Using previously purchased epubs on iBooks (cover pictures?)

[micol124]

I finally got my iPad (insert clapping sound) and I have been converting my current ebook library over to epub and to iBooks, which I find very graphically pleasing. I guess this is one of the reasons I love Apple, their attention to detail, so I would like to use iBooks as much as possible, and I don't mind going through some trouble to be able to visually pick a book (or eventually my notes) from by iBooks Library.

I have been having trouble with book covers. I have searched everywhere, I have downloaded Calibre and Stanza and Sigil but I somehow cannot figure out how to give all of my epub books a cover.
I can use Stanza to convert the files, but if they already do not have a cover picture, that's a no go. I can use Calibre, but sometimes the cover is not the correct one (and yes, I tried to save a different picture as the cover.jpg file, but it will still either not show up or show up as the old one in iBooks). I can make them over from scratch with Sigil, or just change them and add a cover by adding a picture and then a chapter break right after it (Sigil's instruction assume this this will work) but still, no cover. I even tried to change the artwork in iTunes... no luck.
I have also tried to format all the pictures to have the same size and resolution, but that doesn't seem to affect it, since some of the books with covers display different sizes!

I have also has a problem with meta data, where even after changing 1. the file name and 2. the meta info in sigil and/or calibre, iTunes will still show the book name and author as "Unknown".

Anybody have the same issue or has some suggestions? I used to play with HTML in college, so looking at the code doesn't scare me (I even tried to copy the coding of those books that indeed do have covers, but to no avail) I have been looking online for this for 3 days, but I have found nothing!

 

[supermanx]

In iTunes right click on the book and click get info. From there you can change the author and add cover art.

 

[kes601]

Unfortunately iBooks doesn't properly display the customized book covers. It displays the first page of the ebook as the cover art. The odd thing is that when you close the book and return to the shelf it briefly shows the customized cover art, so I am thinking this is something Apple will fix im the future.

 

[gwynne]

What I've determined is that you must fix the cover art and other data the way you want it, then re-convert to epub and copy the new .epub file to iTunes to get your changes to appear. At least, when using calibre. I had to delete the epub versions of the books I wanted to fix, fixed the source files and reconverted them. Worked perfectly on a variety of source formats.

Tip: you can right-click and paste an image from your clipboard directly into the cover art field in calibre. What I would do is find the cover image I wanted in google images, copy from safari window and then paste into the Calibre art window.

 

[micol124]

supermanx - I tried, it won't work. It will switch back to using the default "blank" cover

kes - yes I figured that, but even those ebooks that have a picture as the first page won't show a cover image... I even made a fake one with Sigil to try... no go!

gwynne - That was it! THANK YOU! I was starting to lose faith! Some still have funny pictures, bt if I change them then they show up! Wonderful!