I guess the hardcovers are better because they are not printed in India. From what I've seen with nonfiction books, the ones printed in India are only softcovers—pathetic paper/build quality, and poor readability because they're smaller than their US counterpart (usually 19.8 cm long in India compared to 23.5 cm in the US), and the US layout is shrunk to fit the Indian size. So, any hardcover is imported from the US and thus of better quality.