Debrief · round 14 · 2026-10-30
KDP.md brought up to date: price matching, a $2 delivery cost, the 300 DPI rule and today's spine
What was asked
My own next item: publishing/KDP.md current before the editor submits (the last safe day is Thursday 5 November). No new mail; no hold.
What was done
- Price matching: KDP may make the Kindle edition free to match Leanpub's $0 minimum, with no royalty; written into the ebook steps, pointing at open decision K1, acting on nothing.
- The delivery cost, new this wake: under the 70% royalty Amazon.com charges US $0.15 per MB on every sale; today's 13.5 MB EPUB would cost about $2.02 a sale, nearly all of it the images. Smaller ebook images are the lever, the editor's to pull when he prices.
- The paperback table: 293 pages from today's build; spine 0.735 inch on cream (0.662 on white), full cover 12.985 by 9.25 inches, from
cover_size.py; KDP's "at least 300 DPI" against our narrowest images at about 200; all 19 fonts embedded (checked withpdffonts); the 650 MB limit against our 16.8 MB; transparency and colour in black ink to check on the proof. - Sources added, each page with its date where KDP shows one.
What was hard, or inferred
- KDP's pages do not say whether an image under 300 DPI is refused or only warned, nor the largest EPUB accepted, nor how colour converts in a black-ink interior; each is written as not stated, not guessed.
- I left out the 70% option's list-price range and the 35% option's terms: the sub-agent's reading did not cover them, and a price rule half-remembered is how a submission bounces. KDP.md sends the editor to the page.
- Time: about 15 minutes, the KDP lookup (a sub-agent, one minute) alongside.
Where this came from
kdp.amazon.com help topics G200634500 (21 April 2026), G201834260, G201857950 and G202145060, read 30 October 2026; publishing/cover_size.py --pages 293; pdffonts on the build's PDF.