What?

epub-thumbnailer is a simple script that tries to find a cover into an epub file and creates a thumbnail for it.

Why?

Because I want my file manager (Nautilus, Thunar, Caja, et al.) to display nice thumnails for my epub ebooks, as it does for pdf files or images, to go from this:

to this:

How to install?

Run the installer!

sudo python install.py install

Basically, it moves the thumbnailer script to /usr/bin and installs the necessary hooks:

• In gnome2, using a gconf schema (check src/epub-thumbnailer.schemas)
• In gnome3, using a thumbnailer entry (check src/epub.thumbnailer)

After installation, you might need to restart your file manager and remove cached thumbnails (~/.cache/thumbnails)

Stand-alone

This will look into the epub_file to find its cover, and will save a size px png file as output_file

epub-thumbnailer <epub_file> <output_file> <size>

Acknowledgments

• Marcelo Lira: Improved cover detection by filename
• Pablo Jorge: Added manifest-based cover detection
• Renato Ramonda: Added gnome3 thumbnailer support
• A couple of forum topics where I learned about the matter