On Amazon, DPI isn’t about “print quality,” it’s about file complexity and how easily the system can process and render your image. Even if your image is under 10 MB, exporting at 300 DPI often adds unnecessary metadata and detail density that Amazon doesn’t need, which can trip internal checks for “excessive file complexity” or make the file more likely to glitch during validation. This is why an image can look perfect, pass manual inspection, and still quietly fail or get stripped out later.
Staying at or below 150 DPI, with the right pixel dimensions (for example, 2000×2000), gives you all the sharpness you need for zoom and Retina displays while keeping the file lean and easy for Amazon’s pipeline to handle. In practice, that means: prioritize pixel size, keep DPI modest, and don’t over-architect files just to “look professional” on paper.