PRS-650 Problems with Kobo Books

[Mubbles]

Hi There,

I'm relatively new to buying ebooks, and I'm hoping someone on here can help me out.

I have the Sony PRS-650 and have been buying books from Sony. Recently I discovered some books that were cheaper on Kobo, so I decided to try downloading one from them.

The problem I'm having is that the book from Kobo does not show the cover - has anyone else had this issue? It shows fine in the Kobo app on the computer, but the Sony app does not see a cover, just the first page of the book (plain white with the title). I really do prefer to be able to see the book cover when I browse my books (I don't care so much about when opening it to read, just to look through the books). Is there any way to fix this, or is this just something that happens with Kobo books?

Thanks in advance,
Robin

[elemenoP]

I have noticed that some books have the cover image and some books don't, I haven't really noticed where they come from. But if you use Calibre, you can download a cover for any book that doesn't have one. But, you will have to strip the DRM in order to get the books into Calibre.

eP

[viviena]

Originally Posted by Mubbles

Is there any way to fix this, or is this just something that happens with Kobo books?

It's sort of 'something that happens'. As you see, the Kobo desktop app shows the correct covers, and if Kobo users sync with their devices, they'll see the books with the correct covers on their Kobo eReaders also. Sideloading with the same ebook, but which is an EPUB, does see the occasional ebook with a missing cover, though I've also sideloaded EPUBs from KoboBooks with the correct covers. I'm not sure why some books are special, and others aren't.

Regarding the missing ebook covers when browsing the library on a Sony device... I suppose one could also either manually create or have Calibre generate custom thumbnails that would show up when browsing, without editing the book itself or having to strip DRM. Pardon the lack of detail though, as I'm hazy on how one would go about this. If you don't mind stripping DRM, you could use Calibre to add covers, as eP noted.

[Mubbles]

Thanks so much! seems like such a little thing, but it was really bugging me.

[bevdeforges]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

I have noticed that some books have the cover image and some books don't, I haven't really noticed where they come from. But if you use Calibre, you can download a cover for any book that doesn't have one. But, you will have to strip the DRM in order to get the books into Calibre.

eP

A slight correction - you only need to strip the DRM to read the books on Calibre's reader. You can always download your books as usual, load them into Calibre and adjust the metadata (including the covers) to your liking. Then, when you upload from Calibre to the Reader, the cover and your tags and all will be there for you to use and enjoy.

[tb74]

There is a way to alter the cover thumbnails for any book, whether from Kobo, Sony, OverDrive etc., that is relatively easy (altho slightly time consuming). I do it for almost all of the books I load, from whichever source. Even the books that have proper covers associated often look less than optimized. It's easy to find some nice cover art online, reduce it to the proper max dimensions (168x217) and load it. A bit of work, but looks sooo nice.

[leshaboo]

Kobo asked me to do a update so I did now I can't open any of my book (proeess com.kobobooks.Android ) keeps popin up