Stat blocks are an essential element of what makes a litRPG. And I’ll be the first to admit I have a bias in this debate: I’m an image guy. I designed the images in Original Enchantment to approximate the look and feel of monster stat blocks from D&D 5e because it gives me warm fuzzy feelings.

Images Look Prettier…

I mean, come on. Look at that. Ignoring the fact that it doesn’t have color (there wouldn’t be much point since the Kindle and print versions of the book are both black and white), it’s a thing of beauty. Building these actually took a good deal more work than just slapping things in a table and calling it a day. When I did it, I was hoping they’d really let my work stand out from the crowd.

…But They Have A Lot of Drawbacks

I didn’t discover the pitfalls of my approach until after the book’s launch. As it turns out, using images presents some real challenges.

Screen Reader Support

I kick myself over the first one, since, as a web developer, I ought to know better. Images require additional “alt” text to work with screen readers. This bit of unseen metadata describes what’s in your image to visually disabled readers. Failing to include it in a litRPG where the stats are a key part of the narrative gives those a very broken experience. One rightfully-peeved reader was kind enough to point this out in a well-deserved one-star review, after which I spent several weekends trying to fix it without success.

Side-Scrolling

The second challenge can be harder to diagnose. I have been told by readers that their Kindle app/device of choice won’t display images without side-scrolling. I haven’t been able to reproduce this on any of my own devices, and I know it shouldn’t be an issue; pages on a Kindle are essentially HTML and they typically have the maximum width of image elements set to 100% of the page width. It’s possible this is due to different Kindle versions behaving differently. It could also be due to the fact that a particular reader’s font size setting has an effect on image sizes (or not, which would give a poor experience for visually challenged users).

Lower Royalties

If it only came down to royalties, it’s a trade-off I’d willingly make to have pretty images. After all, prettier images could lead to more readers, which could easily result in higher overall royalties even if they’re lower per unit.

Debatable as it may be, it bears mentioning that choosing to use images over tables puts less money in the author’s pocket. KDP typically gives you 35% or 70% of the list price less delivery costs. In the US, that delivery cost is $0.15 per megabyte. And if that sounds like an outrageous money grab to you, it absolutely is. For context, Amazon takes $1.29 off the top of every one of my book sales for this delivery fee and then gives me 70% of what’s left, so I see $3.29 (~55%) of the $5.99 sales price.

Yes, I’m getting hosed on this. Mysteriously, the delivery cost didn’t drop even after I optimized and reuploaded my book. It’s worth mentioning, though, that most of my royalties come from Kindle Unlimited readers who aren’t actually buying the book, so this gross injustice applies to less than 20% of my overall royalties.

Bottom Line: It Depends on the Format

The takeaway is clear: As pretty as they are, images present too many challenges to be a good choice for Kindle. Paperback is another story entirely since none of the aforementioned drawbacks apply there. In my case, I’ll most likely be taking a hybrid approach in future books, sticking to tables on Kindle and images on paperback.

What’s Your Preference?

If you’ve read this far, I’m curious as to your preference. Do you like images in spite of their shortcomings or do you prefer your stats in table form? Please share in the comments below.