Topaz looks horrible...

[AnemicOak]

I finally found out how bad topaz format is for myself. What makes little sense is that books 1 & 3 in the trilogy I'm interested in are topaz and book 2 is azw. Wonder why they all aren't one or the other.

Thankfully all I got were the samples, but they're horrible. Page turns are super slow and the text has an almost blurry quality to it. No sale here (and unfortunately Amazon's the only place to get them).

Does anyone know, do publishers pick which format a book will be in or does Amazon? From what little research I've done it doesn't seem like any publisher is exclusively topaz so that's why I wonder.


I can see a use for a format that can have fonts embedded & stuff, but they need to get it so it doesn't look like a low rez scan or bad photocopy.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

I finally found out how bad topaz format is for myself. .....

I can see a use for a format that can have fonts embedded & stuff, but they need to get it so it doesn't look like a low rez scan or bad photocopy.

I just found out how bad topaz is, too! Last June, the first two murder mystery books by Julia Spencer-Fleming were freebies for the Kindle, so I grabbed them. Took me till now to start on them. The first one (now $6.99 for Kindle) would be worth it even at that price. GREAT new (to me) author, and I'm going to have to follow the whole series.

The second book was also free last June or so. I started reading that, and it's a pretty horrible format. It looks like a bad photocopy, as you said. Apparently, *this* author/publisher knows this is bad, cause this 2nd book is no longer available in Kindle format. Arghh -- now that I love the author, I'll have to go ahead and read the topaz (.azw1) format that I have, cause I can't wait. But I'm glad they aren't selling it in this format. I clicked "want this in Kindle form".

Great author, though!

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Great author, though!

Well one good thing about topaz, or this thread at least. I've been meaning to give this author a try. I've got the free PDF's of her first two, hopefully they'll convert ok.

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

I finally found out how bad topaz format is for myself. What makes little sense is that books 1 & 3 in the trilogy I'm interested in are topaz and book 2 is azw. Wonder why they all aren't one or the other.

Thankfully all I got were the samples, but they're horrible. Page turns are super slow and the text has an almost blurry quality to it. No sale here (and unfortunately Amazon's the only place to get them).

Does anyone know, do publishers pick which format a book will be in or does Amazon? From what little research I've done it doesn't seem like any publisher is exclusively topaz so that's why I wonder.


I can see a use for a format that can have fonts embedded & stuff, but they need to get it so it doesn't look like a low rez scan or bad photocopy.

Have you emailed Amazn and told them you aren't buying and why?

They have to know about this so they'll maybe 'get on the stick'.....

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

Have you emailed Amazn and told them you aren't buying and why?

They have to know about this so they'll maybe 'get on the stick'.....

No, but I will be. I'd also like to email Tor, but so far can't find an appropriate email addy. I'd really like to know if the publisher or Amazon decides on the format as it seems so random.

[badgoodDeb]

I think they know for the author I mentioned above, cuz the one I want isn't available any longer, for Kindle!! The 1st, and number 3-6 (i.e. all the rest) are, though. Guess they just haven't yet gone back to fix that 2nd one.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

I think they know for the author I mentioned above, cuz the one I want isn't available any longer, for Kindle!! The 1st, and number 3-6 (i.e. all the rest) are, though. Guess they just haven't yet gone back to fix that 2nd one.

Guess this shows us something else interesting: they pulled the Kindle version of book 2 off the system. You can't buy it any more. *BUT* they didn't reach down and delete my copy. In fact, they let me download it to Kindle2. [Unless it was pulled from the market just since K2 reached me!]

Maybe I'd better finish reading it, though, before I turn on wireless again. Just in case they read this note!

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

I think they know for the author I mentioned above, cuz the one I want isn't available any longer, for Kindle!! The 1st, and number 3-6 (i.e. all the rest) are, though. Guess they just haven't yet gone back to fix that 2nd one.

They can't be told often enough. Seriously, they need to stop doing this, and the only way that'll happen is if people constantly remind them the sales they are losing.

[JSWolf]

The problem is here we have another incomplete series. One eBook is missing from Amazon and all I can find are books 1 & 6 from other shops. So this basically makes it a bust as far as eBooks go. This is a perfect example of why eBooks are not taking off as well as they should.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem is here we have another incomplete series. One eBook is missing from Amazon and all I can find are books 1 & 6 from other shops. So this basically makes it a bust as far as eBooks go. This is a perfect example of why eBooks are not taking off as well as they should.

This is one of my biggest peeve about ebook publishing. I suppose they're probably basing it on what's currently selling well in back catalog paperbacks but that's heavily influenced by people getting stuff at the library, borrowing and buying used. I don't want to read paper so if I hear about a series I might like, I want to find book 1 in ebook form, then book 2 and so on.

[AnemicOak]

On the series thing, it is getting better (just looking back to a year ago things have improved). Still not great, but they seem to be slowly trying. Just not fast enough for most of us. Of course sometimes they do it with new series which is pretty unexplainable. I don't buy pbooks anymore so there are a lot of series I'm hoping we'll see soon (I'm a series junkie).

As I mentioned in another thread, for older titles it seems like they're waiting until they need to do the work for a new run of pbooks and then they do an ebook to go along with it this would obviously save some money on the production front. Can't totally blame them as ebooks are still a tiny market even if it is growing by leaps and bounds & a lot of publishers don't yet seem convinced to put too much money towards things.

Maybe the publishers need to start hitting the pirate sites/torrents since for a lot of books the initial work's already been done for them.

[JSWolf]

But we have a series here that has all the books in eBook form in some form. Other then the one in Topaz, all the rest are Mobipocket. So why not get #3 in Mobipocket and then release them all to the various eBook shops with a reasonable price for those in MMPB? Anyway, I've sent an email to the Julia asking how i can go about getting her books in eBook format in either MS Reader, Mobipocket, or ePub. I'll see what sort of answer I get back.

[StanDaMan]

Wow that's really too bad ....

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But we have a series here that has all the books in eBook form in some form. Other then the one in Topaz, all the rest are Mobipocket. So why not get #3 in Mobipocket and then release them all to the various eBook shops with a reasonable price for those in MMPB? Anyway, I've sent an email to the Julia asking how i can go about getting her books in eBook format in either MS Reader, Mobipocket, or ePub. I'll see what sort of answer I get back.

For the most part it's up to the publishers (or so most authors have told me), authors have little say unless they're big names. I agree they should be out, but Macmillan (Tor, St, Martins, etc.) seems to have an aversion to ebooks for the most part and a screwy way of putting out what little they do offer. They release very little outside the Kindle market. I don't know why. Hopefully if the Tor ebook deal is successful, if and when it happens, Macmillan will be more open with ebooks from their other labels. Dorchester's the same way. I don't know if you can get a single title of theirs unless it's from Sony or Amazon.

[tlrowley]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But we have a series here that has all the books in eBook form in some form. Other then the one in Topaz, all the rest are Mobipocket. So why not get #3 in Mobipocket and then release them all to the various eBook shops with a reasonable price for those in MMPB? Anyway, I've sent an email to the Julia asking how i can go about getting her books in eBook format in either MS Reader, Mobipocket, or ePub. I'll see what sort of answer I get back.

That's not correct, 2-5 were in Topaz, only 1 and 6 were in mobi. Unless they re-released the others.

I was glad to see the return of mobi format for this series. I suffered through the Topaz (so far the only Topaz I've bought knowlingly), because I was enjoying the books so much.