For those of you uploading book cover images:

There is still a problem with book cover image upload.  It is intermittent, so that about 15% of my images (and probably yours too) do not make it into the database, or are only partially in the database.  

  Here's the interim solution:  keep all images that you upload and check back after a couple of days to see if the images are in the database.  If you uploaded an image large enough to have both a small and large image, check both.  (One of the symptoms of this problem is a blue box that says "view larger image" below it, or an image with the "view larger image" link below it that yields a large blue box.)  If your images did not upload properly, upload them again.  Repeat.  That is, check on your images in a couple of days and if they didn't make it, upload them again until they make it.  (This only applies if your images meet the guidelines, however.)

  I have reported the problem and management is working on it.  I will let you know when it has been resolved by posting in this thread.  

  Sherry (royaltech) is aware of the problem and I am keeping her updated

There is a duplicate post in "Club Members' Thoughts".

I thought that I would provide an update on this issue.  Robert has done everything he can think of (we have been aware of the issue for over 6 months, and he thought he had it licked more than once), but I am still losing images on upload.  I think that we (image uploaders) are just going to have to check back to make sure that our images have uploaded for the foreseeable future.  If we all get lucky and it has been cured, wonderful.  I will report any news I have.

I would be interested to hear from anyone who is keeping close track of how many images they are losing vs. how many they upload.  I haven't been uploading a lot of images lately, so I can't put a percentage on losses, and I can't say whether I am losing fewer than in the past after all Robert's efforts.

{Edited to clear this up because I'm not so with it in the middle of the night.}

Update:  http://www.paperbackswap.com/forum/topic.php?t=60867&l=25&ls=200#p2114970 

Image upload loss now at 0.00%

The book image upload problem seems to be history.  Those of us who were keeping track were experiencing an approximate 20% loss of images that we uploaded.  I have uploaded 49 images over 2 months, uploaded in eight batches and have not had to re-upload a single image.  This was a problem that had plagued us for many months, but it seems to be gone!

This is the best news that I have ever posted, and for that reason and the fact that I have discussed the problem in several places, I will post this same message in several places. 

I'm sorry to say that my announcement above was premature.  The image upload problem is back with a vengance. 

My image loss rate was 14% in August through the 26th (76 images), similar to the experience of others.  TPBST is trying to figure out what is happening.

Ah...Thanks :)  Was wondering why one of my images got posted and one didn't.  It was my first time uploading images, so I just started with two books.

What you need to do when an image gets lost in the ether is to upload it again.  If you don't get one of those "Image was skipped because . . ." messages, then you know that it isn't still out there waiting on the approvers. 

I'm confused...I uploaded two images.  If I go to my bookshelf through my account, they are there.  If I go to my bookshelf through a post of mine, they are not there.  What do I do about that?

That is usually a result of your browser hanging onto old images.  Short term fix:  hard refresh (ctrl-F5).  Long term fix is to change the setup on the browser to get a fresh image each time you visit a page.

I tried the hard refresh and still nothing.  What now?

Can YOU see the images if you look at my shelf?  They should be on the "How are Babies Made" and "Home Remedies" books.  If I search for them in the system, the image comes up.  I don't get why I can only see them if I go to my bookshelf through my acct.

Renae,

I don't see them either.  Your bookshelf is showing the blue "no image" and when I click on the title I still get the "no image" box.  When did you upload them? 

The reason that you can only see them if you go to your bookshelf through your account has to do with the size.  There are three sizes of images in PBS, and if you look at your own bookshelf, that is the smallest size.  This is the only size there is in these two listings.  You can confirm this by going to each listing, clicking on "More Options", then "edit book data".  You can see all three sizes in this page.  (Do not hit "Submit Data" unless you have made edits.)  PBS will make as many sizes of each image as the size of the uploaded image warrants.  If you think that your images were good enough that one or both of the larger images should have been created, then upload them again.  Sometimes they don't "take", which, of course, is the point of this thread.

Ok, I edited like you said, trying to upload a bigger picture.  In all honesty though, I have no idea if this one was any bigger than the last one I uploaded (I already erased that one when it showed up on my shelf).  Just starting out with the How are Babies Made one.

Somewhere Sherry (royaltech ) has a post about what sizes are required to make which PBS size images, but here's what I know:  the minimum to make a large size is 350 pixels high, with a maximum of 500 (however, for some reason, larger images are often resized to 475).  As near as I can tell, it can be 500 wide and 300 high, but that's not good enough--it focuses on the height, probably because most books are taller than they are wide.  The "regular" image is about 140-150 high, and the thumbnail is about 60px high.  Images slightly smaller will be accepted (at least for regular and large; I'm not sure about thumbnail) and just show as smaller than most. 

ETA:  To clarify the above, the system will always take larger images and resize them to the sizes needed, up to the 5mb limit. 

Yay!  It worked!  Thanks for all the help!

Book cover image loss rate continues at an average of approximately 10% over the past several months.