03-08-2019, 11:57 AM | #1 |
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Kindle cover problem
Hello everyone! I am new here so not sure if this is correct category.
Anyway... I am formatting books for living. For print and ebooks. So far I didn't had problems with any of my clients, but... One client is asking that I make kindle cover with black background. It is mobi file and cover is uploaded with correct kindle size. So when you open book in kindle device (paperwhite) you need to "slide" to the left to see cover. And that "screen" has left and right white bar, or to say margins. Now, I know how to stretch cover to fill full screen on kindle, but in this case, that is not possible (client don't want it). Now, my question is, is there any way to change "white bars" to black? That is what my client asking. I saw some books have black "bars" on cover screen, but mostly of them are white. I used different softwares for converting to mobi, and none of them work. Not sure if that is just kindle option and not actually in mobi file thank you and nice to be here |
03-11-2019, 07:03 AM | #2 | |
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Quote:
If the image isn't the same ratio as the screen, Kindle will show white bars beside it. If you see black bars, they were in the cover image. You can quickly confirm if it's all in the image by changing the view to landscape mode, then you must see white bars beside whatever was the actual image. The thumbnail cover shown on the Kindle "grid view" booklist will be made from the cover image, so you would see black around that if there were bars in the image. I never distort a cover to make it Kindle 4:3 ratio, but often crop and/or rearrange elements it if it's too tall. Last edited by AlanHK; 03-11-2019 at 07:58 AM. |
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03-11-2019, 08:50 AM | #3 |
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In my testing using a Kindle Oasis 2 with 5.10.3 firmware, books in KF8 (azw3) format are shown with a white border around the cover and books in KFX (enhanced typesetting) format are shown with a black cover border.
These samples are in landscape mode. The first book is KF8 and the second is KFX. ------ Added: This is basically out of your control. The various Kindle apps, devices and firmware versions may produce different results. Last edited by jhowell; 03-11-2019 at 10:08 AM. |
03-14-2019, 10:58 PM | #4 | |
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Hitch |
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03-28-2019, 03:50 AM | #5 |
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Thank you all for you answers.
I did bunch of research on this and downloaded some free sample books on my kindle, and some of them had black "bars" or "backgrounds" on cover screen. Spent so many hours to figure it out and last thing I did is to uploaded the book to KDP and download it again. It had black bars lol. So to make it short, KDP is adding black or white "bars" based on cover itself. If cover is light, then it will be white and if cover it black, then "bars" will be black. They are adding it automatically... Thank you all again! |
03-28-2019, 01:14 PM | #6 |
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The bars are necessary to maintain the aspect ratio of the cover. To remove the bars you would have to stretch the image to take up the space.
Dale |
04-09-2019, 10:04 AM | #7 |
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I never include a cover in an epub, because that can (but not always) result in there being two covers, both in the downloaded book and the Look Inside sample. The first is Amazon's conversion from the separately uploaded product image, and it fills the screen. The second is my included cover, and it does not fill the screen.
I never experienced this when uploading html files to the DTP/KDP. Indeed, Amazon would not only suppress an included cover, but also a frontispiece is there was one. So I learned to move the "frontispiece" to follow the table of contents. |
04-09-2019, 10:52 AM | #8 | |
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What can still happen, though, as far as I know, is that Word-file uploaders that leave cover images inserted into their Word files can indeed still encounter the dreaded double-cover scenario. But ePUBs? No, not really. Hitch |
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05-20-2019, 10:34 AM | #9 |
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I agree with Notjohn. I submitted an epub (May 2019) from Sigil with a cover and wound up with two covers. I resubmitted it with no cover and it solved the problem.
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05-20-2019, 07:15 PM | #10 | |
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If you leave the cover.jpg in the file, but remove the cover.html file, ensuring that the cover.jpg is correctly semantically identified as the cover, that won't happen. Hitch |
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05-24-2019, 09:02 AM | #11 |
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The cover, cover.jpg, was included in a separate Amazon-specific step, separate from the epub upload.
I did try to identify semantically the cover. In Sigil, I right clicked on cover.xhtml, selected add semantics, then selected cover. It did not work. Sigil does allow me to specify cover.jpg as 'cover image.' I tried deleteing cover.xhtml and specifiying cover.jpg as cover, but it threw a "Warning OPF resource in manifest not reachable" error with the FlightCrew plug in. It's possible the epub would have worked on Amazon in spite of the error. |
05-24-2019, 09:08 AM | #12 | |
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You have to remove the cover.xhtml file, but LEAVE the cover.jpg or png or whatever you have, Right click the jpg and semantically identify it as the cover image. Save. Yes, that will not epubcheck, but it will build a proper MOBI without issues. Hitch |
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05-24-2019, 01:02 PM | #13 | |
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Is that epubcheck being overly restrictive or the kindlegen design/implementation overly lazy? |
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05-24-2019, 06:07 PM | #14 |
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06-06-2019, 01:00 PM | #15 |
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All very interesting, but I shall stick with deleting the included cover (and cover image) from the epub I upload to the KDP. Why not? It also reduces the size of the file, hence the download fee.
(The double cover last happened to me [REDACTED] That doesn't seem all that long ago to me....) Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa: it was 2014. How time flies when you're having fun! Last edited by Notjohn; 06-06-2019 at 01:39 PM. |
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