Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines 2025.1

[jhowell]

Version 2025.1 of the Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines is now available. This is the first update since 2019.

Listed changes are:

• Updated following sections as Amazon supports enhanced typesetting for all conversion formats.
  • 3. Comparing formats
  • 11 Creating Fixed-Layout Books with Text Pop-Ups
  • 12 Creating Fixed-Layout Books with Image Pop-Ups or Virtual Panels
  • 13 Creating Fixed-Layout Books Without Pop-Ups
• Removed the following sections as Amazon restricting MOBI format ingestions and following tools are deprecated
  • 2.2.1 KindleGen
  • 2.2.3 Kindle Comic Creator
  • 2.2.4 Kindle Kids' Book Creator
  • 20.1 KindleGen Command
• Updated 2.1.1 Kindle Create support Children’s book conversion by providing Guided View experience
• Updated 2.2.1 Kindle previewer can be used to validate your file for publishing errors
• Revised 4.1 Cover Image specifications and the checklist for better rendering on Kindle
• Revised 4.2 Internal Content Cover Image checklist for better rendering on Kindle
• Revised 5.1 HTML TOC Guidelines best practice and checklist for better customer experience
• Revised 5.2 NCX Guidelines checklist for better customer experience
• Revised 9 QA Standards checklist to ensure accessibility and for better customer experience
• Revised 10.3.1 Heading Alignment and Justification for better customer experience
• Revised 10.3.5, Margin and Padding Formatting checklist for better rendering on Kindle
• Updated 10.4.1 Use of Supported Input Formats
• Revised 10.4.2, Image Size and Quality Standards checklist for better rendering on Kindle
• Updated 10.4.6 PNG for Line-Art and Text for better rendering on Kindle
• Added 17.2.1 Workarounds to avoid frequent conversion failures

[JSWolf]

10.4.2 Image Size and Quality Standards

Images must meet the minimum quality standard of 300 ppi for the intended display size. The minimum standard for a full-page image in a book after allowing for margins, running heads, page numbers, and captions is an image size of 4" x 6". At 300 ppi, this image must be a minimum of 1200 x 1800 pixels. The following terms will define specific use cases and provide examples of how to meet this standard

What hypocrites. Amazon want hi-res images and won't let you have them as hi-res images.

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What hypocrites. Amazon want hi-res images and won't let you have them as hi-res images.

And you don't think that this is in preparation to deliver hi-res images?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

And you don't think that this is in preparation to deliver hi-res images?

The resolution and bit depth of images delivered by Amazon already depends on the device the ebooks are being sent to. My PW4 gets smaller grayscale images while my K4PC and K4A app get larger colour images. Perhaps the difference between a screen that Amazon knows is 1072px by 1448px with 16 shades of gray (4 bit mono) screen and a screen that currently is 3840px by 2160px with 16.7 million colours (24 bit (8 red, 8 green, 8 blue)).

[Quoth]

Though my PW3 gets mono (now with KFX, the azw3 was color) and the Kindle DXG gets colour.

Also the PW3 azw3 has a bug on image display size compared to same azw3 on a Kindle Graphite Keyboard AKA K3.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Though my PW3 gets mono (now with KFX, the azw3 was color) and the Kindle DXG gets colour.

Also the PW3 azw3 has a bug on image display size compared to same azw3 on a Kindle Graphite Keyboard AKA K3.

What's the PW3/KF8 bug?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What's the PW3/KF8 bug?

I forget exactly. Under certain circumstances the image is madly the wrong size, compared to azw3 on K3 or epub on anything.

Hitch knows about it and remarked on it some long while ago.