I’ve been pretty happy about the quality of eBook purchases so far. There’ve been a few rough edges but nothing major.
That changed when I bought a Kindle version of “David and the Phoenix” by Edward Ormondroyd a few weeks ago. This is a classic children’s storybook which is no longer in copyright. It is also beautifully illustrated by Joan Raysor.
Unfortunately the version I bought did not have any of the illustrations. Instead, everywhere there was supposed to be a picture there was instead just the text “[ILLUSTRATION].” To their credit, when I complained to Amazon about the problem they immediately refunded the purchase.
That still left me with a problem. I still wanted an illustrated ebook copy. I set out on my quest and unfortunately all the Kindle-compatible versions I found were either without illustrations or were very poorly formatted.
I came across a free version with illustrations in HTML and was able to reformat the text, table of contents and images such that it would display nicely on the Kindle. After much toil I got a beautifully displayed Kindle version with all the original illustrations.
Since the source I used was freely redistributable, I opened up a publishing account with Amazon and published my version with them, which you can now get here:
Just wanted to say thank you! I got the unillustrated version for my Kindle to read with my 8-year old son. Was very disappointed until I searched on-line and found your link. They should make it more clear on Amazon.com. THANKS!!
Yes, they should. Unfortunately Amazon makes it very difficult. Once the ‘same’ books are linked together, they all share the same reviews and product description. The only way to check is to get samples of various editions, but that is tedious.
Hope you enjoy the Qualiteri edition.