cover art size

CoffeeBlack · Aug 19, 2012

Hi all,

I have a book formatted and ready to publish for Smashwords and Kindle. I am very pleased with the cover art. The designer sent me the cover as a jpg, the size is 5860x7544.

What is the ideal size of the cover art for Smashwords and Kindle - I have read different things.

Also, when I was previewing my book on Kindle, the cover lost a lot of its color and art. I am wondering if the Kindle previews do not render the cover art correctly or if there is something my designer needs to change? For example, my organizations logo did not appear on the Kindle preview but it appears clearly on the jpg I submitted.

Thanks in advance!

Gale Haut · Aug 20, 2012

It was very nice of your designer to send you an image at a high enough resolution for printing. I bet that the color format is for printing as well.

It sounds likely that the image was cropped and compressed from it's original format--and converted to a different color mode by those sites. I would need to see a before and after to know for sure. (But please don't post them unless you can re-scale the original image to the right size for the forum.)

You should ask your designer if there is anything about her image that may have caused this. And you might refer her to the different sites' specifications for cover art, since you are publishing in multiple digital formats and will need professional assistance to get the images looking tip top.

WeaselFire · Aug 24, 2012

Kindle:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2J0TRG6OPX0VM

Smashwords:

http://blog.smashwords.com/2012/06/new-ebook-cover-image-requirements.html

Jeff

aibrean · Aug 25, 2012

The Kindle preview in KDP is not as clear as what is "live".

cover art size

CoffeeBlack

Gale Haut

waxing digital artistic

WeaselFire

Benefactor Member

aibrean

Author, Designer, Imaginative Being