Title sort in iTunes

[kcc]

I'm new to Calibre and have a couple of questions. I use iBooks as my reader on an iPhone 6 and run Lion (I have no desire to upgrade to Mavericks)

1. Is there a way to simply add a cover without reconverting (ePub to ePub for e.g)? I've tried 'Edit metadata' and the 'Save to disk' however, when importing to Itunes, the cover does not appear. So, either I'm missing a step, or I do need to reconvert to merge the data.
2. I've serached/read enough to work out how to change my title sort to strictly alphabetically, because I prefer my books that start with 'A' or 'The' are actually sorted that way. But, when importing to iTunes, the title sort goes to 'Album Sort' and whilst it no longer displays 'Black Echo, The' for e.g, it now simply drops 'The' altogether, so that it appears as 'Black Echo'.

When I check the metadata in Calibre, the title sort field does read as the title - i.e. how I want it to display, so, I'm not sure if this is an iTunes import issue, or if there is something further I need to do in Calibre to prevent this.

I'm pretty GUI dependent. Working out how to get the title sort took some time So if your assistance could be with that in mind, I'd appreciate your help.