Ok, so heres what I've done
I re-exported the book from within indesign CS5 (it gave me a times new roman font not embedded message btw, but i don't think thats relevant) with the cover as a seperate document, so it now has a seperate .xhtml file called cover.xhtml . Now, if I just open and extract it in a text editor it shows up all bunched together. But when I open it up in Sigil, add the date, save and exit, then it shows up all nicely seperated onto different lines in dreamweaver in the .opf.
Here is an excerpt of the top of my .opf file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<package xmlns="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" unique-identifier="BookID" version="2.0">
<metadata xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns
pf="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf">
<dc:title>American Fab Dad</dc:title>
<dc:creator opf:role="aut">Paul Kerton</dc:creator>
<dc:description>a man's guide to fathering</dc:description>
<dc:date opf:event="creation">2010-09-03</dc:date>
<dc:language>en</dc:language>
<dc:identifier id="BookID" opf:scheme="UUID">5858a97c-3dac-4e13-a257-6e4bb10bb950</dc:identifier>
<meta name="cover" content="cover_fmt.jpeg"/>
<meta name="Sigil version" content="0.2.4"/>
</metadata>
<manifest>
<item id="ncx" href="toc.ncx" media-type="application/x-dtbncx+xml"/>
<item id="cover_fmt.jpeg" href="Images/cover_fmt.jpeg" media-type="image/jpeg"/>
<item id="template.css" href="Styles/template.css" media-type="text/css"/>
<item id="x01Introduction.xhtml" href="Text/01%20Introduction.xhtml" media-type="application/xhtml+xml"/>
As you can see the cover is was added as metadata to the file automatically. I haven't changed the filename so it should be working. Also, none of the .xhtml file names contain spaces so it isnt that either.
Opening and saving it in Springy works a charm but what am I missing here?