[chadgeidel]

I'd love to do this using "pulp" science fiction book covers. I assumed that there was already a tutorial for this, but my Google-fu is weak. Did you use a guide or just DIY? What size/resolution image does the Kindle expect? Is there a filename format or a directory structure to use?

[semi-extrinsic]

Here you go (there is a link on that page for latest Kindle's, this is for v. 1/2/3/4:

http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Screen_Saver_Hack_for...

Image format is grayscale 800x600 (bigger for Kindle DX) png or jpg. For best quality I recommend fiddling a bit with the color to grayscale work in Gimp or Photoshop, especially if the image has large areas with soft gradients. IIRC, running a selective Gaussian blur after grayscaling, and/or working the curves tool a bit before grayscaling, will improve problematic images quite a bit. Early models had only 4 grayscales, now they have 16. "Posterize" to 4 or 16 colors after grayscale in Gimp will give you a good idea of how the end result looks.

[DanBC]

I think you want screensaver hacks. Here's one example, but there are others.

http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Screen_Saver_Hack_for...

Some people add their contact details to the screensaver images, so if you lose your kindle your contact details are the first thing someone who finds it will see.

[rsync]

Maybe a better hack would be to disable screensavers since they serve no purpose on an e-paper display and actually cost battery to switch from text -> screensaver -> text.

The better behavior would be to not flip the screen at all and keep it static, using no battery.