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The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books

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Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books

#111

Post by nswango »

Freak_NL wrote: post #31
mat0 wrote: post #23

if you appreciate books, you don’t buy them from amazon. that’s been true for a number of years now. of course, if someone is tight on budget and wants to get a book, I wouldn’t go at them for getting the cheapest option available, which in 99% of cases, amazon is. but for people that can afford it? no excuse. I find it to be immoral to buy from amazon. my wife and I have switched years ago: small local libraries > d…

Often local booksellers will have the ability to order pretty much anything in print too. Here in the Netherlands there are only a few exceptions I can't order¹ locally, and even then I can usually find them on the national Amazon alternatives (i.e., Bol.com, which sucks, but isn't nearly as evil as Amazon). For affordability I would recommend anyone interested in reading to visit secondhand book fairs for the breadt…

If you order from your local bookstore a book which is being sold on Amazon as a PoD copy by a major publisher, what do you think happens?

They don't have a separate manufacturing process for mom-and-pop bookstores. Amazon do the printing and the logistics but deliver the book to the store instead of to your house so that the store can hand it to you and collect a very small amount of money.

Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books

#112

Post by nswango »

lich_king wrote: post #79
AlotOfReading wrote: post #76

I agree with the broad point of the article, but the author misidentifies what's going on. The author's problems are coming from digital printing, not the print-on-demand business model specifically and Amazon isn't the only company doing it. The older books were printed using a process called offset printing. It needs large economies of scale to be financially viable, but it produces higher quality books. The newer…

That's one part of the story, but I think you're glossing over two other issues. First, digital printing allows anyone to sloppily OCR public-domain works (or download them from Project Gutenberg), typeset the text haphazardly, and put it on Amazon. The result is terrible for reasons that have little to do with the limitations of the technology. Take the Russell book: terrible kerning ("Proble ms"), an AI-generated a…

> If you have an older, low-volume book, providing a shoddy version will make you more money than letting it go out of print.

From my point of view, what you are describing is "if you're the owner of an interesting but niche work, making it available in a basic version will please a lot of people who want to buy and read it".

The alternative to most of these 'shoddy versions' from reputable publishers is simply no version at all. Not sure why the author of the article wants to enforce this on people who actually want to read these books, rather than ooh over print quality and hoard them as luxury objects.

Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books

#114

Post by nswango »

g947o wrote: post #25
EddieB wrote: post #7

The last 3 books I’ve purchased from Amazon (UK) have been of questionable quality. The most recent was Designing Data–Intensive Applications (O’Reilly) and I’m still not sure if it’s print on demand, counterfeit- or just a reject. Roller marks, damaged pages, slightly off print. The returns process is inconvenient, one-offs are okay but on multiple purchases it’s fatiguing and so the book stays. This isn’t specific…

Your DDIA book might be an international version. Check if it says the edition is only for sale in India.

It's usually extremely prominent if the book is an India only edition.

Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books

#115

Post by nswango »

protocolture wrote: post #73

Honestly love them and dont see the issue at all. Have seen a few people bootstrap themselves with POD and then move into traditional publishing. Demanding people keep a massive stock of something just in case you want one is the height of privilege.

Agreed, the article author is just gatekeeping as far as I'm concerned.

Most books available on PoD wouldn't be available at all without it. Not just less well known reissues but also new interesting books with limited readership, and books which larger publishers would ignore because of their own prejudices.

There are more luxury editions of classics than ever so quality-sensitive book collectors are still being catered for. And it's easier than ever to find secondhand copies of old books.

Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books

#116

Post by iamacyborg »

realityfactchex wrote: post #69
rleigh wrote: post #24

It's not just Amazon. I bought a copy of an ARM assembly book from a proper bookseller (Blackwells) which was a proper hardback for a high price--something like £80, and I received a print-on-demand mess with a hardcover. The print was there but barely legible, a dotty mess which gave me a headache. I returned it. I can see print-on-demand working very well, but not until the quality issues are sorted out. Being char…

Yes, this. Even hardcover books from "real publishers" have arrived with low print quality. The most common problem book-printing problems I have a real problem with today are 1. text that is gray (not black) and 2. text that is dotted (not solid) I have, 20, 40, and 100+ year old books with phenomenal "solid black text", and they are an absolute pleasure to feast the eyes on. But more importantly, they are not so ir…

Acid-free is debatable, non-archival books frequently last decades or even centuries

Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books

#118

Post by layer8 »

ahartmetz wrote: post #47
toofy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don’t know of a way. but even if you can, it will almost certainly be done away with. i’m so jaded im sure it would end up like trying to filter out shorts on youtube. click the “show me less of this” only for it to show you more.

There are uBlock Origin filter rules for shorts. They work :)

Not in the mobile app.

Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books

#119

Post by throw234252234 »

specproc wrote: post #110

Pro-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?

Because either only Amazon sells the books I want to buy or the alternatives are other non-local shops that are usually far more expensive.

I live in Poland. I want to read books in the original English version. The main competitor to Amazon for ordering books in the original version would be libristo.eu, which is not Amazon, but it’s also not local and it’s far more expensive. On top of that, there are “local” online shops which engage in ordering things from Amazon to then only repackage them, as if they were bought locally. The books I’ve bought recently, all of them hardcover:

1. Lester W. Schmerr Jr., Sung-Jin Song, Ultrasonic Nondestructive Evaluation Systems. libristo.eu: 223.64EUR, Amazon: 83.84EUR.

2. Alan V. Oppenheim, Alan S. Willsky, Signals and Systems. Second Edition. Available from local Empik.com, but only in paperback version, and it’s a different edition. libristo.eu: 298.19EUR, Amazon: 237.81EUR.

3. Avinash C. Kak, Malcolm Slaney, Principles of Computerized Tomographic Imaging. Not available anywhere else than Amazon (to be fair, on Amazon I’ve also bought a used version, because there were none new).

4. David J. Griffiths, Introduction to Electrodynamics. libristo.eu: 67.11EUR, Amazon: 48.72EUR.

5. Thomas M. Cover, Joy A. Thomas, Elements of Information Theory. libristo.eu: 122.85EUR, Amazon: 83.38EUR.

As long as you buy hardcover versions, their quality tends to be a lot higher.

And I would not be able to find these books in any physical shop by just walking in. Even if some book was theoretically available, it would need to be imported.

(I’ll also preempt one possible criticism: it is not true that this state of affairs is caused by Amazon pushing out great local shops from the market. There used to be no easy options of getting technical books in original versions before Amazon, just translations, and only of a small number books in the most generic topics appealing to the lowest common denominator. You could maybe get Charles Dickens or Shakespeare in original version from Empik.com, maybe a Bruce Eckel book if you were lucky, but forget about getting a book like Elements of Information Theory. English proficiency in Poland is generally high, compared to Western Europe, but our local shops refuse to cater to it.)

Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books

#120

Post by g947o »

nswango wrote: post #114
g947o wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your DDIA book might be an international version. Check if it says the edition is only for sale in India.

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).
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