diff --git a/fanficdownloader/adapters/base_adapter.py b/fanficdownloader/adapters/base_adapter.py
index 0d3f7d82..b530daa5 100644
--- a/fanficdownloader/adapters/base_adapter.py
+++ b/fanficdownloader/adapters/base_adapter.py
@@ -284,8 +284,10 @@ class BaseSiteAdapter(Configurable):
         if self.getConfig('include_images'):
             acceptable_attributes.extend(('src','alt','longdesc'))
             for img in soup.findAll('img'):
-                img['longdesc']=img['src']
-                img['src']=self.story.addImgUrl(self,url,img['src'],fetch)
+                # some pre-existing epubs have img tags that had src stripped off.
+                if 'src' in img:
+                    img['longdesc']=img['src']
+                    img['src']=self.story.addImgUrl(self,url,img['src'],fetch)
 
         for attr in soup._getAttrMap().keys():
             if attr not in acceptable_attributes:
diff --git a/fanficdownloader/epubutils.py b/fanficdownloader/epubutils.py
index 27d5257c..8fcf30f1 100644
--- a/fanficdownloader/epubutils.py
+++ b/fanficdownloader/epubutils.py
@@ -56,6 +56,8 @@ def get_update_data(inputio,
                     if getsoups:
                         soup = bs.BeautifulSoup(epub.read(href).decode("utf-8"))
                         for img in soup.findAll('img'):
+                            newsrc=''
+                            longdesc=''
                             try:
                                 newsrc=get_path_part(href)+img['src']
                                 # remove all .. and the path part above it, if present.