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Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

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Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#1

Post by sandman1906 »

I buy a lot of books from Amazon (EU). Recently, more and more of the books I received were printed by Amazon themselves with the message "Printed in Poland by Amazon Fulfillment" on the last page.

They are of decent quality, though sometimes the cover art might be lower-resolution than that of an equivalent book from a bookshop. I double checked and all of these were sold by Amazon themselves (i.e., not a marketplace seller, where I would suspect a piracy issue). The cover material is always this unpleasant matte rough-feeling paper.

Is there anything nefarious going on here? Does Amazon have permission from the publishers to distribute their books like this? The books that I received were of different publishers (Penguin, Basic Books, among others).

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#2

Post by mocko »

Amazon has had a print-on-demand service [1] for a while so the real question is whether major publishers have been signing deals to use it. Maybe from their perspective it's worthwhile for older books, to avoid maintaining lots of slow-moving inventory?

[1] https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GHKDSCW2KQ3K4UU4

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#3

Post by bezout »

They’re legit - most of the times. Most of the times it’s cheaper to print on-demand if you don’t know how many copies you’re going to sell. For instance, OpenStax usually prints its books through Amazon.

I’m surprised hearing about big publishers such as Penguin using the on-demand service though. Maybe they use it to provide books which are out-of-print or which don’t sell a lot.

Given Amazon scale, I’d not be surprised if some of them are being sold by non copyright owners though.

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#4

Post by diamondap »

mocko wrote: post #2

Amazon has had a print-on-demand service [1] for a while so the real question is whether major publishers have been signing deals to use it. Maybe from their perspective it's worthwhile for older books, to avoid maintaining lots of slow-moving inventory? [1] https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GHKDSCW2KQ3K4UU4

I think this is right. Some book stores in the US even have print-on-demand machines inside the shop. See https://www.ondemandbooks.com/ for more info about the printers.

Most publishers make good money on their backlists, with a slow trickle of sales across a huge number of titles. Amazon and other stores don't always want to stock these titles because they take up a lot of shelf space.

Publishers may not want to put them into book stores because they may be returned if unsold, and the return process is costly. So print-on-demand (POD) makes sense for both parties.

Amazon has been running a pretty big POD operation for years for its Kindle Direct Publishing arm, so they have the infrastructure to print books for others as well. And yes, depending on the machine, the covers may not look quite as nice as the covers from offset printers.

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#5

Post by sandman1906 »

bezout wrote: post #3

They’re legit - most of the times. Most of the times it’s cheaper to print on-demand if you don’t know how many copies you’re going to sell. For instance, OpenStax usually prints its books through Amazon. I’m surprised hearing about big publishers such as Penguin using the on-demand service though. Maybe they use it to provide books which are out-of-print or which don’t sell a lot. Given Amazon scale, I’d not be surp…

These were all books that were quite recently published and I have seen all of them in bookshops.

In the past, I have received n>1 books which were sold by marketplace sellers but fulfilled by Amazon. Same inscription "Printed by Amazon", but these clearly had things wrong with them, like font issues.

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#6

Post by huhtenberg »

> They are of decent quality

I got two and they were absolute shit.

So much so that it was the first time ever I actually returned something to Amazon. From blurred cover "art" stretched from what looked like 30dpi image to godawful sans-serif font in humongous size with line spacing so tight some characters ascenders and descenders overlapped. Made my eyes bleed. Even if they paid me to read this, it still would've been a torture.

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#7

Post by xn »

I bought two Springer books from Amazon that turned out to be print-on-demand. The font size and weight made them uncomfortable to read so I returned them.

I bought another self-published book that was also print-on-demand. The larger font size made it readable although the font weight makes the footnotes look quite bad.

I wish Amazon would show on the product listing that it's a print-on-demand book since they're inferior to traditionally printed books with the equipment currently being used.

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#8

Post by bombcar »

xn wrote: post #7

I bought two Springer books from Amazon that turned out to be print-on-demand. The font size and weight made them uncomfortable to read so I returned them. I bought another self-published book that was also print-on-demand. The larger font size made it readable although the font weight makes the footnotes look quite bad. I wish Amazon would show on the product listing that it's a print-on-demand book since they're in…

It’s unfortunate because Amazon PoD books have been big quality - sometimes. But the person setting them up has to opt for some of the higher price features, and check fonts/print samples.

(One of the advantages with PoD from Amazon is you can order boxes of your own books at cost.)

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#10

Post by onion2k »

I've got a few. They're not quite as nice as 'proper' books, but the reduction in having to transport and store books before they're sold, and the fact that it means Amazon can have a much bigger inventory, means I'm fine with them. I can deal with having a lower quality book if it means I can get the book I want.

The only real downside is that I'm very reluctant to buy someone else a book as a gift from Amazon. I'll go to a book store in that situation.

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