Download covers

[PierreDa]

Hi there,

I discover that downloading cover look after field "title" and "author" !
It sounds a bit of limitation!
If you have the title and the author for instance, title is "unknown" ... and searching for "unknown" ... hum hum ...

I can't find a place to modify the query or the options (like for the "download metadata") ...

I try to encode clearly all my books and for some using "serie" field can be a must have to find cover !! (I try to change tile to serie and the discovering is much better in some cases).

May be an enhancement?

Thanks a lot for any idea or help

Pierre

[theducks]

Why not fix that before trying for a cover?
How is Calibre (or any other) supposed to know what book to look for?

Even if you had just the Author, the only chance to get the correct cover, would be IF they only published 1 book.

Meanwhile: Generate (a generic) Cover from what you have

[DNSB]

If you have the ISBN, Kobo identifier or Amazon identifier, those are also used by the Kobo and Amazon plugins to look for covers.

I'm sorry but I really don't understand the rest of your question. You have the author but not the title and expect calibre to be able to download and install the correct cover with that information? How the heck is calibre supposed to guess what the correct cover is with so little information?

I tend to clean up the metadata so I have title, author(s), series and identifiers before trying to download the cover which, BTW, how calibre's metadata download works since you get the book metadata and then you can download the cover. I also avoid bulk metadata download like the plague since it almost guarantees that your IP will be banned and you end up waiting longer than if you download metadata individually.

OTOH, I have not purchased an ebook from Kobo, Baen, Amazon, etc. in years that has not had the correct title and author metadata already embedded. Perhaps purchasing from stores that do supply correct metadata would be helpful. Can you give an example of a book and the store where it was purchased that had incorrect or no metadata?

[ownedbycats]

You might find the Search Internet plugin useful.

[PierreDa]

Originally Posted by theducks

Why not fix that before trying for a cover?
How is Calibre (or any other) supposed to know what book to look for?

Even if you had just the Author, the only chance to get the correct cover, would be IF they only published 1 book.

Meanwhile: Generate (a generic) Cover from what you have

Don't understand !
If you make a search (I mean within a software) you construct it to be able to search on fields and generally not only "author" or/and "title" ...

We have no way to choose which fields to search ...
And, for instance, searching for "unknown" is not good ;-)

Thanks

[PierreDa]

Originally Posted by DNSB

If you have the ISBN, Kobo identifier or Amazon identifier, those are also used by the Kobo and Amazon plugins to look for covers.

I'm sorry but I really don't understand the rest of your question. You have the author but not the title and expect calibre to be able to download and install the correct cover with that information? How the heck is calibre supposed to guess what the correct cover is with so little information?

I tend to clean up the metadata so I have title, author(s), series and identifiers before trying to download the cover which, BTW, how calibre's metadata download works since you get the book metadata and then you can download the cover. I also avoid bulk metadata download like the plague since it almost guarantees that your IP will be banned and you end up waiting longer than if you download metadata individually.

OTOH, I have not purchased an ebook from Kobo, Baen, Amazon, etc. in years that has not had the correct title and author metadata already embedded. Perhaps purchasing from stores that do supply correct metadata would be helpful. Can you give an example of a book and the store where it was purchased that had incorrect or no metadata?

Hello,

Thanks for your answer.
I didn't say the metadata are wrong.
I said that sometimes when you have little info (for instance only author and title or just title), the query don't let you choose which field to search for.
So as I said searching for "unkown" is not a good thing ;-)

You're right, If I bought a book, everything is correct. If I import, sometimes I have little information and try "download cover".

My request (or my proposal in a future version) is to be able to define the query use to find covers.

Regards

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by PierreDa

Hello,

Thanks for your answer.
I didn't say the metadata are wrong.
I said that sometimes when you have little info (for instance only author and title or just title), the query don't let you choose which field to search for.
So as I said searching for "unkown" is not a good thing ;-)

As as I mentioned, I edit the metadata so I have at least correct title and author plus series if needed. I will also add identifiers though often that is done by the metadata import. After the metadata is correct, I will download the covers.

Originally Posted by PierreDa

You're right, If I bought a book, everything is correct. If I import, sometimes I have little information and try "download cover".

My request (or my proposal in a future version) is to be able to define the query.

Again, even for your books from sources that do not have correct metadata, since you will want the correct metadata, do that step before downloading covers. And I do wonder about where the books that you import are coming from. But then I have a nasty suspicious mind—a side effect of decades in IT.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by PierreDa

Don't understand !
If you make a search (I mean within a software) you construct it to be able to search on fields and generally not only "author" or/and "title" ...

We have no way to choose which fields to search ...
And, for instance, searching for "unknown" is not good ;-)

Thanks

What other fields do you want to search for the cover on? The Kobo Books and Kindle Hi-res covers plugins make use of identifiers while most others search on author/title and sometime series. Again, if you don't have the correct metadata, fix that before trying to download a cover otherwise, GIGO will rule.

[Karellen]

Not exactly what you are asking, but maybe some covers here might help...
https://github.com/KarellenX/book-covers

[theducks]

I believe ISBN (or other identifiers if their relevant plugin is configured) takes precedent (I know the wrong ISBN results in the cover for that ISBN, not the book )

[DNSB]

I remember making good use of downloading metadata using the ISBN when I was adding my paper books to calibre. An old handheld barcode scanner was a carpal tunnel saver.

[JSWolf]

I always have the correct title and author before I do a search for a cover in the edit metadata dialog. I've also downloaded some extra metadata plugins to be able to search more places for a cover.

Searching for unknown is not a good idea. Besides, where do you get eBooks that have Unknown for the title?

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Searching for unknown is not a good idea. Besides, where do you get eBooks that have Unknown for the title?

I have two fanfics titled Unknown, though searching covers there isn't very useful. I had to put "Unknown." (with a period) to get the title to show up in book details. I wonder if a nbsp could work?

EDIT: A nbsp doesn't work.

ANOTHER EDIT: I put 'Unknown' into the Goodreads search. Oddly, not seeing any books actually tittled that:
https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf...&query=Unknown