Kindle books new procedure remains a problem
Kindle books new procedure remains a problem. As I put out my new trilogy, I discovered that Kindle was tearing up my MOBI versions—again. It still seems like every Kindle book I do requires a new procedure.
Kindle books new procedure demands 300 dpi
Yes, you read it correctly. Here are some quotes from their guidelines:
- Use a resolution of at least 300 ppi for all images. Important: Use RGB or sRGB as the color profile when saving your files. Kindle does not support CMYK.
- For the best user experience across Kindle devices and applications, use color images whenever possible and relevant. If an image is a photograph, it should be formatted as a JPEG.
- Photographs should use the JPEG format and be saved at high quality. (In Adobe Photoshop, choose Save As, select JPEG, and click Save. In the following JPEG Options dialog box, choose a Quality level of 10 or higher.) Photographs should use the highest resolution available within the file size limit.
- This means that if an image is intended to display at full width on device, its width should be captured at 3200 px
Lineart [GIFs or PNGs]
- …the largest acceptable table rendered as an image is… The size is 500 x 600 pixels, which is the maximum. The font uses a body size (height of an “a”) of 7 pixels, which is just above the 6 pixel minimum.
So, what does this mean?
Photos, or rasterized vector art, are going to be huge. We’re looking at 3200×4267 pixels, with a file size [a level ten JPEG or better] of several hundred KB or multiple megabytes. You cannot use Save For Web, because it will convert the images to 72 dpi.
I have a hard time imagining how this would work with my Book Production With InDesign book. It has 310 graphics. Plus, many of them are screen captures, and the Kindle specs say I am not allowed to upsample.
So, I am converting the graphics to Kindle standards, exporting an ePUB and converting it with Kindle Previewer 3. I change settings until something works. It seems to change regularly. Last time I used 3200 px wide at Fixed Size. But it keeps on changing.
What a pain!