|
It used to be (and may still) cheaper for the publishers, because Amazon would do the conversion work for them for a low cost and apparently this could be done as a byproduct of preparing the "Look Inside" feature for print books.
Apparently it's more expensive to do a "real" text-based ebook version, though judging from some of HarperCollins' typo-ridden offerings, the services which provide that may not exactly be giving quality for money spent.
And Topaz does have certain very limited advantages, in that done well, it can preserve and present a more complex typographical layout than Amazon's Mobipocket format is capable of. This can be important for poetry books, and illustrated ones with the pictures supposed to show at a particular point in the text.
And it makes it possible for Amazon to have books in foreign language scripts that aren't covered by the Kindle's internal fonts, which only cover Roman (with accents), Greek, and now Cyrillic and Chinese/Japanese/Korean with the K3 model. ePub can use embedded fonts for additional display/languages, but Mobi's limited to whatever's included on the device.
So in theory, someone with a Mongolian book written in the old script which goes vertically could make a Topaz version and have it look more-or-less like it should.
Topaz does have a number of potentially good uses. Unfortunately, it more often ends up being used for books that just don't need what it provides and would be better off in a "plain" version.
As for taking back your Topaz mistakes, Amazon does let you return any e-book within 7 days for whatever reason.
You could always try telling them that you're finding that the layout/font used is unreadable for you (some of the publishers use faint and skinny typefaces), or the book keeps losing its place and crashing your Kindle (also a common problem), or that the formatting is bad and you keep running into annoying typos that make you regret paying for such poor work.
|