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ePub book covers not importing into iTunes?

C

cualexander

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 3, 2006
567
96
Charlotte, NC
I have about 100 epub books I acquired elsewhere and when I bring them in Adobe Epub reader the cover art shows up just fine. But when I bring them in iTunes the cover art does not show up. Technically epub files are just zip files so I can open them up, pull the cover art out and associate it manually in iTunes with each file but its a major pain.

Anyone else tried to bring in an ePub book into iTunes? I'm wondering if books bought elsewhere "conveniently" don't display cover art. But the verdict is out at the moment.
 
cualexander said:
I have about 100 epub books I acquired elsewhere and when I bring them in Adobe Epub reader the cover art shows up just fine. But when I bring them in iTunes the cover art does not show up. Technically epub files are just zip files so I can open them up, pull the cover art out and associate it manually in iTunes with each file but its a major pain.

Anyone else tried to bring in an ePub book into iTunes? I'm wondering if books bought elsewhere "conveniently" don't display cover art. But the verdict is out at the moment.
Click to expand...

I have encountered the same issue as you. What I did was to drag the epub (that itunes didn't show the cover) into calibre and had calibre download the cover then drag the *.jpg into the artwork box of the epub. It's a little work but it worked for me.
 
A friend of mine said he was able to get his ePub stuff into iTunes 'but had some problems'. I'll ask him exactly what he meant. It may also be worth checking out the Apple subforum at mobileread, they probably have started tangling with this by now.
 
cualexander said:
I have about 100 epub books I acquired elsewhere and when I bring them in Adobe Epub reader the cover art shows up just fine. But when I bring them in iTunes the cover art does not show up. Technically epub files are just zip files so I can open them up, pull the cover art out and associate it manually in iTunes with each file but its a major pain.

Anyone else tried to bring in an ePub book into iTunes? I'm wondering if books bought elsewhere "conveniently" don't display cover art. But the verdict is out at the moment.
Click to expand...

When did iTunes start supporting books? Was there an update today?
 
I just did an import of an epub book and there weren't any issues. It shows up with cover art.
 
skubish said:
When did iTunes start supporting books? Was there an update today?
Click to expand...

Roger that. "Audiobooks" is now "Books".

I just did an import of an epub book and there weren't any issues. It shows up with cover art.
Click to expand...

But what was the source? I believe the OP's source was...uh..non-DRM.
 
ePub Cover Art

Yes, I had the same problem. For the time being, I'm downloading the art separately and adding it manually. If you have any books with no artwork, you can search online.
 
cualexander said:
I have about 100 epub books I acquired elsewhere and when I bring them in Adobe Epub reader the cover art shows up just fine. But when I bring them in iTunes the cover art does not show up. Technically epub files are just zip files so I can open them up, pull the cover art out and associate it manually in iTunes with each file but its a major pain.

Anyone else tried to bring in an ePub book into iTunes? I'm wondering if books bought elsewhere "conveniently" don't display cover art. But the verdict is out at the moment.
Click to expand...

I had the same problem . . . no solution but same problem :confused:
 
I had all mine in Calibre on Mac and then dragged the epub file into the books on itunes, all cover art came across fine...
 
goobot said:
this is what i did

advanced>get album art work


done:D
Click to expand...

Well being as I already know a lot of these titles aren't in the iPad bookstore, that didn't work for me. I ended up just copying the contents of every epub out into a separate folder, then manually associating the cover art that was already with each file, back into iTunes.
 
About 90% of my books came across without any issue, it found them and downloaded the cover art. The last 10% I found most of it online without any problems. But about 25% of the 10% I couldn't find the cover image directly, it has been a bit of work... but it is coming. :D
 
If your epubs aren't edited correctly with metadata, covers can't be shown or downloaded from the Internet using iTunes, or your epub don't have the covers in it. Not all epubs are equal, some are missing illustrations, some books will have TOC missing or chapters missing or something like that.

You'll have to find the cover art yourself, download it and drop it in the artwork for the book.

It is possible due to the bookstore not live, it doesn't have all the books data yet.

We'll have to wait and see on Saturday, but I doubt it.
 
The first one I imported, showed artwork... I thought awesome, thats easy. Next 5 I drag in... no artwork, only two out of like 30 have artwork lol.
 
I just tried one I converted with Calibre and it brought in the cover art, but as I have just read, one is not a good test.

I am going to do a batch convert with Calibre - most of them are pdf now with a few mobi - to get them into epub format and I will report back... hopefully later today.
 
I figure I might have to tag alot of my nondrm books in itunes, although many have been tagged in Calibre. What I hate about Itunes is that everytime they support someting new, they don't bother making custom screens, Back when video was supported they added another tab but left out alot of video specific options. Now here comes books using the same tabs there for music and video. Where's the specific for books? Where's Publisher? Where Type for Novels, Hardcover etc, it's lazy programmming.
 
Scarpad said:
Now here comes books using the same tabs there for music and video. Where's the specific for books? Where's Publisher? Where Type for Novels, Hardcover etc, it's lazy programmming.
Click to expand...

I agree, I was disappointed in the organization. I wish there was some way you could collapse the display to just show authors and then click to display books by that author. My list is going to get mighty long and cumbersome to go through.

So far, I've converted about 25 books with calibre and everything seems to be working fine. I also downloaded some books off Baen's Free Library and they copied in fine also.
 
mr. who? said:
??? In the store? Mine still reads "Audiobooks". Itunes 9.1 on XP.
Click to expand...

Actually, it was odd, mine did to (OSX) until I imported the first book and then it changed. On my other machine (OSX) it came up as "Books" immediately.

Must be "fancy" programming. LOL
 
I added 32 books to iTunes last night with no issues. I used Calibre to convert them also. I never drag and drop into iTunes as I feel I lose metadata that way. I always do a FILE/ADD TO LIBRARY instead. Try that and see if you cover art problems go away. I also just double click the folder/s and not the individual epub files.
 
wolfpackfan said:
So far, I've converted about 25 books with calibre and everything seems to be working fine. I also downloaded some books off Baen's Free Library and they copied in fine also.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, forgot about Baen's Library, some good stuff in there. Too bad no covers found for the ePubs downloaded directly from them. But they have cover images available for all of them.

BTW you can put the Books section into list view just like your Albums. This way you can sort them by Author, Publisher, Genre, Rating, etc..
 
I'm having the same problem, even set the cover art in Calibre and looks correct. I move them into iTunes, still look correct. But, sync to the iPad and the cover art does not display on the "Shelf". But here is the odd thing, I open the book and then go back to the "Library" and as the book is closing I see the correct coverart, but when it actually does back to the shelf view it is not there. I'm done messing with it though, too frustrating for something not overly important.
 
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