About Grayscale covers on Kindle

Hey guys! So I'm going to be putting my first self-pubbed novel up for Kindle and all other devices soon, and I'm obsessing about the cover naturally. More specifically, how it'll show up in grayscale on Kindle devices. I only use a Kindle app, so covers of everything I buy still show up in color, and of course a lot of people just not the new color Kindle Fire, but I'm trying to find out if there's any way to preview how it'll appear on older black and white Kindles. I mean, obviously I can grayscale it myself in photoshop to get an idea, but I meant more along the lines of a way to preview it as it'll show according to Kindle's specifications.

As you can see, my cover relies heavily on shading and lighting, so that has the potential to play really badly in black and white. (Note, this isn't the finished cover anyways, I'm still fiddling with resolution, not sold on the title placement, font and coloring, etc).

My other question then, if I don't like how it plays in black and white: is there a way to have two covers, a color one for Kindle apps and color devices and a grayscale one for older Kindles? And if so, how would I go about differentiating to make sure people with color devices got the color and not the black and white?

Thanks in advance for any help guys!

http://danbrennanwrites.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/burningdaylight2.jpg

Sorry! I have no idea why it showed up so large in thread, and tried to edit it to just include the link, but my browser's on the fritz and posted a new thread! Eeps! Can a mod delete one of the threads? Sorry about that!

And thanks so much for the answer!

Medievalist said:

Right now, there isn't a way to include two images for covers in a single Kindle book.

Also--would you please re-size that image to about half the current size? We have a lot of dialup members, and a lot of members who have bandwidth charges that are high.

And I honestly would have to go check to see if the B and W kindles are 4/8/16 shades of gray--I think the early model was 4.

Your artist should be able to downstep and tweak the color version to a good looking grayscale cover.

Click to expand...

Ack! You all are awesome. Thanks so much, I'm off to try all this.

And veinglory, thanks for the feedback. I hadn't seen it that way, but I can see how there's a disconnect between the head and torso...they should go together, so I'll play around with the opacity of the figure.

That was my understanding as well Gale, and Cyia, you're right it is Bleeding Cowboy - I just downloaded it the other day and love it so I've been playing with it a bit too much. I'm fairly certain it's not the right fit for this cover and won't be using it on the final, for sale product. If I do, I will certainly run it by the creator - don't want to profit off another designer's work anymore than I'd want someone else to profit off my books, after all. (The cover itself is five layered photos that are a mix of my own shots and stock photos I purchased commercial use rights too).