Kindle Fixed Format Books - Children's Picture Books as eBooks
New program required!
UPDATE: See this new comprehensive post about epubs for children’s picture books on Kindle for 2025.
I just got an email from Amazon saying that they are changing their policy on fixed format ebooks. A couple years ago, Amazon went to epub as the accepted format—except for fixed format ebooks.
eBooks for novels are reflowable ebooks. That is, is you increase the font size, the text reflows to the next page. It means the reader has flexibility to read the ebook at their preferred font size.
But children’s picture books usually embed the text with an image. There are programs that try to position everything carefully using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), but the program is backward compatibility. With over 100 legacy ebook readers, it’s impossible to anticipate every coding required to correctly position the text on every, single reader.
Instead, we’ve been using a fixed format ebook. Here, you export the picture book as images with the text embedded , and then upload the images. Amazon has provided the Kindle Kid’s Book Creator program for this, and it worked great. The problem? It exports to a .mobi format that has been deprecated. Amazon now wants epub files.
March 18, 2025 Changes
However, as of March 18, they will no longer accept .mobi files. So the Kindle Kids Book Creator program can no longer be used to create the ebook files.
Instead, they are recommending the Kindle Create program, which has been around for a while. It exports a print replica, so it’s perfect for books such as cookbooks and comics. And now it will be the major tool for creating ebooks from picture book for Amazon.
I just downloaded the program and will play with it. Look for more later.
So, you can upload these files to Amazon:
ePub, fixed format. They recommend this tutorial—which looks daunting! Or, you can follow my directions for using Mac’s Pages program here.
KPF format. Use Kindle Create to create the picture book and export as ePub or Kindle Package Format (KPF).
As always, be careful about file sizes! Amazon charges about $0.15/MB download fees, and picture books can easily be 20MB. The information provided in this article will help you minimize your images. If the final file is over 8MB, choose the 35% royalty option because at that rate, they don’t charge download fees. Below 8MB, you’ll still make a profit at 70%, but the smaller the file, the more profit.
Is this worth doing? Yes, I make about 10% of my Amazon sales as ebooks. And it’s another format to advertise.
It’s always something changing, isn’t it?
Robert -
I inputted a 1.6 MB pdf (exported from Adobe on Smallest Size setting). Kindle Create gave me back a 12MB KDF file. Inputting a pdf has always inflated file sizes on my books. I'll have to go to images that have been manipulated (I use ImageOptim instead of Squash, but same principle.) I'll try that and report.
Hi Darcy, I see that you also sell ebooks on your Mims house site. Can you tell me a bit more about your process there as far as what you use to do it? Always something new to learn!! :-D