I was wondering if any of you put your story's cover image on the first page of your ebooks or do page background color or any such stylization?
I use the same cover for my KDP books as I do for my hard-copy Print-On-Demand books. And I don't use any background color for the content, since it can be a problem for people who read it with phones or tablets or such.
I think if you tried to color your pages it would make each page an image. It costs you money to have a huge file because kdp charges you a transfer fee. Readers would hate it because it would override their ability to change the screen color in the Kindle app.
On the title page I usually do use an image but instead of a repeat of the cover I do a stylized version of the title name. Usually I use the same fonts I used on the cover but you don't have to do that. Formatting programs usually put together a simpletitle page if you don't want to go through the trouble of making an image. You can also use images either for your chapter head or beneath it.
amazon automatically add the cover to the front of the ebook file, so if you ad it you are likely to wind up with iy in there twice also adding unecessary graphics like picture title pages will increase your file size and deliverability cost which is best avoided
thety call it delivery cost... you only pay it on the 70% royalty level not the 35% one, and its usually only a few cents, but if you put a lot of images in it can mount up... they also have a minimum charge for certain file sizes so if your file is too lathe you won't necessarily be able to price where you want
I did do some research into pricing models for the work I plan to publish, but none of it mentioned any of this stuff.
I used a lot of imagery in the Eagle and the Dragon, maps so the reader knows where the chapter is going, which we also did in Karen's WW 2 story Jake, same thing. I had around fifty small images, black and white, set in at the beginning of the chapter. They imported without effort, just part of the text file. Only problem was the KDP phone version, they wound up a bit out of place. They did NOT add to the delivery cost. I also had a lot of diagrams in a non-fiction phyics draft in work, same thing. KDP has an off-line viewer that I recommand instead of their on-line viewer, which often didn't work for me. You can download it from KDP, and then open your source document into the app. Nice thing about this is that you can see how the text looks in Kindle, Tablet or phone. I am going to change the placement of my graphics in the Kindle master for E&D, for better placement. However, concur with the comments on the cover. My paperback master has a black and white inside cover, my Kindle master does not. You want the Kindle version to get to the text as quickly as possible, and the inside cover serves no purpose. Just delete it
from KDP themselves "Delivery Costs are equal to the number of megabytes we determine your Digital Book file contains, multiplied by the Delivery Cost rate listed below. Amazon.com: US $0.15/MB Amazon.ca: CAD $0.15/MB Amazon.com.br: R$0.30/MB Amazon.co.uk: UK £0.10/MB Amazon.de: €0,12/MB Amazon.fr: €0,12/MB Amazon.es: €0,12/MB Amazon.in: INR ₹7/MB Amazon.it: €0,12/MB Amazon.nl: €0,12/MB Amazon.co.jp: ¥1/MB Amazon.com.mx: MXN $1/MB Amazon.com.au: AUD $0.15/MB We will round file sizes up to the nearest kilobyte. The minimum Delivery Cost for a Digital Book will be US$0.01 for sales in US Dollars, INR₹1 for sales in Indian Rupees, CAD$0.01 for sales in CAD Dollars, £0.01 for sales in GB Pounds, ¥1 in JPY, R$0.01 for sales in Brazilian Reals, MXN$1 for sales in Mexican Pesos, AUD$0.01 for sales in Australian Dollars, and €0.01 for sales in Euros, regardless of file size. For sales in JPY, we will not deduct any Delivery Cost for books 10 MB or greater." https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634500 Note that this is for the 70% royalty - you don't pay delivery costs on a 35% royalty book (ie any book priced below $2.99 or higher than $9.99 or where you have selected 35%... also some countries are 35% only)