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 preferred format for the marketing cover is an image of at least 2560 pixels on the longest side and at least 1600 pixels on the shortest side with 300 ppi to ensure image clarity on Kindle HDX devices. 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.

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.