The original title is "the enshittification of". why has it been editorialized to make it less effective?
email dang and find out!
because there's literally no other way your question will be answered
The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
131–140 of 193 posts
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#132I'm buying ungodly numbers of books and I'd say more than half of what I get from Amazon is PoD, and print quality varies. In my country (Poland) they have one huge advantage: the price. It's quite often somewhere between 30%-50% cheaper than alternatives which is significant given book prices. One thing that is pretty annoying is when a PoD book that had colors in the original no longer has them, e.g. on charts, but…
What are you buying ungodly numbers of books for? To read them?
I am not gp, but I like to have a nice collection of unread books to browse and pick from, not (to almost quote someone, from my vague memory) "shelves full of books to impress others with what I have already read".
Kind of like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilibrary
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#133When I was searching for a good copy of The Wizard of Oz to read to my kids it was impossible to use Amazon. Since the book is out of copyright but still popular the results are for terribly formatted print on demand paper backs that don't include the illustrations. It's out of copyright, spend a little effort and do a good job! I eventually found the series in hard cover from Books of Wonder. I buy from them or seek…
Search for the MinaLima edition of the Wizard of Oz, it's absolutely stunning.
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#134Pro-tip: support your local bookstore. If it's inadequate, there's plenty of places to buy books online that aren't Amazon. OP gives a price in euros. Why buy American?
For books in English, Amazon is considerably less expensive than anything local, and can also be significantly faster, instead of being a “special order”.
There is a hidden cost to Amazon, and it's the death of our high streets and independent retailers.
As per my comment to the other commenter in the thread, there will of course be times when Amazon makes sense, for more expensive or difficult to source books.
Sometimes, a book may be desperately, urgently needed tomorrow.
Most of the time, the price difference isn't substantial and time isn't of the essence.
I'd rather keep my money in my local economy, rather than subsidising Bezos' next jaunt into space.
And honestly, given America's current behaviour, I'm currently of a mind to avoid sending a cent a across the Atlantic.
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#135Somewhat related: Amazon has a huge fake ebook problem as well. I recently spent $2 buying an ebook that is still copyrighted. It is cheaper than the first item in search result that has more reviews. I thought, it's an ebook, what could go wrong. Upon opening it, I found that the formatting is completely off. Words are concatenated. It was impossible to read. A few days later, I noticed that the book is gone from Am…
I was happy a few years ago when I found a site selling DRM-free EPUBs on many topics I am interested in, but with no prior warning last week they sent out an email saying they no longer do that and instead you have to buy and read books through some special app. They could at least have warned a few days in advance. I would have stocked up on several lifetimes of books to read. A bit skeptic about post-2022 books an…
It's not very hard to remove the DRM from Kobo or Google Play Books.
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also incredibly annoying that Amazon slurped up AbeBooks way back in 2008.
It is annoying, but bookshop.org is a good alternative to both Abe and Amazon, presenting a single shop front to lots of bookshops.
Betterworldbooks.com is my go to. They usually have everything for decent prices. And you can buy used or new for most things.
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#137Don't buy from Amazon and expect anything but. Knowing the kind of company it is and still being a customer is inexcusable.
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's usually extremely prominent if the book is an India only edition.
For sure, if both Amazon and the seller are doing things the way they are supposed to be. There is a small chance, however, if the OP either purchases from an unfaithful third party seller, or somehow inadvertently from a third party seller even though they purchased from Amazon.com, due to how inventory is mixed (Amazon kept doing this for years).
I mean, it will be very obvious from the physical book itself.
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#139Like many commenters, I much prefer a publisher's version to Amazon's print-on-demand, so much so that when I deduce a book is print-on-demand from the thumbnail provided (POD front covers are universally primitive and basic), I continue looking at various other cover images until I find one that's clearly mass market publisher product. I buy it used, "Good" or better. I'll pay more for a used original than a new POD iteration.
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#140Here's how the last two books I ordered from amazon went: Book 1, low quality print barely readable code segments and the cover reads "Not for reprint outside of India". Book 2, over a month passes with no shipping update. I submit a cancellation request and it gets denied. I then contact customer support (extremely hard to do btw) and they also deny my request. Another week passes and it is randomly canceled and then the book arrives in the mail from a printing company with extremely bad binding.
Amazon has become the temu of books.