How to fix: Cover changed in Calibre reverts on Kindle

[sun surfer]

I:
-purchased an ebook AZW3 on Amazon,
-downloaded it to computer,
-added it to Calibre,
-(automatically) removed DRM,
-removed and then changed the cover photo,
-embedded/converted to AZW3 to save changes,
-correct photo shows on Calibre on main screen, metadata and when viewing the book,
-manually added new file to kindle

At first the new cover does show on the Kindle device home screen, but then a few seconds later it automatically reverts back to the old original removed photo. I've tried the process a few times and always the same result. How can I get the cover I want to stick on AZW3?

[eschwartz]

I *think* I have heard rumors that newer firmware will delete sideloaded covers and redownload them, if the book has an ASIN that links back to a book in the Kindle store.

Test: If you page back to the beginning, do you see the new or old cover?

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I *think* I have heard rumors that newer firmware will delete sideloaded covers and redownload them, if the book has an ASIN that links back to a book in the Kindle store.

I've used the Amazon asin on other books and this hasn't happened, though this is the first book I'm setting up for my Kindle through Calibre that I bought from Amazon.

Test: If you page back to the beginning, do you see the new or old cover?

The new cover. It's everywhere but on the Kindle device cover view.

[eschwartz]

So like I said, it's based on hearsay because I don't have a newer device, but I think that may have been seen before.

I think we know enough to say it is a Kindle problem, not a calibre one, so it would be best to repost this question in the Kindle forum.

[eschwartz]

Hah, found the thread I was thinking of: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ighlight=cover

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Hah, found the thread I was thinking of: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ighlight=cover

Success!

Thanks so much for pointing me in the right direction eschwartz; that thread may be the only place in the entire internet that the question had been answered, heh.

I can confirm that blaenk's directions per that thread do work. And I found as I was doing it that you were right about the asin, at least for the Voyage. All books with asins have their thumbnail downloaded from Amazon and they overwrite/delete any Calibre-produced ones, but if the covers are the same you won't notice a difference. You can tell in the hidden thumbnails folder because the Amazon-downloaded thumbnails are always in black-and-white while Calibre-produced ones match the cover colours.

[eschwartz]

Well, thank you Amazon for a very sensible and logical methodology which builds upon the highly reasonable way you've been handling covers so far.
At least you wait until you're sure a new cover exists before deleting the old one...




So of course that workaround is slightly awkward and I dearly hope you don't need to do this for a lot of books.

If you do... I wonder whether quiris' app would help: https://github.com/quiris11/ExtractCoverThumbs/releases

It was originally meant for fixing books sent through the Kindle Personal Documents Service as dual-MOBI (so it downloads as AZW3 instead of old MOBI).

The app extracts covers from your books and creates thumbnails for them, it should serve as an alternative to calibre's cover sideloading altogether.

At the (time) cost of regenerating all thumbnails, it should automatically set the thumbnails from the books themselves, and unlike resending the book from calibre, it obviously doesn't touch the modification date of the *.azw3 -- so the Kindle should stop getting in a snit about the "official" covers.

[sun surfer]

Thanks! That will be useful if there's more like this.