How to add a cover to an EPUB / PDF / MOBI book

EPUB, PDF and Kindlle MOBI books converted from other formats or downloaded from torrent sites are sometimes cover-missing, which inevitably makes the whole eBook-reading journey less satisfactory. Take it easy. Here I will explain how to add a cover to an EPUB / PDF / MOBI book with free Calibre.

And here is a guide post focus on change Kindle book's cover image.

1. Download and install Calibre on your computer.

2. Launch Calibre and drag & drop your cover-missing books to it.

3. Select a book and click “Edit metadata” on top menu bar.

4. Select “Download cover” on the following window. Calibre will auto search for the EPUB (PDF / MOBI) cover online. You can edit book title, author, etc on this window as well.

5. Click to select a cover from the search results and click “OK”.

6. The cover will get updated at once. Click “OK”.

7. Go back to the main panel, you will find the cover added to the EPUB book accordingly.

If you have got a cover on your computer, you can also select “Browse” on “Edit Metadata” screen to add cover.

The cover will be added as well. Click “OK” to go back to the main screen.

Covers have been added to the EPUB and PDF books.

However, things are not done yet!

As long as you select one eBook and click “Click to open” on the right hand side to check the cover-added EPUB / PDF book, you will find the cover is missing still!

I noticed this problem when I tried to check the result by deleting the original version from Calbre and adding the newly generated EPUB and PDF to it. To my surprise, the covers of both files were missing still. The covers haven't been integrated to both eBooks!

Then how to successfully add a cover to an EPUB / PDF / MOBI eBook?

It’s easy. Just one more step.

When finishing adding covers to EPUB / PDF / MOBI books, don’t forget to select the title and convert the book to its original format again. For example, if the original is PDF, convert it to PDF again after adding a cover to it.

Set the “Output format” as PDF (according to the original) and click “OK” to convert.

When the status in the lower right corner turns to “0”, the conversion is done.


Click “Click to open” to get the converted book (PDF), you will find both the converted PDF and the original one with “original” chars added to the file name under the output folder.

Add the newly created book (PDF) to Calibre and check again (with all originals deleted from Calibre). You will find the cover has been successfully added to the PDF book this time.

Now, two steps to add a cover to an EPUB/PDF/MOBI eBook by yourself: Edit metadata and convert to its original format. Drop a comment below if you have any problem.