Thread: Mobigen formatting cover for mobi: current thoughts
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Old 07-19-2012, 07:12 PM   #4
Hitch
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneFancher View Post

And as a side note on this entire topic: is Amazon still charging an extra download fee for files over a certain size? It that why they're suggesting these huge cover images (not to mention packing a million formats into a single mobi file?) (I looked on the publishing site but couldn't find that particular topic addressed anywhere)

As always,
Amazon's charged those delivery fees forever; it's not files over a certain size, as far as I recall back. It's $0.15/mb. And the real reason that they switched to having "publishers" use the product image which they now turn around and embed in the file, is because so many books were getting so screwed up, particularly those being uploaded in Word. I think that they decided the the customer support burden was so high (I can empathize) that it was simpler to just go with "one cover to rule them all" and elected the product image as the one-size-fits-all option.

We still embed 600x800's in our books. I had a client that tried to upload a cover that was, I kid thee not, over 13,000 pixels on one side (and complained that our book "isn't any good because the upload won't go.") We get upload questions...hell, I don't know, 2 out of every 5 customers? Despite Amazon's step-by-step uploading Help section? I can't imagine what Amazon's support load is like, so I can't quite blame them for going to ONE upload, ONE set of dimensions. I have at least 2 competitors who've left the business because of the customer service burden--so I suspect that Amazon has just determined to do whatever costs them less in supporting people who aren't equipped to be publishing their own books--but do, anyway.

FWIW.

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