and find your Calibre Library.
18. Go into the library folder and find the author and then the book you want. Finally, double click on the EPub file, NOT THE METADATA FILE.
19. On the left side of the screen, you should see BOOK BROWSER. On this list, there should be a folder called IMAGES. If it is not already open, then click the little arrow next to it to open it.
20. There may be several little blue image boxes in this folder. At the top or close to it, you should see a .JPEG file (not .JPG, you want the .JPEG file). If there are several .JPEG files, you need to double click on each one. When your book cover comes up, that is the image you want. If there is not a .JPEG picture here, then you need to repeat the conversion and addition steps in Calibre and then come back to Sigil.
21. If the book image is not called cover.jpeg, then right click on it and rename it cover.jpeg.
22. Click the SAVE button. If the image is already named cover.jpeg, click on the SAVE button anyway. This is very important, you CANNOT skip this step. Even if the name is already correct, you must click on the SAVE button in order for this process to work.
23. Go back to Calibre. Open the book again and repeat the exact same steps to convert the book from EPub to Epub and change the cover image. Again, even if the book cover shows here, click on the CHANGE BOOK COVER and reselect the book cover you downloaded.
24. Click the OK button so Calibre will do the conversion process again.
25. Now you can save the book to your Nook Color. Allow the Nook time to process the file and when you back into your library on the Nook, the cover should be there.

Frannieann · 06-21-2011, 03:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jhempel24

Okay, so here's my problem with sideloaded content, and I don't quite know what's going on here.

I have a rooted (via manual nooter) 2.1 Nook Color. I can put books on my NC via Calibre and they'll show up in the library. If I download an ePub from the web, and place them in the /sdcard/my files/books folder, they DO NOT show up.

However, if I download the books through Aldiko, and then move the EPUB FILE, not the folder, it will show up in the library although with a different cover, I'm guessing I need to do an epub to epub conversion to get that, it might just be displaying the first page.

What does Calibre do that moving the file will not? And why would it show up after Aldiko downloads it and moves it. I have a feeling there is something missing from just the ePub and I can't figure it out.

When Calibre does the conversion to EPub, it doesn't just create an EPub file, it also creates a .JPEG file (which hold the picture) and a .OPF file (which holds the metadata). When you use Calibre to transfer the file to the Nook Color, it transfers all three files, not just the EPub file. Maybe that is what Aldiko is doing as well. When you a simple download and save the file directly to your Nook, you are only getting the EPub file. The Nook probably needs all three files to make it work.

jhempel24 · 06-22-2011, 02:18 PM

I actually got it to work a while ago...I just move the file that I download with ASTRO filemanager, it creates a thumbnail when the folder is opened, and I move it and viola! It's there!

Thanks for the PM about this though, I do appreciate the looking out! I just happened to forget about this thread!

WhiteGinger · 07-11-2011, 02:40 PM

My NC is not rooted. Two-thirds of my books are NOOKbooks from BN; the other third are DRMed epubs sideloaded from other sources, mostly Kobo. I have not been able to get cover art for any of the DRMed sideloads, no matter what steps I try.

Because they are DRMed epubs, will I never be able to get cover art for them to appear? Has anyone else ever gotten cover art to show for a sideloaded DRMed epub? How? Have I simply not followed the steps correctly?

Bookworm_Girl · 07-11-2011, 03:05 PM

Good question. I have never gotten covers to show on DRM'ed sideloaded books either. Most of mine are also from Kobo and Sony. Covers only show on non-DRM'ed books for me.

goldberry · 07-11-2011, 03:49 PM

If you did an epub to epub conversion on Cailbre would it possibly create the cover?

negris123 · 07-15-2011, 10:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by goldberry

If you did an epub to epub conversion on Cailbre would it possibly create the cover?

Since they have DRM, you cannot open them on Calibre

negris123 · 07-15-2011, 10:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WhiteGinger

My NC is not rooted. Two-thirds of my books are NOOKbooks from BN; the other third are DRMed epubs sideloaded from other sources, mostly Kobo. I have not been able to get cover art for any of the DRMed sideloads, no matter what steps I try.

Because they are DRMed epubs, will I never be able to get cover art for them to appear? Has anyone else ever gotten cover art to show for a sideloaded DRMed epub? How? Have I simply not followed the steps correctly?

I have the same problem. Can't seem to find a way around it

Rick1971 · 07-26-2011, 02:03 AM

I gotta say I have never side loaded a book I just get them from either downloading them from B&N or I upload them from Calibre

Frannieann · 07-28-2011, 06:53 PM

You have to strip the DRM first, then import the books into Calibre. If you Google "remove DRM from epubs" you should get some posts with good instructions on how to do this. I know you need specific software to do this, but I can't really recommend any as I just don't buy books with DRM for this specific reason.

prophet5590 · 08-30-2011, 09:55 PM

I tried searching some, but, I admit I gave up kind of early, so maybe this has been noted before.

I recently got my daughter a nook color, and, I did the calibre epub->epub conversion, and all covers were working.

She just lost all of her covers, this evening. I went looking through the file structure, and, I was able to restore all of her covers just by making sure there was a matching file in the ".docthumbs" directory with the same name, with the extension embedded, and then .jpeg

So, for a book called "Cory Doctorow - Little Brother.epub", the file in ".docthumbs" needs to be called "Cory Doctorow - Little Brotherepub.jpeg" - no space between the book name and 'epub'.

All of the covers were already there, but none had the 'epub' suffix, and a couple of the names didn't match. I bulk-renamed to add 'epub' to all, and I fixed up the couple that were off, and when I disconnected the USB, all of the covers were back, without rebooting or anything.

I hope that helps someone out there. I didn't look forward to re-converting epub->epub a second time.

[she just told me she is responsible for the renaming. She thought those files were the names of the books, so she went and changed them all herself

and then complained to me about the missing covers. But now I've learned something, so, that was good]

terrygt351 · 10-01-2011, 12:49 AM

It does show them; which brings me here to this website from calibre because of page formatting.

I was looking at one of my side loaded books and the cover was cut-off so I was deleting it and putting it through its Calibre paces (debugging it because of the page formatting and the cover was somewhat cut-off.)

I got my book cover to display normally but the formatting is still screwed up:
the name of the book and the author's name is printing next to the text of each paragraph.

Short answer: Yes nook will display your book cover but you may have to do some work (I should know I have over a thousand non barnes&norble ebooks.)

Care · 10-03-2011, 01:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by terrygt351

It does show them; which brings me here to this website from calibre because of page formatting.

I was looking at one of my side loaded books and the cover was cut-off so I was deleting it and putting it through its Calibre paces (debugging it because of the page formatting and the cover was somewhat cut-off.)

I got my book cover to display normally but the formatting is still screwed up:
the name of the book and the author's name is printing next to the text of each paragraph.

Short answer: Yes nook will display your book cover but you may have to do some work (I should know I have over a thousand non barnes&norble ebooks.)

Are your sideloaded books stripped?

I like to open my books (B&N and others) in calibre and change the metadata. I prefer the series name and number first, then book title. But when I do this I loose the cover. I was just wondering if there is anything besides stripping the drm I can do to get them to show up on both my Nooks (it works for my original rooted Nook, but not my NC or STR).

06-21-2011, 10:35 AM	#168
Frannieann Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2011 Device: Nook Color	How to add book covers that are not showing on Nook Color OK, so after scouring all the various forums and spending weeks figuring this out, I thought I would post this for those of you that are technically challenged like me. So, without further ado, here are step by step instructions on how to make those stubborn sideloaded book covers show on your Nook Color. I know this process seems long (it's really not) and it REALLY works. 1. Hopefully, you have already downloaded and installed Calibre in order to convert and/or add books to your Nook Color per my previous post. If not, then go to http://calibre-ebook.com/download and download and install the program. If you need to know how to add books to your Nook Color, then there a separate post for that. 2. Go to http://code.google.com/p/sigil/ and download SIGIL. This is a program that Google developed that allows you to go in and fix the Metadata on a file. 3. Leave both programs open at the same time. 4. Go into Calibre and find the book that does not have a cover. Click on it one to highlight it. 5. At the top of the screen, click on the CONVERT BOOKS button and then CONVERT INDIVIDUALLY. 6. In the upper left hand corner, the INPUT FORMAT should already read EPub as you should have already imported and converted all your files to EPub as needed. 7. In the upper right hand corner, set the OUTPUT FORMAT to EPub as well. I know this seems somewhat redundant, but trust me, this process works. 8. Even if your book cover shows here, if it is not pulling through to the Nook, you need to complete this process. Leave the Calibre screen as it is, and go to the web and find your book cover. 9. You can do this several ways. You can go back to the site you obtained the book from and see if it is there. You can also check the publishers website or a booksellers website (a couple of good websites for this are allromanceebooks.com or fictionwise.com). Once you have found your cover, you want it as big as possible. If you go to the publishers or a booksellers website, typically, if you click on the image, it will pop up a little bigger. 10. Right click on the image and then on SAVE IMAGE AS. Find your desktop and then click on ADD NEW FOLDER. Call the folder what you want (I called mine Calibre Bookcovers). Wherever you put it or whatever you call it, the point is to be able to find it quickly and easily again and again. 11. The image should download as a JPG. This is very important. The Nook DOES NOT recognize any type of image except for JPG, so do not download GIF files or any other sort of pictures, they will be useless for this purpose. 12. At the bottom of the screen, click on the FILE NAME line and rename your picture. This is important as once you are in Calibre, the picture themselves will not show, only the name with a little generic picture next to it. 13. Go back into your screen in Calibre and in the middle of the screen, click CHANGE COVER IMAGE. 14. Go onto your hard drive and find your book cover. Click on it and then click OPEN. 15. Click the OK button at the bottom of the pop up. Calibre will now do a conversion. 16. Once that is done, go into Sigil. Click the OPEN button. 17. Go onto your computer hard drive and find your Calibre Library. 18. Go into the library folder and find the author and then the book you want. Finally, double click on the EPub file, NOT THE METADATA FILE. 19. On the left side of the screen, you should see BOOK BROWSER. On this list, there should be a folder called IMAGES. If it is not already open, then click the little arrow next to it to open it. 20. There may be several little blue image boxes in this folder. At the top or close to it, you should see a .JPEG file (not .JPG, you want the .JPEG file). If there are several .JPEG files, you need to double click on each one. When your book cover comes up, that is the image you want. If there is not a .JPEG picture here, then you need to repeat the conversion and addition steps in Calibre and then come back to Sigil. 21. If the book image is not called cover.jpeg, then right click on it and rename it cover.jpeg. 22. Click the SAVE button. If the image is already named cover.jpeg, click on the SAVE button anyway. This is very important, you CANNOT skip this step. Even if the name is already correct, you must click on the SAVE button in order for this process to work. 23. Go back to Calibre. Open the book again and repeat the exact same steps to convert the book from EPub to Epub and change the cover image. Again, even if the book cover shows here, click on the CHANGE BOOK COVER and reselect the book cover you downloaded. 24. Click the OK button so Calibre will do the conversion process again. 25. Now you can save the book to your Nook Color. Allow the Nook time to process the file and when you back into your library on the Nook, the cover should be there.

08-30-2011, 09:55 PM	#178
prophet5590 Junior Member Posts: 8 Karma: 587860 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Colorado Device: Samsung Charge, Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9	I tried searching some, but, I admit I gave up kind of early, so maybe this has been noted before. I recently got my daughter a nook color, and, I did the calibre epub->epub conversion, and all covers were working. She just lost all of her covers, this evening. I went looking through the file structure, and, I was able to restore all of her covers just by making sure there was a matching file in the ".docthumbs" directory with the same name, with the extension embedded, and then .jpeg So, for a book called "Cory Doctorow - Little Brother.epub", the file in ".docthumbs" needs to be called "Cory Doctorow - Little Brotherepub.jpeg" - no space between the book name and 'epub'. All of the covers were already there, but none had the 'epub' suffix, and a couple of the names didn't match. I bulk-renamed to add 'epub' to all, and I fixed up the couple that were off, and when I disconnected the USB, all of the covers were back, without rebooting or anything. I hope that helps someone out there. I didn't look forward to re-converting epub->epub a second time. [she just told me she is responsible for the renaming. She thought those files were the names of the books, so she went and changed them all herself and then complained to me about the missing covers. But now I've learned something, so, that was good] Last edited by prophet5590; 08-30-2011 at 10:03 PM.

10-01-2011, 12:49 AM	#179
terrygt351 Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2011 Device: nook color	It does show sideloaded book covers It does show them; which brings me here to this website from calibre because of page formatting. I was looking at one of my side loaded books and the cover was cut-off so I was deleting it and putting it through its Calibre paces (debugging it because of the page formatting and the cover was somewhat cut-off.) I got my book cover to display normally but the formatting is still screwed up: the name of the book and the author's name is printing next to the text of each paragraph. Short answer: Yes nook will display your book cover but you may have to do some work (I should know I have over a thousand non barnes&norble ebooks.)

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05-16-2011, 11:54 PM	#167
jhempel24 Wizard Posts: 2,157 Karma: 7068605 Join Date: Dec 2007 Device: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite, B&N Nook Colro	Okay, so here's my problem with sideloaded content, and I don't quite know what's going on here. I have a rooted (via manual nooter) 2.1 Nook Color. I can put books on my NC via Calibre and they'll show up in the library. If I download an ePub from the web, and place them in the /sdcard/my files/books folder, they DO NOT show up. However, if I download the books through Aldiko, and then move the EPUB FILE, not the folder, it will show up in the library although with a different cover, I'm guessing I need to do an epub to epub conversion to get that, it might just be displaying the first page. What does Calibre do that moving the file will not? And why would it show up after Aldiko downloads it and moves it. I have a feeling there is something missing from just the ePub and I can't figure it out.

06-22-2011, 02:18 PM	#170
jhempel24 Wizard Posts: 2,157 Karma: 7068605 Join Date: Dec 2007 Device: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite, B&N Nook Colro	I actually got it to work a while ago...I just move the file that I download with ASTRO filemanager, it creates a thumbnail when the folder is opened, and I move it and viola! It's there! Thanks for the PM about this though, I do appreciate the looking out! I just happened to forget about this thread!

07-11-2011, 02:40 PM	#171
WhiteGinger Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Kentucky Device: NOOK, NOOKColor	My NC is not rooted. Two-thirds of my books are NOOKbooks from BN; the other third are DRMed epubs sideloaded from other sources, mostly Kobo. I have not been able to get cover art for any of the DRMed sideloads, no matter what steps I try. Because they are DRMed epubs, will I never be able to get cover art for them to appear? Has anyone else ever gotten cover art to show for a sideloaded DRMed epub? How? Have I simply not followed the steps correctly?

07-11-2011, 03:05 PM	#172
Bookworm_Girl E-reader Enthusiast Posts: 4,871 Karma: 36507503 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Southwest, USA Device: Kindle Oasis 3; Kobo Aura One; iPad Mini 5	Good question. I have never gotten covers to show on DRM'ed sideloaded books either. Most of mine are also from Kobo and Sony. Covers only show on non-DRM'ed books for me.

07-11-2011, 03:49 PM	#173
goldberry Groupie Posts: 199 Karma: 1105816 Join Date: Sep 2010 Device: Nexus 7, Kindles (wife's), now obsolete Nook and Sony	If you did an epub to epub conversion on Cailbre would it possibly create the cover?

07-26-2011, 02:03 AM	#176
Rick1971 cool a zombie! Posts: 75 Karma: 1016994 Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: San Antonio, Tx, USA Device: Sony PRS-350, Lenovo a2107a-f, Le PanII, Motorola Xoom FE	I gotta say I have never side loaded a book I just get them from either downloading them from B&N or I upload them from Calibre

07-28-2011, 06:53 PM	#177
Frannieann Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2011 Device: Nook Color	You have to strip the DRM first, then import the books into Calibre. If you Google "remove DRM from epubs" you should get some posts with good instructions on how to do this. I know you need specific software to do this, but I can't really recommend any as I just don't buy books with DRM for this specific reason.