Active book thumbnail not shown in Kindle

[Jake Stoddard]

In my Android Kindle app, after opening my book and then going back to the library, the cover thumbnail isn't shown at the bottom center of the screen. However, after doing the same thing with my friend's book, her cover thumbnail is shown. (See the attached image.)

Both books were side-loaded, and my intention is that my book will always be side-loaded.

My epub was generated by Atticus. My friend's was generated by Vellum.

I compared the epubs and tried some things, including:

• Adding the cover-image property to the cover element in my content.opf file (it had been missing)
• Removed the '<meta name="cover" content="image_cover" />' element from my content.opf file (because Vellum's epub didn't have it)

Neither change fixed my issue.

Any ideas?

[JSWolf]

Can you post the OPF, cover HTML, and the relevant CSS code for this Atticus generated ePub?

[Jake Stoddard]

content.opf attached.

There isn't a cover HTML. Should there be?

I'm not sure what CSS is relevant. I attached the whole file.

[azimuth]

I assume this is your cover .xhtml page (just from glancing at your content.OPF file) -- see below.
If not, it might be worth adding an actual .xhtml page for it.

<manifest>
<item id="content_0_item_0" href="64e747ce5301520dc5af4bc7.xhtml" media-type="application/xhtml+xml" />
</manifest>

<spine toc="ncx">
	<itemref idref="content_0_item_0" />
</spine>

[Jake Stoddard]

Ah, thanks. That's helpful.

I didn't have a title page. I added one and re-exported. All the UUIDs changed. So here are all three files from the new export.

I compared my title page with my friend's title page generated by Vellum. Neither references the cover image.

[azimuth]

Ok, so the "content_0_item_0" is the title page. Then I'd suggest adding the following in "<spine>" in content.OPF file as it typically is the first item in that 'spine' string. We are suggesting this so as to hopefully resolve why the thumbnail cover image is not rendering.

<spine>
<itemref idref="cover_image"/>
</spine>

In <metadata> almost every epub OPF file that I've glanced thru, it has the part you removed:
'<meta name="cover" content="image_cover" />'

**your OPF file looks much cleaner now (all of it is well compacted, and much easier to analyze).

[Jake Stoddard]

Good idea. It did help the experience on non-Kindle apps because they didn't show a cover image inside the book.

Unfortunately, the Kindle thumbnail at the bottom of the app is still that white, auto-generated thing.

Originally Posted by azimuth

**your OPF file looks much cleaner now (all of it is well compacted, and much easier to analyze).

Heh, yeah. I ran it through: "xmllint -format". So much better.

[Jake Stoddard]

Mystery solved!

My cover image was too small: 550x850

Bigger images worked: 1200x1800 and also 1200x1855

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Jake Stoddard

Mystery solved!

My cover image was too small: 550x850

Bigger images worked: 1200x1800 and also 1200x1855

See Cover Image Guidelines

625x1000 is the minimum.

[Jake Stoddard]

Originally Posted by DNSB

See Cover Image Guidelines

625x1000 is the minimum.