Wednesday, August 28, 2013

No cover when uploading to Google Play Books


If you upload a book to Google Play Books in EPUB format and one of these things happens:

  • The cover isn't showing up
  • The cover looks like the above image
  • The book doesn't open/gives you a 404 error
Here are some things to try:

  1. First of all, wait! Google has to extract the cover from the file, and for some reason it can take a long time for it to show up. I would recommend waiting at least an hour, if not longer. Yes, this might seem like way too long, but I've seen it take that long.

  2. If you're absolutely sure it isn't working, you can try to fix the cover using Calibre:
    1. Download Calibre, install it, and use it to open the EPUB file
    2. If the cover doesn't show up in Calibre:
      1. Right-click → Edit metadata → Edit metadata individually
      2. Click Download cover
      3. Select a cover and click OK
      4. If no cover is found, find a cover online, and then from the metadata window in Calibre, click Browse to browse to the cover and add it.
      5. Click OK
    3. If the cover does show up in Calibre, the EPUB file may be corrupt. To fix it:
      1. Right-click → Convert books → Convert individually
      2. Output format → EPUB
      3. OK
    4. Save the file
      1. Right-click → Save to disk → Save to disk
      2. Select a location to save the EPUB to
    5. Remove the file you previously uploaded to Google Play Books
    6. Upload the modified EPUB to Google Play Books. It will be located in a subfolder in the location you specified in the previous step. You just want the EPUB file; you can ignore the other files.

  3. If the cover still isn't showing up, you can try to manually repair it.
    1. Download Sigil, install it, and use it to open the EPUB file
    2. Fix the cover according to the guidelines in the following blog post:
      Best practices in ePub cover images by Keith Fahlgren
    3. Once you're done, upload the modified EPUB to Google Play Books

  4. If the book won't upload at all, the cover may not be the problem
    1. Validate the EPUB using the validator here: http://validator.idpf.org/
    2. Modify the EPUB using Sigil or another EPUB editor, and keep validating it until there are no more errors
    3. Try uploading it to Google Play Books again

15 comments:

  1. Angel Dan01 April, 2014 02:41

    Another good tool here I want to recommend when adding cover to epub.

    http://www.epubor.com/how-to-change-epub-cover.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown25 September, 2014 21:33

    I also have this problem. Front cover shows up fine on my first account, but on my second account all of the book have 404 error and book cover does not show up. I uploaded the same books to Account#1 and account#2. it is weird that books are uploaded fine on account#1 but not on account#2. Please advise!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. bmaupin02 October, 2014 18:54

      Hmm, if it doesn't go away on its own after a little bit, then I'm not sure what the problem would be. How long did you wait? If it is happening with all of the books on account 2, I would suspect there's a problem with the account. You could try creating another account, or deleting the account and trying again. Unfortunately it sounds like a different issue so I'm not sure I can be of much help!

      Delete
    2. Unknown02 October, 2014 22:00

      Yeah, I tried. :( I even have account#3 and #4 haha. And you know what's weird? When I tried to login using a different computer all of the books shows up on all of the accounts. I'm not sure if it is a problem with my laptop. But anyways thanks for your response. :)

      Delete
    3. bmaupin04 October, 2014 10:25

      That's even weirder that you'd only have the problem with one computer. Have you tried a different web browser, like Chrome or Firefox? If the problem only happens in one browser, try clearing the cache and cookies:

      https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32050

      Delete
  3. S1111123 December, 2015 05:23

    this is a great help - thanks

    ReplyDelete
  4. Unknown30 July, 2016 01:38

    very helpfull, thanks a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  5. snobographer18 December, 2016 14:28

    I don't want to read my ebooks in calibre. I want google books to work right.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. bmaupin18 December, 2016 15:05

      I only suggested using Calibre to fix any problems with ebooks so that they will work in Google Play Books, not using Calibre to read your ebooks. Cheers!

      Delete
  6. Unknown07 October, 2017 23:56

    if I'm using an android phone, what version of calibre would I download? can I even download it at all? it seems to be for computers only.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. bmaupin20 October, 2017 08:28

      Yes, Calibre is only for computers unfortunately.

      Delete
  7. Wayne16 December, 2017 23:55

    Thank you. Great help.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Devil Woman 2419 April, 2019 20:26

    Thank you so much! It always bothers me to see crooked titles and this helped me fix that

    ReplyDelete
  9. P. D.29 September, 2019 13:02

    Thank you very much! Worked perfectly!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Roberto Luongo17 August, 2020 05:43

    I think I found the solution: it's necessary (whith right mouse over the file of the image itself, not the html that contains it) to tell sigil that it's a cover

    ReplyDelete

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