Marketing Cover Image

Kindle eBooks must have a marketing cover image provided for use on the website detail page. This is provided separately from the eBook file.

The ideal size of your eBook cover art is a height/width ratio of 1.6:1. This means that for every 1,000 pixels in width, the image should be 1,600 pixels in height. To ensure the best quality for your image, particularly on high definition devices, the height of the image should be at least 2,500 pixels. Ideal dimensions for cover files are 2,560 x 1,600 pixels.

• The minimum image size allowed is 1,000 x 625 pixels.
• The maximum image size allowed is 10,000 x 10,000 pixels.
• The image file size should be 50MB or smaller.

If the marketing cover image size is smaller than the 2560 x 1600 recommendation, a reminder message is displayed at time of upload. Covers with less than 500 pixels on the shortest side are not displayed on the website. If your cover image is smaller than the recommended size, Amazon strongly recommends that you create a new image that meets the size requirements. Do not stretch the image to meet the size requirements, because this may lower the image quality.

Cover art with white or very light backgrounds can seem to disappear against the white background. Try adding a narrow (3-4 pixel) border in medium gray to define the boundaries of the cover.

The content of the cover image must not:

• Infringe another publisher's or artist's copyright on the same cover
• Mention pricing or other temporary promotional offers

Important: Use RGB as the color profile when saving your cover image files. Kindle does not support CMYK.

Note: This cover image guidance doesn't apply to KDP eBooks. If you're using KDP, follow the KDP guidelines for cover images.

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Internal Content Cover Image

Kindle eBooks must have an internal cover image provided for use within the book content. Provide a large, high-resolution cover, because Amazon quality assurance will fail the book if the cover is too small.

Do not add an HTML cover page to the content in addition to the cover image. This may result in the cover appearing twice in the book or cause the book to fail conversion.

Define covers in the OPF file using either of the following methods (underlined elements are mandatory):

Method 1 (preferred):

<manifest> ... <item id="cimage" media-type="image/jpeg" href="other_cover.jpg" properties="cover- image"/> ... </manifest>

This syntax is part of IDPF 3.0 standard.

Method 2:

<metadata> ... <meta name="cover" content="my-cover-image" /> ... </metadata> ... <manifest> ... <item href="MyCoverImage.jpg" id="my-cover-image" media-type="image/jpeg" /> ... </manifest>

This syntax is not part of the IDPF standard. However, it was designed with help from the IDPF and will validate in an IDPF validator.

Note: This cover image guidance doesn't apply to KDP eBooks. If you're using KDP, follow the KDP guidelines for cover images.