2026-10-08
KDP's actual Kindle ebook cover size rules — and why a PNG cover gets rejected
Bowker, the U.S. ISBN agency, reported in March 2026 that the total number of books published in the United States with an ISBN jumped 32.5% in 2025 over 2024, to more than four million — and that the growth was driven almost entirely by self-publishing, where the count of print and e-books soared 38.7%, to 3,529,980 titles from 2,545,885 in 2024, according to the Bowker figures Publishers Weekly published. A large share of those titles go up through Kindle Direct Publishing, and every one of them needs a cover image before it can go live — a file that Amazon's own KDP help pages size, format, and color-profile to a specific set of numbers that have nothing to do with how a design tool exports by default.
What KDP's own help page requires for an ebook cover
KDP's cover-image help topic states the format rule plainly: a cover file must be in “TIFF (.tif/.tiff) or JPEG (.jpeg/.jpg) format,” in “RGB (red, green, blue)” color, at “72 dpi,” and “less than 50MB.” On top of the format, there's a size rule with four distinct numbers, not one: “Ideal dimensions for cover files are 2,560 pixels in height x 1,600 pixels in width,” with a note that for the best display on high-definition devices “your image should be 2500 pixels in height” at minimum for that ideal case; a floor of “minimum dimensions of 1000 pixels in height and 625 pixels in width”; a ceiling where the “cover image should not exceed 10,000 pixels in height and in width”; and a shape rule independent of all three — “an ideal height/width ratio of at least 1.6:1.” That ratio is exactly what 2,560÷1,600 and 1000÷625 both work out to: every size KDP names, big or small, is the same rectangle, just scaled.
The format rule that catches most covers: no PNG
Read the accepted-format line again: TIFF or JPEG. Not PNG. That's the part almost nobody checks before uploading, because PNG is the default export format for most design tools someone without a print-design background reaches for — Canva's “Download” button, a screenshot of a cover mockup, a transparent-background logo layer flattened in an image editor. None of those produce a TIFF or a JPEG on their own. KDP's own file-rejection guidance separately notes that a “could not convert” error on upload often traces back to exactly this — the wrong format, or a transparency layer that was never flattened before export (a PNG's alpha channel has no equivalent in a finished book cover, which is why it has to go). A cover built as a PNG needs one conversion step before KDP will even look at it.
Ebook cover vs. print cover: two different files, two different specs
Everything above is specifically the Kindle ebook cover — the image that shows in the Kindle store and on the device's library grid. KDP's paperback and hardcover print cover is a separate upload with a separate spec built around a single wraparound PDF: front, spine, and back as one page, sized to the book's exact trim size and page count (the spine width changes with page count), with bleed and safe-zone margins and, per KDP's own rejection-reason notes, a minimum resolution recommendation of 300 DPI for print quality. That PDF has to be assembled in a page-layout or cover-template tool that understands spine width and bleed — it isn't a single flat image, so it's outside what an on-device image resize/crop/ convert tool like nearIMG does. This piece, and nearIMG's actual tools, only apply to the flat ebook cover image.
| Requirement (ebook cover) | KDP's own number |
|---|---|
| Accepted format | TIFF (.tif/.tiff) or JPEG (.jpeg/.jpg) — not PNG |
| Color profile | RGB |
| Ideal size | 1,600 × 2,560px (width × height) |
| Minimum size | 625 × 1,000px |
| Maximum size | 10,000 × 10,000px |
| Height/width ratio | at least 1.6:1 |
| File size | under 50MB |
| Compression | KDP says to avoid it — “try to avoid compressing your files” and upload with minimal compression, since its own previewer compresses further |
Building a compliant ebook cover with nearIMG
- Crop to 1.6:1 first if the file isn't already that shape. A cover exported from a design tool at its own canvas size, or a photo meant to become a cover background, is rarely already a 1.6:1 rectangle. nearIMG's Crop tool doesn't have a 1.6:1 preset among its 1:1, 4:3, 16:9, and 3:4 options, so drag the box freely to the right shape by eye, or over-crop slightly and let Resize's exact pixel mode fix the final ratio.
- Resize to the exact pixel pair — 1,600 width by 2,560 height for the ideal case. Typing both numbers into nearIMG's Resize tool with “keep aspect ratio” off forces that exact size; if the source is already close to 1.6:1 from the crop step, almost nothing gets stretched. A cover coming from a small source image can also go through nearIMG's AI upscale mode first, since enlarging a plain photo past its real detail looks soft otherwise.
- Convert to JPG, not PNG. nearIMG can output PNG and WebP as well as JPG, but neither is on KDP's accepted-format list for a cover — TIFF or JPEG only. nearIMG converts to JPG locally in the browser; it doesn't produce TIFF, but KDP accepts either, so JPG covers the case nearIMG handles. Converting flattens any transparency the design tool left in a PNG export, which is the other half of the “could not convert” failure mode.
- Turn the quality slider up, not down. nearIMG's JPG conversion defaults its quality slider to 85%, a sensible default for photos in general, but KDP's own guidance is to avoid compressing a cover at all and upload with minimal compression — its preview pipeline already compresses further on top of whatever arrives. Push the slider toward 95–100% for a cover; a 1,600×2,560px JPG at that quality is nowhere near the 50MB ceiling.
What this doesn't do
- nearIMG doesn't build the print (paperback/hardcover) cover. That's a single wraparound PDF with a spine sized to the exact page count, assembled in a cover-template or page-layout tool — a different file and a different KDP spec from the ebook cover covered here.
- nearIMG doesn't export TIFF. KDP's format line names TIFF first, but also accepts JPEG; every example above uses the JPEG path nearIMG actually has.
- nearIMG doesn't check KDP's cover against Amazon's content policies (adult content thresholds, trademarked imagery, or whether the design matches the book's metadata) — only the pixel size, ratio, and format a resize/crop/convert tool can actually affect.
The short version
KDP's own help page wants a Kindle ebook cover as a TIFF or JPEG (not PNG) in RGB, ideally 1,600×2,560px, never smaller than 625×1,000px or larger than 10,000×10,000px, always at least a 1.6:1 height-to-width ratio, under 50MB, and compressed as little as possible. Crop to that ratio, Resize to the exact pixel pair, and Convert to JPG with a high quality setting, entirely in the browser with nearIMG — before an unpublished manuscript's cover file ever leaves the device it was designed on.