# Books download with blank covers



## MBlack (Mar 12, 2012)

I bought three ebooks today, using my computer. When I turned on my Kindle, they came in with blank covers. This happened once before, too. Now I have four blank cover books. Not only can't I see the pretty covers, but I don't know which is which!



Any advice out there? It's appreciated!


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## BTackitt (Dec 15, 2008)

unfortunately some books don't load correctly with covers.. big 6 or indie, sometimes they just are not there.


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## MBlack (Mar 12, 2012)

Hmm. Thanks. 

Maybe I need to return the books, and then buy them again. Phooey.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

What device are you using?  

The first thing to try, as you suggest, is to delete them and re-download them.  No need to re-buy them, I'd say.

You could also try a restart.

If you have a Fire, you could try clearing the data and then doing a sync.

If none of that works, then it's probably time to call Kindle CS and explain the problem.


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## MBlack (Mar 12, 2012)

Hi Ann,

I have a Kindle Fire. I would be glad to try and delete, but have no idea how to re-download.

By restart, I'm assuming you don't mean turn off the device and then turn back on. I did this last night, without effect on the covers. 

Hmm, no idea how to clear the data and do a sync. I guess I'm a newbie with the Fire.

Thanks! I'll try deleting the one of the four that was free and see if I can re-download, I guess.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Marilyn. . . . .try the steps here: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,91485.msg1527766.html#msg1527766

It's for a different problem . . . .but might work for you.

And, as it's a Fire problem, I'm going to move the thread to Fire Talk . . . . .might be someone there will have seen it before.


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## BTackitt (Dec 15, 2008)

Sometimes, there just IS no cover image included, or it's not loaded as a cover image, you may find it in the book as page 1.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Good point.  On the other hand, I've had books that had covers lose their covers.  Makes me think the books have been skinny dipping during the night.  

Betsy


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

My completely unsupported opinion is that it has to do with connection speeds.  Though why that would be, I have no idea.  I'm probably dead wrong. 

But, sometimes a restart will fix it, or a re-sync, or deleting the books and re-downloading them, or clearing the cache.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

And sometimes it doesn't.  Is a puzzlement.  Haven't had it happen yet on the new Fire.  I think it's some kind of memory management issue.  I didn't have it happen until I'd had a lot of stuff on my Fire.  And not yet on the new one.

Betsy


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## briezee (Feb 16, 2011)

Ann in Arlington said:


> My completely unsupported opinion is that it has to do with connection speeds. Though why that would be, I have no idea. I'm probably dead wrong.
> 
> But, sometimes a restart will fix it, or a re-sync, or deleting the books and re-downloading them, or clearing the cache.


I think I agree with you, I've only experienced it when my connection speed slowed or was interrupted. However, I've never been able to fix it without a factory reset.


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## MBlack (Mar 12, 2012)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Marilyn. . . . .try the steps here: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,91485.msg1527766.html#msg1527766
> 
> It's for a different problem . . . .but might work for you.


It was scary, but I did it. It didn't work. All my books came back though. whew!

I've currently got 5 covers with no cover (out of a few dozen titles downloaded since June) (all the blank ones within the past few weeks). Four are blank and one has title and author name. They all do have a viable cover inside the blank cover.

Thanks for the tips.

What a pain.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

That's kind of weird.  How much stuff overall do you have on the Fire?  Might it be simply that the device is full and there are memory issues?  (Betsy mentioned earlier that that is when she's noticed oddness.) You can check memory usage by tapping the settings gear and "more".  One of the options near the bottom is "device" and when you click that the top two bits of information will be how much of the memory is being used for apps and overall.


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## MBlack (Mar 12, 2012)

Thanks, Ann.

Application Storage (1.05 GB of 1.17 GB available)

Internal Storage (5.34 GB of 5.37 GB available)

I've hardly used any of the capacity of the Fire.


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## smober (Aug 23, 2012)

MBlack said:


> I bought three ebooks today, using my computer. When I turned on my Kindle, they came in with blank covers. This happened once before, too. Now I have four blank cover books. Not only can't I see the pretty covers, but I don't know which is which!
> 
> 
> 
> Any advice out there? It's appreciated!


I've encountered this before. Usually, it seems to only happen when I purchase more than one book before turning on my Kindle Fire again. What has seemed to work for me is deleting the books from my device and then redownloading them one at a time. Sometimes, it'll also automatically add the covers when I turn the device off and turn it back on again later. It's good to know I'm not the only one experiencing this!


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## mistyd107 (May 22, 2009)

this has happened twice today. I'm hoping they appear later Ive tried the restart with no luck


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## cursor system (Aug 15, 2012)

Are you after the cover or the knowledge to get from the ebook?


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

cursor system said:


> Are you after the cover or the knowledge to get from the ebook?


That's not really the point, though. If the book HAS a cover and it's consistently not displaying properly on the device, something's not right. Or if it keeps happening with different books.

I did have one the other day that wasn't showing with a cover. I think it was mostly a connection issue -- I was trying to read the newspaper and it wouldn't open properly. I did a sync, tried it again and the blank cover was there. I let it sit for a few minutes -- on and wifi connected -- and then tapped the blank cover and the real one showed up. And then the newspaper opened just fine.

I also have one game app that I've been playing a lot lately and I think it's got some memory bloat -- filling up space it shouldn't and not clearing properly. Only minorly annoying, but there have been some 'sluggishness' issues since I got the game and played it a lot. My device is, overall, about half full, which is probably somewhat a factor. Last night I turned it off and plugged it in to charge. When I restart it I'll pay closer attention to what's using what.


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## mistyd107 (May 22, 2009)

I noticed last night that a few of my books had covers in the cloud or on the bookshelf on the device but not if they were on the carousel(black hills by nora Roberts)and the reverse was true for others. Covers on caurosel but not in cloud or library shelf(it's not about the cookies by KA Thompson and this is where I leave you by Jonathan trooper. I'm sure there are others in both instances. It only concerns me if it might signal a larger major problem with the fire so I called and one title they sent me again and it came thru ok the others no. So they had me force quit the kindle app sync and then check again. Still didn't work so they are looking into the issue further and will get back to me. It struck me that both people I spoke to found this odd. I'm not sure if it's a device problem or a book issue but the first gentleman I spoke to said it should only happen if an image is not loaded for the cover. Just thought I'd share. It may not hurt to call and talk to them if this is happening and if I hear back from them I'll share


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## mistyd107 (May 22, 2009)

Stupid ? But what does clearing the cashe do exactly??


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## Tip10 (Apr 16, 2009)

Well, in a nutshell (and VERY simplistic terms) cache is a localized copy of an item held in faster memory than its normally stored in.  It facilitates faster call ups.

For example in the PC world say a picture is stored on oa hard drive and a copy of it held in cache -- when you request the picture the operating system will first search cache to see if its there, and if so it'll feed it up to you -- otherwise it will go to the hard drive look up the location of the picture copy it into the core memory of the system and then feed it up to you.

The above is a very simplistic view of things. I did not want to get bogged down in details and lose the answer.

The rationale behind periodically clearing cache is, because its got so much stuff being crammed into and out of it, cache sometimes gets corrupted and things are not as they should be -- clearing cache is, in effect, erasing it and making the OS go back to the source for things.


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## mistyd107 (May 22, 2009)

thank you


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## mistyd107 (May 22, 2009)

Amazon contacted me yesterday and turns out this is a software issue with certain books they are working on a fix to get out. They were able to help me atleast temporarily but apparently it sounds like different solutions are working for different people as we went thru several options.


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