Is it possible that what you'd bought was a counterfeit? Amazon apparently has a problem with knock-offs being commingled with their publisher-supplied stock. Here's the founder of No Starch Press tweeting about Amazon selling counterfeit copies of Python For Kids. The diagrams were fuzzy & pixelated (and black and white), and the paper quality was significantly inferior:

https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/844030960333152256

There was an HN discussion about it 6 months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546