[sartori]

While preparing some of my books for the upcoming iPad I noticed that when importing them into iTunes the metadata and cover image were not coming up correctly.

This data can be added directly in iTunes using the Get Info option but it would be nice if this information was added by people creating books.

After a bit of investigating I think I have the solution.

For the cover image :

Place a jpg or png image in the root folder of your epub before compressing. The image must be named iTunesArtwork with no file extension.

For the meta data :

Create a file called iTunesMetadata.plist in the root folder of your epub. This file contains a lot of information but below seems to be the minimum to get what is needed for sorting and grouping books in iTunes :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>artistName</key>
	<string>***AUTHOR FIRST LAST***</string>
	<key>book-info</key>
	<dict>
	</dict>
	<key>comments</key>
	<string>***COMMENTS***</string>
	<key>genre</key>
	<string>***GENRE***</string>
	<key>itemName</key>
	<string>***BOOK TITLE***</string>
	<key>sort-artist</key>
	<string>***AUTHOR LAST, FIRST***</string>
	<key>sort-artist-status</key>
	<integer>1</integer>
	<key>sort-name</key>
	<string>***BOOK TITLE***</string>
	<key>sort-name-status</key>
	<integer>1</integer>
	<key>year</key>
	<integer>1923</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

Once you have added these two file, any epub dragged into iTunes will show all the correct metadata and cover image.

Would be really nice if Calibre or Sigil created these files when exporting an epub.

Sartori