Cover Image Compile Problems

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

This seems to have come about since the last update. When I compile my front cover image isn’t available to pick from the drop down list and always appears after my table of contents (which isn’t where I want it to be!)
Can anyone please guide me on what I need to do so it does appear as the first page?

Thanks Lisa

2

I’m confused on the ‘and’ operator. You state the picture cannot be chosen, but that it appears in the compiled file after the ToC, but how can it appear if you cannot choose it? Also let us know what e-book format you are using. I just ran a quick test using the Tutorial.

  1. I made a fresh copy of it
  2. Use [b]File/Compile...[/b], expanded the window and selected “ePub eBook”.
  3. Clicked on Cover and selected “Research/Alhambra”.
  4. Clicked on Meta-Data and type in some placeholder data.
  5. Clicked the Compile button and saved it as ‘cover.epub’.

This was opened in Sigil, and I verified that the HTML file order list went from cover.xhtml to contents.xhtml, and that the pre-built ToC in the right-sidebar showed likewise.

If you follow these steps, do you get a different result? If not, what about these steps differ from the settings in your project? I would also check the graphic itself to make sure the picture file is okay. If you click on it in the Binder, does it show up in the editor?

3

To fill in some gaps, the image that you want to use for your cover should be its own item in the binder, not inserted into the text. It used to be that the compiler would go through every document in the project to make all the inserted images accessible, but this was unwieldy and used a lot of memory and a lot of time and wasn’t really the design intention anyway. With 1.5.7 (maybe starting in an earlier version), this behaviour has been corrected so that the compiler only goes through the image documents within the binder to make those accessible as a cover image. Since you don’t want your cover image inserted in a text document for the ebook anyway, this is much cleaner.

It sounds like you have the image inserted into a text document at the beginning of your manuscript, so it’s compiling and appearing after the automatically generated TOC. Get rid of that document and just import the image directly into the binder, e.g. into the Research folder. You’ll then be able to choose it as a cover during compile and have this working as it should.

4

Thank you for your replies - I have now loaded the image into the Research folder and it is now appearing in the drop down in compile and as my 1st page :slight_smile: