Calibre 9.5: can't find any cover

[Ansem_93]

Hi everyone,
not sure why but calibre can't find any cover for my books. Most of them are not english but the title is still corrent.
What can I do to fix it?

[kovidgoyal]

Install some more metadata sources via Preferences->plugins->get new plugins. Google recently started completely blocking non browser clients which broke the builtin plugins.

[JSWolf]

Apple & Kobo are good sources that work.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Apple & Kobo are good sources that work.

For ITALY?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

For ITALY?

I set my VPN to Italy and set both Kobo and Apple for Italy. With Apple, I'm not getting Italian covers. But with Kobo, the last cover I tried, I did get an Italian version. The book I grabbed the cover for is The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski. So while Apple does not work for Italy, Kobo does.

[Ansem_93]

thanks everyone for the help! Can confirm that Apple and kobo were basically the only ones working

[brainycat]

I tried to use wget to get images from duckduckgo using my browser's useragent, but no dice - looks like they're doing some handshaking to verify an interactive session too

May I suggest adding a note to the 'Download Cover' window that recommends adding more metadata plugins? I spent too many minutes validating the issue from my end - verifying firewall rules for calibre/calibre-parallel, etc + time spent searching for a solution until I found this thread.

Thanks!

[brainycat]

I came here after troubleshooting my firewall, calibre installation, etc and then googling around for a little bit.

I tried duckduckgo, but it looks like they're doing interactive handshaking too

May I suggest adding a note to the "Download Covers" window explaining the situation and the recommended fix?

Thanks!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by brainycat

I came here after troubleshooting my firewall, calibre installation, etc and then googling around for a little bit.

I tried duckduckgo, but it looks like they're doing interactive handshaking too

May I suggest adding a note to the "Download Covers" window explaining the situation and the recommended fix?

Thanks!

The recommended solution is to install the Apple and Kobo Metadata plugins. I confined that at least Kobo was able to get an Italian cover when I had my VPN set to Italy and proper configured the plugin.

[slm]

Of course, just copying and pasting the cover from the web site that sells the book also works, thought it may be a lower resolution.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by slm

Of course, just copying and pasting the cover from the web site that sells the book also works, thought it may be a lower resolution.

That depends on the site. Some publisher site does have hi-res covers availble. Most do not.

I used to use Google Images to find hi-res covers and I did the cut/past to get the covers into calibre.

Now I use the Apple and Kobbo metadata plugins to get hi-res covers.

[brainycat]

After thinking about it for a while, it seems that the Most Best solution might be:

Adding clickable links to the the 'Download Covers' window with the URLs that are already being generated
- this would open up google and bing results in the users browser
- - I have confirmed the query URLs generated by calibre do still work from an interactive session
- Allow drag and drop FROM the browser into calibre
- calibre grabs the object and pushes it down the book update codepath

Also, add a note in the same window "adding metadata sources will probably result in better results" or something like that, to save some time for all the other poor schmucks like me who thought their network was at fault.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by brainycat

After thinking about it for a while, it seems that the Most Best solution might be:

Adding clickable links to the the 'Download Covers' window with the URLs that are already being generated
- this would open up google and bing results in the users browser
- - I have confirmed the query URLs generated by calibre do still work from an interactive session
- Allow drag and drop FROM the browser into calibre
- calibre grabs the object and pushes it down the book update codepath

Also, add a note in the same window "adding metadata sources will probably result in better results" or something like that, to save some time for all the other poor schmucks like me who thought their network was at fault.

Currently, the best solution are the Apple and Kobo metadata plugins.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by brainycat

After thinking about it for a while, it seems that the Most Best solution might be:

Adding clickable links to the the 'Download Covers' window with the URLs that are already being generated
- this would open up google and bing results in the users browser
- - I have confirmed the query URLs generated by calibre do still work from an interactive session
- Allow drag and drop FROM the browser into calibre
- calibre grabs the object and pushes it down the book update codepath

Also, add a note in the same window "adding metadata sources will probably result in better results" or something like that, to save some time for all the other poor schmucks like me who thought their network was at fault.

I use the Search the Internet plugin: Search for covers: <configured sites>: drag and drop into Calibre details pane: then embed (Polish,Modify EPUB...)