PNG in KF8 yet?

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Unfortunately that is the way images are handled in KFX format. They are converted to JPEG for the Kindle apps and grayscale JPEG-XR for e-ink Kindle devices. They can be downscaled in pixels and reduced in quality.

As far as I can tell the largest file size across all of the variants produced is shown as the file size on Amazon's product page for the book. Someone who has published may be able to comment on whether the file size on the product page is the same size used to calculate delivery costs.

Thanks for the breakdown. Our other KDP titles have only a handful of images, so I can't quite make an apples-to-apples comparison. But here is an example:
ePub: 1.6 MB
KDP says: Your book file size after conversion is 0.93 MB.
Listed delivery charge: $0.14
Amazon product page reported size: 5203 KB
KDP December report: Avg. Delivery Costs: $0.14

That's evidence that the amount the KDP author gets charged is related to what it says for the filesize in KDP, not what it says on the product page.

Still, this thread has me seriously reconsidering how I want to approach making the ePub for uploading to KDP.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Peter Ahlstrom

Thanks for the breakdown. Our other KDP titles have only a handful of images, so I can't quite make an apples-to-apples comparison. But here is an example:
ePub: 1.6 MB
KDP says: Your book file size after conversion is 0.93 MB.
Listed delivery charge: $0.14
Amazon product page reported size: 5203 KB
KDP December report: Avg. Delivery Costs: $0.14

That's evidence that the amount the KDP author gets charged is related to what it says for the filesize in KDP, not what it says on the product page.

Still, this thread has me seriously reconsidering how I want to approach making the ePub for uploading to KDP.

Peter:

Around image resolution issues, or around the delivery fees, or both?

(We've found the delivery fee size expressed in section 3, on the bookshelf, to be a pretty reliable indicator of the "final" delivery fee, if that helps. When my bookmakers complete an ebook, they are required to test-upload it at their own testing accounts, [QA] and they note the delivery fee size, too, which we share with the customer. ENTIRELY too many hysterical customers, who see the size of a file and ask "OMG, is that my delivery fee?!" especially when we were still delivering mobis. It's less frequent now, but now, giving them the number is simply habit.)

Y'know, in some eBooks, we already have included lower-resolution and higher-resolution images, with media-queries, (for different devices) but I freely admit, I can't be sure what's being used for what.

AND, let's not forget, now we have the KQN-GOK (Kindle Quality Notice--Great on Kindle) "standards" of not less than 1200px wide for images--if this is happening, if images are being reduced/compressed/shrunken, what's the bloody point?

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Peter Ahlstrom

Thanks for the breakdown. Our other KDP titles have only a handful of images, so I can't quite make an apples-to-apples comparison. But here is an example:
ePub: 1.6 MB
KDP says: Your book file size after conversion is 0.93 MB.
Listed delivery charge: $0.14
Amazon product page reported size: 5203 KB
KDP December report: Avg. Delivery Costs: $0.14

That's evidence that the amount the KDP author gets charged is related to what it says for the filesize in KDP, not what it says on the product page.

Still, this thread has me seriously reconsidering how I want to approach making the ePub for uploading to KDP.

Please don't make changes detrimental to the ePub just because Amazon botches things.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Please don't make changes detrimental to the ePub just because Amazon botches things.

Oh, the ePub we release through all other channels won't change due to this.

But I'm considering reducing the resolution for the images bound for KDP. If they want 1200, maybe I'll do that instead of 1600 as in the standard ePub.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Peter Ahlstrom

Oh, the ePub we release through all other channels won't change due to this.

But I'm considering reducing the resolution for the images bound for KDP. If they want 1200, maybe I'll do that instead of 1600 as in the standard ePub.

1200 is their new HG (Holy Grail). OMG, you mean you haven't been whacked by the GOK team yet? (Great on Kindle?).

it's sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo infuriating. The team, somehow, someway, finds some book that they wish to make Great on Kindle, right? And then they send the customer love notes, telling them that the book has "quality issues." Now, these are only Quality Issues for GOK, not generally, which has (to my eyes) somewhat arbitrary standards. They don't make it clear that there is actually NOTHING WRONG WITH THE BOOK. Naturally, the customer is not happy, thinking that we screwed up, but hell, some of these books are from 5, 7 years ago!

What's really frustrating is that they insist that images--all images!!!-must be certain standardized sizes. A half-page-wide image, thus, MUST BE 600px wide. A quarter, 300. If you have a fleuron or decorative doodad, that should be 200px wide, tough crap, it needs to be 300. (Yes, really).

When you get one of their lovely little GOK notices (which the customer forwards you, natch), you get their specifications. It's not complicated, really--300dpi, 1200px wide, thence 600px for half-width, 300px for quarter width, and oh, yes, 900 for 3/4 width.

That's about it. There's no give in the interpretation, no allowance (thus far) for aesthetics, etc. We've had to fix...IDK, under 10? But they're all infuriating. Every bloody one.

Hitch

[Quoth]

Great on Which Kindle?
App on a 4.3″phone, 10″ tablet.
Pre-2020 167 dpi 6″ Basic
6, 7 or 10.2 ″ 300 dpi Kindle?

Mad as a barrel of weasels or box of frogs.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Great on Which Kindle?
App on a 4.3″phone, 10″ tablet.
Pre-2020 167 dpi 6″ Basic
6, 7 or 10.2 ″ 300 dpi Kindle?

Mad as a barrel of weasels or box of frogs.

Why is there a need for differing image resolutions? I buy an ePub and I get the size images that comes with the ePub. If the eBook has hi-res images, I get hi-res images.

[Quoth]

Also set one dimension to a percent and the other to auto unless it's a very small image (maybe 300 px wide max?), in which case absolute pixels.

There is probably a maximum size limitation due to RAM? But I've not seen that happen on my ancient PRS350 or Kindle DXG. Certainly the DX and DXG had a stupidly low amount of RAM for the target application of Education.

I don't grok their GoK.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Originally Posted by Hitch

1200 is their new HG (Holy Grail). OMG, you mean you haven't been whacked by the GOK team yet? (Great on Kindle?).

it's sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo infuriating. ...

Yikes. No, we haven't been whacked by GOK. We've only released 11 novellas since 2012 that we published ourselves. This is the first year we're putting out our own novels (four of them) rather than using a New York publisher.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Quoth

There is probably a maximum size limitation due to RAM? But I've not seen that happen on my ancient PRS350 or Kindle DXG. Certainly the DX and DXG had a stupidly low amount of RAM for the target application of Education.

I don't grok their GoK.

RAM size does not explain the excessive compression. For given dimensions, uncompressed size will be the same regardless of the compression level.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

RAM size does not explain the excessive compression. For given dimensions, uncompressed size will be the same regardless of the compression level.

I wasn't thinking of file compression, but X x Y x bit depth /8

Nothing really explains what they are at. They should know if it's their Edge/3G/4G vs customer's Internet (of any kind to WiFi or Download for USB), which in comparison is a nearly nothing cost.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Peter Ahlstrom

Yikes. No, we haven't been whacked by GOK. We've only released 11 novellas since 2012 that we published ourselves. This is the first year we're putting out our own novels (four of them) rather than using a New York publisher.

Ah, well...you may yet escape, then! I wish I could!

Hitch

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Still haven't heard back from my contact. But I did an experiment with KDP.

For the book we're releasing next week, I made a KDP-only version with images 1200 pixels wide. I made both a version with PNGs and a version with GIFs. (The only difference is the file format; neither has transparency, etc.) Then I uploaded them and let them process. Here are the results.

PNG version:
4.3 MB
After conversion: 4.28 MB
Delivery fee: $0.64

GIF version:
4.6 MB
After conversion: 3.83 MB
Delivery fee: $0.57

I wonder why the larger file came out smaller...

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Peter Ahlstrom

Still haven't heard back from my contact. But I did an experiment with KDP.

For the book we're releasing next week, I made a KDP-only version with images 1200 pixels wide. I made both a version with PNGs and a version with GIFs. (The only difference is the file format; neither has transparency, etc.) Then I uploaded them and let them process. Here are the results.

PNG version:
4.3 MB
After conversion: 4.28 MB
Delivery fee: $0.64

GIF version:
4.6 MB
After conversion: 3.83 MB
Delivery fee: $0.57

I wonder why the larger file came out smaller...

Yesterday, I bought a book published by University of Chicago Press as azw3/azw6 from amazon and as an epub from kobo. It had 7 b&w photos with inserted black text on white background boxes and 28 line drawings.

All of the illustrations in the epub are PNG, including photos. Although the line drawing had 256 gray levels present, that was because of effective anti-aliasing because of scanning. It looks like they did make sure that the backgroung was pure full white (255,255,255).

the azw6 had the photos as wdp (JPEG-XR bitdepth=16-SIGNED, colorfmt=YONLY) and the line drawings are all GIF, 8-bit with fixed color table, which had 25 gray entries (which does not have a subset of 16 equally spaced levels). The dimensions of the original images were small enough that the output dimensions did not change, but jpeg artifacts from excessive compression were evident. The GIF images were significantly degraded compared to the PNG but I don't know whether that would be evident on an e-ink display.

In your case, it would be interesting to know the sizes oy your input GIF and PNG and the types and sizes of the KDP output images.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Peter Ahlstrom

Still haven't heard back from my contact. But I did an experiment with KDP.

For the book we're releasing next week, I made a KDP-only version with images 1200 pixels wide. I made both a version with PNGs and a version with GIFs. (The only difference is the file format; neither has transparency, etc.) Then I uploaded them and let them process. Here are the results.

PNG version:
4.3 MB
After conversion: 4.28 MB
Delivery fee: $0.64

GIF version:
4.6 MB
After conversion: 3.83 MB
Delivery fee: $0.57

I wonder why the larger file came out smaller...

Greater compression when the sausage machine converted the GIFs into JPG?

Hitch