Personal Documents Covers

[Blossom]

I keep losing covers with 6.3! To say this is buggy is an understatement. It seems my Pdoc Archive has lost it covers again and when it loses it's covers if I download that book it's a white cover with title.

Before the cover would show on the Device tab but it was a white cover on Carousel and now it's doing the opposite. If I download a pdoc I get a white cover in Device tab and the real cover on the Carousel.

Anyone else having this happening to them?

Edit: A Temp fix is posted here.

I think the whole Personal Documents thing is rather unstable/buggie. I learned over the past week that Personal Documents have to be built without errors before they are even recognized by the Fire, though other devices recognize them with varying accuracy. Covers are defined in the OPF file in a very specific method and like a lot of programming code it must be precisely done. Amazon is doing very little to help people format their books correctly. I found that what documentation Amazon provides is inadequate and poorly written. There is NO comprehensive guide for creating books. Amazon seems to have the opinion that we should use MS Word or Adobe InDesign to create our books, then let Amazon convert them. Word is the worst tool to use for that and InDesign costs $700 to $1300 dollars.

[Blossom]

I have no problem with my pdocs other then the covers not showing correctly.

I forgot you prefer ePubs. I was referring to mobi books created with KindlePreviewer 2.4.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I forgot you prefer ePubs. I was referring to mobi books created with KindlePreviewer 2.4.

No I use the Kindle Reader in the Fire due to having two other Kindles and needing to sync them all. They are all mobi books I converted in Calibre then sent to my pdoc archive. The covers can't make up their mind if they are going to show or not and when they do later they go missing again. It's very buggy.

In that case my guess it is the crappy way that calibre does mobi conversions. I doubt the cover is properly coded.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by jswinden

In that case my guess it is the crappy way that calibre does mobi conversions. I doubt the cover is properly coded.

I'm pretty it's generate icon issue. Something about it not updating the small book icon because the carousel is updating to the cover. The funny thing is when I first installed 6.3 it was the other way around. The small book icon updated but the carousal cover didn't. I got all the covers to generate then today they suddenly vanished after a sync. Factory reset and after two hours of cleaning the carousel up now all my pdocs are white covers.

After syncing for the 20th time they suddenly popped up!

[msandsm]

I'm having a similar problem with my Kindle fire and calibre. I lost all the covers on books I had used calibre to convert and transfer to my kindle, both on the carousel and in the Books folder. I can't seem to get them back - I've removed them from the Kindle and tried
to re-install them from calibre, but I still don't get any covers - just white squares.
Any suggestions?

[jgaiser]

Yep, something strange going on. I've got books that are missing covers on the Carousel but appear in Books, books missing covers in Books but appear in Carousel. I've got sideloaded books created with kindlegen that that appear nowhere except in a search list (though they do appear on the Carousel once they're selected from search list). I've even had sideloaded kindlegen books that couldn't be deleted from the Fire, using Remove from Device. All since 6.3

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

Yep, something strange going on. I've got books that are missing covers on the Carousel but appear in Books, books missing covers in Books but appear in Carousel. I've got sideloaded books created with kindlegen that that appear nowhere except in a search list (though they do appear on the Carousel once they're selected from search list). I've even had sideloaded kindlegen books that couldn't be deleted from the Fire, using Remove from Device. All since 6.3

Wow that's pretty much what is happening to me too. Be sure to report this on the feedback app to Amazon. Try Clearing the Kindle app data sometimes works at a temp fix and sometimes it takes a few clearing to get the covers back. Most of my topaz books refuse to show covers at all.

[Blossom]

Okay I am convinced this is a server issue. After fighting with this all night and day. I cleared the Kindle data one more time. This time my books I grabbed this morning suddenly showed up on my Carousel and suddenly all my covers were back! Still not showing in archives but in doc tab and carousel it seems to be working again. Buggy!

I'm still thinking there are two problems that are related:

1. Update 6.3 is not handling Personal Documents correctly
2. Covers MUST BE correctly defined in the OPF

Update 6.3 seems to have been rushed. Perhaps Amazon took on too many updates with various Kindle apps at the same time. But obviously they have broken parts of the Personal Documents concept as well as parts of the sideload concept.

Using 3rd party applications like calibre which produce sloppy conversions is only going to make item two worse. Only Amazon can correct item 1, so let us hope 6.3.1 gets here soon.

Originally Posted by jgaiser

Yep, something strange going on. I've got books that are missing covers on the Carousel but appear in Books, books missing covers in Books but appear in Carousel. I've got sideloaded books created with kindlegen that that appear nowhere except in a search list (though they do appear on the Carousel once they're selected from search list). I've even had sideloaded kindlegen books that couldn't be deleted from the Fire, using Remove from Device. All since 6.3

I'm having similar issues with books created using KindlePreviewer 2.4, however, once I get those books to generate without error the problems go away. Amazon seems to have built in a ZERO tolerance for errors for the Fire, at least as far as KF8 books are concerned.

[sadievan]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I keep losing covers with 6.3! To say this is buggy is an understatement. It seems my Pdoc Archive has lost it covers again and when it loses it's covers if I download that book it's a white cover with title.

Before the cover would show on the Device tab but it was a white cover on Carousel and now it's doing the opposite. If I download a pdoc I get a white cover in Device tab and the real cover on the Carousel.

Anyone else having this happening to them?

This was happening to me. What I found worked was to email them specifically to my Fire address. They showed up in archive on all my Kindles and the covers showed up across all. If I emailed to my generic account, myname@kindle.com or any other device the covers would not show up on the Fire. I used Calibre to email the books.

Of course this could change at any minute.

Carol

[Skydog]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Okay I am convinced this is a server issue. After fighting with this all night and day. I cleared the Kindle data one more time. This time my books I grabbed this morning suddenly showed up on my Carousel and suddenly all my covers were back! Still not showing in archives but in doc tab and carousel it seems to be working again. Buggy!

Were the mobi books converted from epub in Calibre with the [EBOK] tag? If not, what was the original format and how were they converted?