Calibre/Kobo cover problems (apparently I'm a three year news)

[Joliet Jake]

I bought my first Kobo in 2014. I have had Calibre since *at least* 2018 and probably before. I currently have Calibre 4.23 because I didn't want problems with Amazon.

When I first got a Kobo, I bought some KEPUBs and got some free from their site. However I don't know how to put those books on a "shelf". In fact, Calibre cannot "see" those books. I can use Kobo Desktop to put the books on the Kobo, and everything is fine other than the books all landing in one "shelf". The covers are fine. These KEPUBs tell you where you are in a chapter.

Recently I learned about the Obok plugin and installed it. It found all the books and converted them to EPUBs. All of them have covers, and if I attach my Kobo Calibre "confirms" they have covers (I can see them, and the covers are visible in the appropriate folder). The covers are actually in the book themselves, so I don't need to modify the files.

However the covers never appear on the Kobo itself. I just get large text words as the title (the appropriate title). In addition, a 300 page book says it has 2000 pages (since the KEPUB to EPUB seems to make every single screen a page, but the text is perfectly clear unlike with a PDF). Am I doing something wrong to lose those covers? Is there a way for Calibre to directly interact with KEPUBs, perhaps there's a way to tell the plugin not to convert the books? (Every one of those books is available in Calibre as EPUB only.)

Note: even if I access the directory where Kobo Desktop stores downloaded KEPUBs, I cannot see them. I know they're there but they're hidden, and I've set my computer to not hide any files.

Guidance elsewhere told me I'm not using the Kobo plugins correctly. I have them installed but use them just to transfer EPUBs from Calibre to Kobo.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Joliet Jake

I bought my first Kobo in 2014. I have had Calibre since *at least* 2018 and probably before. I currently have Calibre 4.23 because I didn't want problems with Amazon.

You can upgrade to Calibre 5.x. You will not have problems with Amazon.

If by "problems" with Amazon you mean the DeDRM plugin, there is a 7.21 version that works with Calibre 5.x.

[Joliet Jake]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You can upgrade to Calibre 5.x. You will not have problems with Amazon.

If by "problems" with Amazon you mean the DeDRM plugin, there is a 7.21 version that works with Calibre 5.x.

Unfortunately I've heard of people who have had problems with the newest Calibre/plugin. Calibre 4.23 works perfectly (except maybe this cover problem) so as far as I'm concerned, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

I know I'm missing features this way, but I don't know what they are. I use Calibre mainly so I can create categories or shelves for my collection of books on an e-reader. (I currently have 800+ books on my Forma. I have to organize them somehow.)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Joliet Jake

Unfortunately I've heard of people who have had problems with the newest Calibre/plugin. Calibre 4.23 works perfectly (except maybe this cover problem) so as far as I'm concerned, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

I know I'm missing features this way, but I don't know what they are. I use Calibre mainly so I can create categories or shelves for my collection of books on an e-reader. (I currently have 800+ books on my Forma. I have to organize them somehow.)

Trust me when I say the DeDRM 7.21 plugin works well. I'm using it. Also, you can install 4.23 portable in case you find it doesn't work. Just copy your settings to the portable install. Then install version 5.x and DeDRM 7.21.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Joliet Jake

I bought my first Kobo in 2014. I have had Calibre since *at least* 2018 and probably before. I currently have Calibre 4.23 because I didn't want problems with Amazon.

When I first got a Kobo, I bought some KEPUBs and got some free from their site. However I don't know how to put those books on a "shelf". In fact, Calibre cannot "see" those books.

When a device is connected, there are two lists of books. One is the usual list of all books you have added to calibre. The other is the device list. This shows all books that calibre has found on the device. This should show all books that you have purchased from Kobo and either downloaded directly to the device, or used the Kobo desktop to sync to the device. In both lists there will be a green tick to indicate the book matches one you have in the other list.

I can use Kobo Desktop to put the books on the Kobo, and everything is fine other than the books all landing in one "shelf". The covers are fine. These KEPUBs tell you where you are in a chapter.

I'm not quite sure of the distinction there. Kobo devices tell you were you are in any book you are reading. Or are you on an older firmware that doesn't show chapter progress for epubs? It is always a good idea to mention the firmware version of the devices you use asking for help.

Recently I learned about the Obok plugin and installed it. It found all the books and converted them to EPUBs. All of them have covers, and if I attach my Kobo Calibre "confirms" they have covers (I can see them, and the covers are visible in the appropriate folder). The covers are actually in the book themselves, so I don't need to modify the files.

However the covers never appear on the Kobo itself. I just get large text words as the title (the appropriate title).

I don't know what you are doing here. You are using Obok to add the books downloaded using the Kobo desktop to your calibre library. Are you then using calibre to send the books to the device? If so, the device should get the covers. But, it isn't as simple as saying the covers are in the books. For epubs, Kobo renders the first page and uses that as the cover. If the first page does not have the cover image, but is the title page (text with the title and author and probably the publisher) or something else, that is what you will get. If something prevents the cover from being generated, you the cover will be shown as the title plus the format and two rectangles around this.

If you are actually sending kepubs to the device, then the image that is used for the cover is defined in the OPF. But, to be doing this, you would be using the user added KoboTouchExtended driver instead of the builtin KoboTouch driver. And this driver should be handling the cover correctly.

In addition, a 300 page book says it has 2000 pages (since the KEPUB to EPUB seems to make every single screen a page, but the text is perfectly clear unlike with a PDF).

How pages are counted depend on the book format. Epubs use the Adobe RMSDK method which is not per screen, but, can be fairly close depending on screen size and the font settings. Kepubs are per screen, so the page count depends on your font settings. If you need to use a large font, it will show a larger number of "pages".

Am I doing something wrong to lose those covers? Is there a way for Calibre to directly interact with KEPUBs, perhaps there's a way to tell the plugin not to convert the books? (Every one of those books is available in Calibre as EPUB only.)

Calibre automatically converts books to the format the device supports when you send it to the device. It does the conversion, adds it to the library and then sends the book to the device. Kobo supports epubs, so they should not be converted. But, if they are arriving on the device as kepubs, either you are using the KoboTouchExtended driver, which transforms the epub to kepub during the send (doesn't do a calibre conversion) or the epub format has been unselected in the KoboTouch driver configuration. Either of these means that you have made a change, either installed the KoboTouchExtended driver, or changed the configuration. The former is the most likely. If you want to use epubs, then you can remove the extended driver or reselect epub in the driver.

As to covers, as explained above, they should just work. I would need to see some sample books to get an idea of what is happening. But, the drivers do have options to send the covers to the device when sending the books. This means calibre generates the appropriate image files from the cover it has and puts them on the device so that the device does not generate them itself.

Note: even if I access the directory where Kobo Desktop stores downloaded KEPUBs, I cannot see them. I know they're there but they're hidden, and I've set my computer to not hide any files.

In Windows, the Kobo desktop stores the books in "\AppData\Local\Kobo\Kobo Desktop Edition\kepub" within your user profile directory. The file names look like random characters and they do not have an extension. On a MAC, it should be in a similar location.

You can add an extension to use these, but, it only works if the book has no DRM. The Obok plugin sorts this out.

Guidance elsewhere told me I'm not using the Kobo plugins correctly. I have them installed but use them just to transfer EPUBs from Calibre to Kobo.

That guidance is probably correct. But, what that guidance didn't tell you is that you do not need any extra plugins to use calibre with a Kobo device. They are fully supported with the base install of calibre. The plugins are needed to do other things, such as send books as kepubs. What you install depends on what you want to do beyond putting epubs on the device.

[Joliet Jake]

It took some time but I've figured it out. Sort of. I basically brute-forced things.

I downloaded and installed the Kobo Touch Extended plugin and configured it to match the one I was using before. (I then backed it up because I hope to never have to do that again.) I also downloaded two Kepub plugins that let me edit metadata, though I'm pretty sure I didn't need to.

I looked at Obok to see which books I had gotten from Kobo and checked all of them on the Kobo itself. About half had a working cover, which was way more than I expected. I wrote down the names for all of the ones without working covers and deleted them from the Kobo. Then I sent them again to the Kobo. They must have been converted to Kepubs during the transfer.

I also looked at a couple of categories where the collection name did not match the series name. I don't know how to coordinate these properly, so from now on every book I buy from the Kobo store will go through Obok, just so I can change the metadata properly. This means I'm converting from Kepub to Epub to Kepub again, but it seems to cause no damage. (I seriously doubt I will ever try to fix this. The absolute worst part about Calibre/Kobo, when I first got one, was getting the columns to work properly. Short of taking courses in computer programming I am leaving that alone!

Finally **one** book (that I deleted because of the cover issue) persistently gives me an "error in communicating with the device" message. It only happened once so it's not a big deal, but I can't fix it. I looked around for that error but it seems when other people get that error it affects every book. I might disable the Kobo Extended Touch plugin temporarily and use the older one and transfer that book to my Kobo again, although I suspect this will reintroduce the non-functioning cover error.

[Joliet Jake]

I was able to "fix it".

I installed the Kobo Extended Touch plugin. Then I wrote down (on paper!) the names of all the books that Obok brought into Calibre. About half had the cover problem (better than I thought). I deleted all the books that had cover problems and retransferred them.

It worked, although **one book** gave a repeated communication error. I don't know why that one book had the problem. (Google suggested that if someone has that problem, it's with all books.)

I can't get the Kobo to treat collections and series as the same, so from now on I'll buy Kobo books, convert them to Epubs with Obok, then *back* to Kepubs when transferring. It's unnecessarily complicated and brute force but it works.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Joliet Jake

I can't get the Kobo to treat collections and series as the same, so from now on I'll buy Kobo books, convert them to Epubs with Obok, then *back* to Kepubs when transferring. It's unnecessarily complicated and brute force but it works.

Given that Kobo has support for series, I really don't see a need to add each series as a collection. If you really want that, you can open the driver configuration (either the KoboTouch or KoboTouchExtended) and on the Collections, covers & uploads tab, add series to the Collection columns box and check Create Collections (I'd suggest also checking Delete empty bookshelves). Your next metadata update should take care of creating the series collections and adding the books to them.

[Joliet Jake]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Given that Kobo has support for series, I really don't see a need to add each series as a collection.

I had all the old Kepubs in a single collection, and within it I would see the series, which was kind of pointless. (I have 800 books on the Kobo.) I got Calibre in part because it was too much of a hassle creating new series/collections on the Kobo itself. (I hate touchscreens. My Kobo Forma has page turn buttons for just that reason.)

If you really want that, you can open the driver configuration (either the KoboTouch or KoboTouchExtended) and on the Collections, covers & uploads tab, add series to the Collection columns box and check Create Collections (I'd suggest also checking Delete empty bookshelves). Your next metadata update should take care of creating the series collections and adding the books to them.

Now that is a fantastic idea. I already have "delete empty bookshelves" on.

Note, the way I have things set up, my books go from Calibre series to Kobo collections anyway, so maybe I have already done that. I only really had a mismatch when sending books directly from Kobo Desktop to the Kobo.

[Joliet Jake]

An unasked for update:

So I learned all about polishing books. Actually I just learned to select something about modifying the cover, so now I have a lot of "original" Epubs. I didn't have to use the resize cover plugin.

I made a list of all books on my Kobo with improper covers (too small and at the top and center, stuck in the left corner, just text, all white or all black) and fixed them in Calibre. Then I deleted them from the Kobo and re-sent them. Given the number of books, it took a long time.

All were fixed except the all-white and all-black covers. The all-white ones were DRM fixed. I could read them on Calibre but could not modify them. I just replaced those. The ones with black covers apparently had an Adobe Digital Editions issue. There were only three of them. Calibre couldn't send them to the Kobo in the form of a Kepub because it said my machine was not registered with ADE. I guess I need to tackle that later.

This was less of an issue before since I used to transfer books as Epubs and not Kepubs. Kobo tends to use the metadata cover for Epubs, and the first page for Kepubs.

I've essentially corrected the covers for all Epubs in my Calibre library. (The large majority of those books are Epubs. There's just a few PDFs that are pointless to convert to Epubs.)

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Joliet Jake

All were fixed except the all-white and all-black covers. The all-white ones were DRM fixed. I could read them on Calibre but could not modify them. I just replaced those. The ones with black covers apparently had an Adobe Digital Editions issue. There were only three of them. Calibre couldn't send them to the Kobo in the form of a Kepub because it said my machine was not registered with ADE. I guess I need to tackle that later.

Calibre does nothing with DRM except tell you the book has it. If it mentioned ADE, it would have been a message about you needing to use ADE, not that your machine wasn't registered. And calibre has absolutely no support for DRM removal. This can be done using the plugins in the DRM tools package that is available separately.

This was less of an issue before since I used to transfer books as Epubs and not Kepubs. Kobo tends to use the metadata cover for Epubs, and the first page for Kepubs.

You have that backwards. For epubs, Kobo renders the start of the book and uses the first page for the cover. For kepubs, the cover image is found from the metadata and extracted.

[Joliet Jake]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Calibre does nothing with DRM except tell you the book has it. If it mentioned ADE, it would have been a message about you needing to use ADE, not that your machine wasn't registered. And calibre has absolutely no support for DRM removal. This can be done using the plugins in the DRM tools package that is available separately.

That was probably it. I tried opening those books in ADE and it gave me some different error message and asked for a user name and password. (ADE recognized my Kobo perfectly well.) I no longer remember where I got those books from; they weren't in the ADE library.

You have that backwards. For epubs, Kobo renders the start of the book and uses the first page for the cover. For kepubs, the cover image is found from the metadata and extracted.

For the series that had all "white" covers, the first page was just white. This wasn't a problem when I transferred them as Epubs, as there was metadata, but when I transferred them as Kepubs, they came over with "white" covers. The books with "white" covers had a DRM issue. For some other Kepubs, the "cover" was just plain text even though the first page in the file (as seen in Calibre) was the cover.

I had some word files converted to Epub where the first page was just a really boring page, and I simply attached a cover and it worked as Epubs. Something is weird.

That was all kinds of confusing. It doesn't really matter, since I was able to solve the problem (at least for almost all of the books, but five) by polishing the books. The metadata and first page matched, so it doesn't matter which one Kobo looks at, they're both the same now.