I am fascinated to see that the current Kindle Publishing Guidelines instruct us that an internal cover is mandatory. Previously we were told that if we included a cover, it would simply be suppressed and replaced by a degraded version of the separately uploaded Product Image. Can anyone enlighten me about this apparent change?
The Guidelines now state:
Quote:
3.2.2 Cover Image Guideline #2: Internal Content Cover Image Is Mandatory
Kindle books 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.
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="coverimage"/>
...
</manifest>
This syntax is part of IDPF 3.0 standard and described at http://idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-
publications-20111011.html#sec-item-property-values.
Method 2:
Publishing on Kindle: Guidelines for Publishers
Kindle Publishing Guidelines Amazon.com 18
<metadata>
...
<meta name="cover" content="my-cover-image" />
...
</metadata>
...
<manifest>
...
<item href="MyCoverImage.jpg" id="my-cover-image" media-type="image/jpeg" />
...
</manifest>
The use of name="cover" in the metadata element name is mandatory.
This syntax is not part of the IDPF standard, because the standard does not provide for cover images.
However, it was designed with help from the IDPF and will validate in an IDPF validator.
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https://kindlegen.s3.amazonaws.com/A...Guidelines.pdf