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Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

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Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#31

Post by diamondap »

To all you folks complaining about the quality of POD books, you should know that the book designer has a lot to do with the book's readability. Many self-published authors who design their own interiors choose bad fonts out of ignorance, or make the font too small to reduce page count and cost. Print design is really an art. The big publishers take it seriously, and some self-published authors do as well.

As for blurry covers, a common mistake among self-published authors is not preserving the aspect ratio for cover art. They'll stretch an image, or use a low-resolution image. Again, this is done out of ignorance or carelessness. Major publishers know to pay attention to these details.

POD publishers like Ingram Spark also let you choose the type of paper and cover finish. They can produce good paperbacks. Maybe Amazon's POD system chooses cheaper paper by default. I'm not sure.

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#32

Post by rocketbop »

Ah this makes so much sense!

I bought a book on Amazon Germany last year, 1000 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think, and as soon as I opened it I had a feeling it was a pirate copy. I even tried to find the book in a physical book store so I could compare, but didn't find it.

Just took it down from the shelf and went to the back page, and yes it's printed in Poland by Amazon Fulfillment.

I suspected it because the print looks weird, almost like a photocopy, uneven and thin and pale. The paper is like printer paper, and in general it just doesn't feel premium.

So the mystery is solved, but I feel cheated, even though the book was rubbish anyway.

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#33

Post by paxys »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #28
paxys wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Buy from a book shop. Authors use on-demand printing from Amazon because ordering a full print run is significantly more expensive, and due to lack of demand they'd never be able to recover the costs. These kinds of books aren't promoted by a top publisher and don't have shelf space at your local bookstore. Chances are if it weren't for Amazon they wouldn't be available for purchase at all. People don't seem to rea…

`"Oh but the cover art is blurry"...seriously? Who the hell cares?` I care.

Stick to the big five publishers section at Barnes & Noble then, and excuse the indie authors who don't have the budget to make your bookshelf look good.

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#34

Post by quest88 »

rocketbop wrote: post #32

Ah this makes so much sense! I bought a book on Amazon Germany last year, 1000 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think, and as soon as I opened it I had a feeling it was a pirate copy. I even tried to find the book in a physical book store so I could compare, but didn't find it. Just took it down from the shelf and went to the back page, and yes it's printed in Poland by Amazon Fulfillment. I suspected it because t…

> the book was rubbish anyway.

Why is it still on your shelf then :)

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#36

Post by paxys »

factorymoo wrote: post #30

I worked for Amazon for two years. They always were very proud of their customer obsession and in some ways it really showed (great customer service, very speedy deliveries). But what I never understood is how it never seemed to be a problem that over the years, the site is just filled with low quality / alibaba imports / bad products. On a side note, the number of vendors that offer you to remove a bad review in exc…

Amazon changed from being a marketplace for high quality products to being a marketplace for their own products while also allowing some cheap junk to boost their numbers. Just open the site and see the prominent categories – Amazon clinic, Amazon Fresh & Whole Foods grocery delivery, One Medical, Amazon Pharmacy, Amazon Music, Prime Gaming, Echo & Alexa, Fire Tablets, Fire TV, Kindle, Audible... There's really no high quality third party retail over there anymore because manufacturers can now easily ship on their own and avoid Amazon's massive cut.

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#37

Post by ajkjk »

factorymoo wrote: post #30

I worked for Amazon for two years. They always were very proud of their customer obsession and in some ways it really showed (great customer service, very speedy deliveries). But what I never understood is how it never seemed to be a problem that over the years, the site is just filled with low quality / alibaba imports / bad products. On a side note, the number of vendors that offer you to remove a bad review in exc…

I worked on Amazon's fulfillment software a long time ago. Short version is: quality is an arms race between Amazon and a lot of _very-motivated_ cheaters, and Amazon is always behind. At least when I was there, they wanted to fix stuff, but only in an "cost-effective, at-scale, multi-year-project" kind of way, rather than the simple obvious solution of "throw lots of people at the problem until it goes away". My guess is that they're somewhat more worried now as tides have shifted away from their reputability, but they're nevertheless probably in like year 3 of a ten-year plan at the moment.

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#38

Post by cinntaile »

paxys wrote: post #33
KingOfCoders wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`"Oh but the cover art is blurry"...seriously? Who the hell cares?` I care.

Stick to the big five publishers section at Barnes & Noble then, and excuse the indie authors who don't have the budget to make your bookshelf look good.

No, our standards shouldn't be that low that we accept blurry covers. It's likely a good quality proxy of the content though. Attention to details is often important.

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#39

Post by CrociDB »

Just browsed through some of my recent purchased books from Amazon and I found the same. Books from Cambridge University Press. I imagine Amazon might be offering those PoD services to big press companies especially for older books. The cover art is indeed slightly blurred, but seems like the pages are fine.

Re: Tell HN: Books Printed by Amazon

#40

Post by lasermatts »

I self-published a book on gardening and learned how much I enjoy the design/marketing/sales aspect of the self-publish industry almost as much as I enjoy writing.

Something I learned quickly is that local bookstores & libraries will often refuse to carry books that are Print-on-Demand from Amazon. There are several other POD suppliers online and it’s really cool to compare the features and cost models across each supplier.

My Amazon POD books were nearly identical in quality to some books I printed with another provider — and as a few others have said it was magic to see how many sales I got with zero advertising.

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