covers won't show in sony prs350

[S3ZAi]

I have worked all evening and night to find nice covers for many ebooks and created a nice collection. When sent to my sony prs350 (it's the new mini pocket size version) the covers didn't show. They show for a second, then the device exchanges them and shows the original cover, which is most of the time the first page of the book. This really sucks. What could cause the miscommunication? How could I link books wiht covers after all or should I delete everything and start all over again. [sigh]. First I go to bed tho as it is already almost 08.00 in the morning over here and I promised my parents I would visit them tomorrowafternoon. Anyway, any suggestions? Please explain everyting in plain language as I am totally new to this.

[edit]Oh, by the way, I just discovered another failure: when I select sory by name, the device sorts the books by the first name of the authors, while I had expected it to sort them by surname. So a book by Alberto Toscano now is the second book in my list, while it should be one of the last. Calibre gave me the impression that it would communicate the sort order to the device, but somehow this didn't work apparently, any way to set this straight?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by S3ZAi

How could I link books wiht covers after all or should I delete everything and start all over again.

Doing a epub to epub conversion will insert your new covers in the books.

Originally Posted by S3ZAi

Oh, by the way, I just discovered another failure: when I select sory by name, the device sorts the books by the first name of the authors, while I had expected it to sort them by surname.

If you go to Preferences - Plugins - Device interface plugin - Sony and check the Use author sort for author (see attached) this might set the order correctly.

For either of the two above you might have to take a minute or two and delete the books and resend them to your reader.

Originally Posted by S3ZAi

Calibre gave me the impression that it would communicate the sort order to the device, but somehow this didn't work apparently, any way to set this straight?

Calibre will only do what you tell it to do. There is an additional way to control sorting of your collections via a tweak. Go to preferences - tweaks and read the description of the Sony sort tweak.

Spoiler:

# Specify how sony collections are sorted. This tweak is only applicable if
# metadata management is set to automatic. You can indicate which metadata is to
# be used to sort on a collection-by-collection basis. The format of the tweak
# is a list of metadata fields from which collections are made, followed by the
# name of the metadata field containing the sort value.
# Example: The following indicates that collections built from pubdate and tags
# are to be sorted by the value in the custom column '#mydate', that collections
# built from 'series' are to be sorted by 'series_index', and that all other
# collections are to be sorted by title. If a collection metadata field is not
# named, then if it is a series- based collection it is sorted by series order,
# otherwise it is sorted by title order.
# [(['pubdate', 'tags'],'#mydate'), (['series'],'series_index'), (['*'], 'title')]
# Note that the bracketing and parentheses are required. The syntax is
# [ ( [list of fields], sort field ) , ( [ list of fields ] , sort field ) ]
# Default: empty (no rules), so no collection attributes are named.
sony_collection_sorting_rules = []

Copying this tweak to the current tweaks section with your preferences will control how the collections on your sony are sorted.

Good Luck.

[S3ZAi]

Ok, thanks for the replyl. Already applied the second one, didn't test it yet tho, but it sounds really logical, but with the first point:

Quote:
Originally Posted by S3ZAi
How could I link books wiht covers after all or should I delete everything and start all over again.

Doing a epub to epub conversion will insert your new covers in the books.

Can I assume that this would also work for pdf files in a way? Convert pdf to pdf or pdf to epub or something? Or should I try with adobe acrobat?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by S3ZAi

Can I assume that this would also work for pdf files in a way? Convert pdf to pdf or pdf to epub or something? Or should I try with adobe acrobat?

Since I only own a 505 and don't have a 350 I don't know if you're referring to thumbnails images of the books or the actual cover inside the book. I assumed actual cover. I stay away from pdf files and only send epubs to my reader so I don't know how well calibre will handle a pdf to pdf scenario. Keep in mind that any conversion to the same format overwrites the original, so keep a master in a safe place in case things don't go as planned.

[S3ZAi]

No, I did mean the thumbnails, but I thought for the thumbnails the e-reader used the cover pictures that you can put into calibre.

Anyway, after experimenting a bit I discovered that I can batch convert all pdf files to epub, much better and smaller and calibre implements the cover supplied automatically.

Thank you so much dwanthny, with your help I solved both issues.