Well, I can't say that it is a 30 second process. I guess it just depends on how badly you want the covers. It can often take up to 15-20 minutes to find one. I do wonder at something you said "the correct book cover" are you looking specifically for the cover on your book or any cover for that title & author? Since there are so many editions of a book published, I find it unrealistic to try to find the exact cover that matches my book. Nice, but not necessary. If I find another editions cover, I will take that and call it close enough. If the title and author are the same, but its just another edition, you are fine.

Now, on that same note, a caveat of sorts. I will not post a cover that is for a special edition, tho. Example if it says "50th Anniversary" or such, unless this is mentioned in the title and is the only edition of that book. If the listings on PBS or other databases come up with that same title & author NOT being a 50th An. edition, I won't use that cover. Does that make sense to you?

I don't know that there is necessarily a "QUICK" way of finding covers, they just sometimes take a bit longer. Please feel free to ask any other questions you have, I'm happy to try to answer them. OR contact the co-coordinators for the Image Team:

sarradee (Sarra B.)
hockeygal4ever (Beverly P.)

Hi Sherry
I have tried about 4 times to upload different book covers and I always get the same message:

The images were skipped because there is already a pending image waiting for approval in the system

I get this message even though I only tried to upload once per book.  Nothing happens after that!

I gotta be doing something wrong????  Doesn't work!!   What am I missing??

Thanks, June

June, Was this before the middle of last week? We had a glitch that we caught about then with image uploads. If it has not been a week since you last tried to upload, please wait until it has been, then check it and try again. If it still gives you this error, please contact me directly. I'll see if I can help.

Sallianne, I did forget to mention, that when you look at sites like Alibris, Abebooks, Biblio, and others, don't take the top image being blank as your answer. Skim down the page, you will often see a listing with the cover, even tho there is not one at the top. Don't know why, but they are down there more often than not!

And, as for how I search, I usually enter the ISBN into the search slot of Google or another search engine (Google's my fav)

I also FIRST check PBS for another copy of the book. Amazing how many editions are blank when there is a copy of the cover already in the system! I realize that the HC & PB are usually different covers, so I generally try real hard to find the right one for the right binding, but within the same binding, I don't care which copy I get. Hope that helps explain what I meant in the other post.

Sherry;  yes, the first time I tried it was over a week ago; then I tried again last week, and again today (3 different covers).  I can see why my first one didn't go because I scanned it but the others I got from one of the booksites and they copied to my hard drive beautifully.  None of them worked.  Luckily, I only have a few books without cover images, so I'm not too disturbed, but I DO like the covers!

Am I doing something wrong here?

I just tried uploading 10 covers and got the same message as June.

you could you amazon or some other book site. It shouldn't take long because you have the book and ISBN I assume.

I had the same problem as June.  Last week I uploaded about 7-10 pics.  I tried again today and got the error message saying they were in queue already.

Sherry, if you want to look, the first picture on my shelf that I uploaded was the Children's Picture Bible.   Thanks!

How do we upload covers for books that don't have an isbn? Also, If we're editing book data can we upload the cover at the same time or do have to use the bulk upload?

Thanks

Marie

I tried to upload images today and I am getting the same message as June and the others.  Nothing seems to be going through.  Or I just must be doing something wrong. 

Ok, all images are approved or denied from the que. Check your images, anything not up at this point, needs to be reuploaded. 

If an image is not showing either it was denied and a glitch in the system prevented the approver from sending you a PM,

or it got corrupted in the upload, which can happen, and it just needs to be put up again.

But, the main thing is, you know anything uploaded before 1:00 am ET that isn't showing, isn't going to come up. Recheck it and reupload it.  If it doesn't come up this time, feel free to PM me and see if I can help you figure out what the problem is.

Hope this helps those working on images this week.

Mona, there happened to be at least one from you, I sent you a PM on it.

Hey! For those that are doing cover images, even tho it says it on the page, it's still easy to miss if you are not real familiar with graphics -- the images you upload MUST be in the JPG format, they cannot be GIF format.  For those that don't know, that means, when you look at the file name (when you Save As...) the last three digits MUST be JPG  If it's not, you will have to use a graphics editing program and convert it (FILE/SAVE AS...) to a JPG (FILE TYPE - jpg/jpeg) Thanks everybody!

Also, I missed a question above. DO NOT upload your images with your book edits. Always upload them separately. Don't ask me why, but they never take, and I'm not going to bother Robert to ask why right now either :)  Just always upload images using the Upload Book Covers link. Thanks!

THANKS Sherry!

Thanks Sherry!!  Got your PM.  At least one of my covers worked.  Yippeee!  I'm going to try to do a few more today and see what happens.  Again, thanks for helping us all out here on this issue.

Thanks Sherry!    I uploaded 23 last night. I wouldn't have been able to do that without your help.  Google images rock!!

ok.  I tried to redo mine today and it seems as though they worked.  How long does it take for them to be "approved" and uploaded?

Tracy

Tracy, it depends on how many are uploaded and how many volunteers are available to approve them. If a lot of people uploaded today, and only one volunteer had time to work on approvals today and tomorrow, you may not see your images for 3-4 days. Odds have been very good at getting them approved within a couple days, but as a general rule, always allow at least a week before trying again, and if it doesn't go the 2nd time then feel free to contact myself or one of the co-coordinators hockeygal4ever (Beverly P.) or sarradee (Sarra B.) directly.

In addition to everything that Sherry has said, here are some tips for image uploading that will help ensure that your images get approved.  The process for pm'ing members whose images aren't passing is very, very cumbersome at the moment and it's quite possible that an image might not make it and you might not get a pm.  I apologize for this, and Robert is working on fixing it to make it easier.

• The images themselves need to be under 5mbs in size , and cropped so that all you can see is the book cover, they also need to be in .jpg or .jpeg format only. It appears the optimum size is around 500 pixels high by 300 pixels wide. They should be as clear as possible. Book images that are too small to read the title and or too blurry will not be accepted into the database.  Bigger seems to be better as long as the aspect ratio is good, the smaller the image the harder it is to see all the details.

•  If you are submitting scanned images or photographed, they also need to be cropped so that all you can see is the book cover. Scanned and photographed images need to be straight on, they will not be accepted if the book cover is tilted at an angle or if there is excessive glare on the image.

In doing approvals over the past couple of days there have been a lot of images that aren't cropped, or aren't cropped and containing the "Look Inside" arrow from Amazon.  Those are immediate non-approvals.  When you download an image to submit, I suggest looking at it in your image software before uploading it to the database to make sure there isn't any white space surrounding the book.

Also, if you're scanning/photographing the book covers, please make sure the book is in good condition.  If there are patches missing, huge creases across the entire cover, or other really obvious damage that book is probably not the one we want as a representative image in the database.  I hear you can work wonders with Photoshop, but I'm not that savvy and wouldn't know how.

In addition to watching to not add images with Amazon's arrow, it is important that images that have the phrase "Copyrighted material" not be submitted. If the image is being given as part of the promotion of the book, that is one thing, but when it clearly states that it is copyrighted, that means DON"T USE IT. Please, let's not try to get PBS involved in a law suit :)

Thanks, Sarra, for adding extra tips on the scanning. If an image is scanned crooked, most programs will allow you to straighten the image, but you have to know how and actually do it, same with exessive creases and mars on a cover  :)

I've found scans on the Internet that I won't use unless I can fix the bad looks, touch up the creases, straighten it up, etc. Otherwise it's just a crappy image, and I want PBS to have good stuff, so I'll leave a blue image rather than submit a crappy one. Thanks again, Sarra! Good stuff to remember!

Ditto to the "image was skipped problem". On two covers.

Please send me a PM and I will give you my email addy so that you can send a couple of them to my as attachments. I will see if I can figure out what the problem is. Besure the name of the file is the ISBN. Thanks Sallianne & Angie (or anybody else that's having problems with uploading covers!)

Ok, all the images in the que have been approved, so if you uploaded images that are not showing, please send me or one of the coordinators a PM to see if we can help you figure out why.