Optimum cover image kilobyte size for those darned delivery fees?

473 Views 5 Replies 4 Participants Last post by AnneEton, Jan 8, 2013

AnneEton

Discussion Starter · Jan 8, 2013

So I was reading today's thread

[URL=http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,138598.0]http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,138598.0.html[/url]

and I thought, "Oh no." I haven't trimmed the file size of any of my covers... and it seems that may cost me money! (At least in the long run.)

I use Photoshop Elements and I can save my covers as lower-quality jpegs. Does anyone have a certain file size they shoot for? I want to get the image kb's as low as possible without it looking like gunk on the HD ereaders.

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AnneEton

Discussion Starter · #2 · Jan 8, 2013

And I just make a low-quality jpeg of my cover, as a test, that looks as good to me as the original. So, 1.2MB file size vs. 98KB size... Hmmm...

Amazon.com's delivery fee is US $0.15/MB, and rounds file sizes up to the nearest kilobyte...

So I can save a delivery charge difference of over ten cents per book? Gaaaah. Well, at least I'm not finding this out later!

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jackz4000

· #3 · Jan 8, 2013

Amazon recently increased the pixels they want. I think it was 2300 x 1500? Check at KDP.

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robin_hart

· #4 · Jan 8, 2013

Yeah they recommend a high pixel count...1563 by 2500 last I checked, but I didn't realize it would end up allowing them to charge us more...hmm.

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Aaron Pogue

· #5 · Jan 8, 2013

It doesn't matter (unless you're embedding an HTML cover page, anyway). KDP prefers for you to leave out the cover image and then upload that 2300x1500 jpeg during the book upload process.

We've done extensive testing, and that image is not included in the file size/transfer fee. It's a pretty elegant way of handling the very thing you're worrying about.

On the other hand, any other images embedded in the document will tend to bloat the file size.

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AnneEton

Discussion Starter · #6 · Jan 8, 2013

Aaron Pogue said:
It doesn't matter (unless you're embedding an HTML cover page, anyway). KDP prefers for you to leave out the cover image and then upload that 2300x1500 jpeg during the book upload process.

We've done extensive testing, and that image is not included in the file size/transfer fee. It's a pretty elegant way of handling the very thing you're worrying about.

On the other hand, any other images embedded in the document will tend to bloat the file size.

Thanks Aaron! You've solved all my concerns.

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