Covers Disappearing

When I add a book, the cover pops up, if not, I either go in and edit to add cover or upload a cover. At the end of 2020, I went through my entire 3500 collection and made sure that all of the books had covers. There were MANY to fix, even though I have done this before and keep them continually updated. Well, already, there are several books that have gone to the default blank cover. This seems to be a recent occurrence (say last 6 months or so) where I've noticed that covers seem to disappear.

If it's the covers you uploaded, developers will want an example to investigate. If it's amazon covers, it's out of LT's hands.

Most of your covers are Amazon. If Amazon changes the cover for that ISBN or stops carrying it, your cover will change. Member covers don't change.

Amazon coers used to hang around in LibraryThing when books were unpublished, but something else appears to be happening now. Amazon.com has been removing a large amount of Kindle editions (of active books) from its site.

Can you give us some examples?

Once again, it would be nice if there was some warning, somewhere, on the site that if you use Amazon covers, they are very likely to change or just disappear. I wish I'd known that before I just automatically let the site use thousands of Amazon covers for my books.

>6 the_red_shoes: Same happened to me. I have been slowly going thru and correcting the Amz covers to member covers or uploading new cover images. I use the kindle app on my computer to go back and see the original cover when I purchased the book. But, if you don't make a copy of that original image the next time you go into a book via the kindle app it will go to Amz's current cover. Just to let you know.

One of the advantages of using Calibre to manage my ebooks is that I have a record of the original cover even if Amazon subsequently changes it. Basically, you download the books in the Kindle desktop app, then import the record into Calibre.

However, if you are using a 'fresh' install of Calibre, you may have to roll back the Kindle app to an older version to avoid KFX problems.

Maybe old news, but might be useful to some; in the mobile app (at least on Android), you can easily see which books still use Amazon covers; go the 'Cover Explorer', and click the 'Amazon-provided cover' options.

>9 Antheii: Same on the IOS one and you can easily see that on the site as well:

Home -> Stats/Memes -> Book covers which opens https://www.librarything.com/profile/MEMBERNAME/stats/covers (just click on it - the MEMBERNAME will get replaced by yours if you are logged in ;) )

>10 AnnieMod: Yeah, I wound up using about 5300 Amazon covers before I became aware of that problem when I found out a lot of my covers were wrong and was told "Oh that happens if you use Amazon." Would have been useful to know! Oh well.

Good to know. Yes, the vast majority of my covers are Amazon -- I guess that the default? Because, for the most part, I don't choose them, they are just there. Maybe it would be nice to be able to change the default away from Amazon. I have 2700 Amazon provided covers. More disappear every single day/week. Today's disappearing covers: Love in Theory E.J. Levy; Blacktop Wasteland S.A. Cosby

When I "fixed the problem" at the end of the year, I'm sure many I chose were Amazon. In fact, I'm sure they were, because there were some that I was pretty sure I'd seen before come up again.

This feels like something that should/could be back end fixed? If Amazon is the default and Amazon is no longer holding the pics, could there be a way to either make member uploads the default or to convert Amazon pics to a third, "LibraryThing Covers" option so that they will stick?

>6 the_red_shoes: Agreed. Or, change the default. This is actually not an inconsequential amount of tinkering to just straight up add books.

>7 Bettesbooks: Thanks to you and the_red_shoes for the info.

>3 MarthaJeanne: Weirdly, they are not changing, just disappearing. Changing I don't really care about, although I know some folks like to keep the version that they read consistent.

>15 Well-ReadNeck: I said "or stops carrying it".(that ISBN) In that case the cover will disappear.

LibraryThing has to work within Amazon's rules. If LT wants to have access to Amazon covers, those covers have to be the default. You can set your account to not use them.

>7 Bettesbooks: Thanks for the info! I’ve gone back and started the long slog to make sure I have member uploaded covers. Running into a new problem: now several of those new covers are not showing up when I use the app. Weirdly, when I use cover explorer the are not showing missing and when I attempt to edit from the app, the photo I chose shows as one being used when I’m in the record, but on my library list, just the generic no cover shows. Are u having this problem as well as you shift to member covers?

>17 MarthaJeanne: that’s good news. Could u tell me how to set my account not to use them?

>19 Well-ReadNeck: Go to Home => Settings (top right corner) => Other settings => Uncheck 'Show Amazon covers' (and don't forget to save ;-) )

Closing.