All book covers missing on my kindle

[soenderup]

I bought my first Kindle (Paperwhite signature) and I am so happy, thoug I’m not glad that I have no covers to my books, - not a single one of them.

These are books I bought in e-shops in my country, so I don't have any directly from Amazon. I have searched and searched for solutions and I see this has been an issue in the past and I have tried everything that has been suggested.

There is no problem in the Kindle-app on my iPad and iPhone, all the books showing the covers corectly.

At first, I just transferred the books with the send to function from my iPad, and the books came up fine in my Amazon library, which I then downloaded to my Kindle. But since all the covers were missing, I chose to try Calibre, and I have updated all the meta data, ensured that there is an image for the cover and that there is the correct ISBN. None of that has helped, whether I send the books from Calibre to Amazon or transfer them directly via USB to Kindle. I've tried deleting everything and starting over, overwriting, putting the Kindle on airplane mode etc.

Now I'm really confused and no longer think it's cool with my new Kindle. Help me think again that it's a nice new toy I've bought myself. What is the solution?

[shamanNS]

If you send the books wirelessly to your Kindle (using "Send to Kindle" option or via e-mailing it [doing that with Calibre or however doesn't make a difference]) you will not get cover thumbnail on eInk Kindle devices. Amazon made it work like that intentionally, azw3 format + PDOC flag = no cover thumnails on Kindle eInk devices.

Also if you transfer azw3 files over USB using a file explorer app (= not using Calibre's "Send to device" , you manually copied files from a folder on your computer to "documents" folder on Kindle drive) you will not have cover thumbnails.

In order to have cover thumbnails you must use USB connection + Calibre's "Send to Device" (because doing that will generate and copy thumbnail jpeg file where it needs to go: /system/thumbnails (system folder is marked as hidden) on the kindle drive) and because if your Kindle is connect to WiFi once you disconnect the Kindle from your computer Amazon servers will overwrite those "sideloaded" thumbnails files you need to reconnect your Kindle to your computer with Calibre opened one more time to let Calibre restore those files. Then you finally have cover thumbnails
And you have to repeat that procedure (send via Calibre > disconnect from USB > let Amazon "process" new books and destroy/overwrite cover thumbnails > reconnect to computer and let Calibre re-do the work it already did once) for each batch of newly transferred books.

So, one thing to be made clear is: there is no way to have both "whispernet" syncing (of last page read, notes and highlights) between Kindle devices and apps and have cover thumbnails on Kindle eInk devices for azw3 (= KF8) and KFX books.
You have to make a choice which of those is more important to you.
iOS and Android apps don't have that issue, they just extract the cover from the PDOC book file itself and use it to make the thumbnail image.


For details in regards to overwriting problem that Kindle's firmware does you can read this:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=329945

For discussion about e-mailed or "Send to Kindle"-ed books don't show cover thumbnails read:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=346764

Short answer do the questions "What changed?" is basically "For PDOCs Amazon switched from converting stuff you send to old MOBI format to newer AZW3/KF8 , and that format has had that cover thumbnails issue for years and years".