121–130 of 193 posts
I've experienced this. Actually when I received the book from Amazon I thought it was a counterfeit copy, only to discover that on the very last page it says: "Printed by Amazon Logistica Italia S.r.l". Amazon's business shouldn't be printing books and obviously they should state clearly that the book you are purchasing is printed by them. The current solution? Just return the item.
Isn't paperback basically dead in the US because most sales are digital now? Tbh i've given up on dead tree books with the lone exception of a few hard covers because ... space the final frontier.
Mass-market paperbacks are definitely dying, but trade paperbacks continue to sell (at rates lower than mass-market, obviously): https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/p... (trade paperbacks are the larger paperback editions printed on better paper than the mass market paperbacks, but still soft-cover.) John Scalzi posted about this a few months ago: "All my recent books went from hardcover to tra…
I used to prefer trades but have gone all in on mass market editions. They just feel better in my hands, especially larger volumes. Plus I can stuff it in a coat pocket on my way out the door.
And FWIW, I’ve found that the “printed by Amazon” editions have actually been higher quality than recent offsets. For example, the newest editions of Hitchiker’s Guide seem to have been laid out without any regard to the inner margin. It’s fiddly to read the first word on each line.
Meanwhile the Star Wars Legends mass markets fulfilled by Amazon in Italy and France have thicker, brighter, paper and clean margins.
For the mass market format, I have to take what I can get, and I’m glad that there are still reasonably priced editions available.
I don't have any reason to believe this is not a scam. If Amazon had any good intention in doing this, why didn’t they simply note on the webpage that this book is printed on demand? Those introduction on pages look exactly the same as those for the original edition. It’s only once you’ve received the book that you realise Amazon has printed it themselves. I don’t like this game, and now I never buy books from Amazon…
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” onlin…
For expensive, hard to find stuff, then of course one has to go on price. If you're seeing 50-100 EUR difference then no judgement here.
The original article, however, does not contain that sort of material. In fact, the piece is about low-quality print-on-demand books, which presumably mainly exist for very mainstream titles.
Using examples from TFA, I have no idea why anyone would buy paperbacks of Jack London or Bertrand Russel from Amazon. That's my beef, not your technical hardback collection.
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?
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…
Terrible quality, and really did make me stop using Amazon for "vintage" books.
I prefer to buy used books locally, but given I don't speak the local languages I'm often forced to buy from abroad to get English editions.
The problem is the print quality, not the idea. There’s nothing inherent forcing them to use the shittest paper on the market.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sucks for the author of the book though, if their books start getting low ratings for something entirely out of their control.
It does indeed, yet if the review makes it clear that the text of a book is not at fault, that the crappy print on demand edition is the issue, it should not matter too much. It would even give them arguments to ask a few pointed questions to their publishers. And aggregated over all the books that use print on demand, the editors will notice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a way to filter out such books when you browse Amazon? They should at least tell you it's an "on-demand" printed book before you order?
Why not just go to a better online seller? One of the books mentioned: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-problems-of-philosophy-warb...
Somewhat 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…
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 anyway.
Going back to kindle isn't very tempting unless there is some reliable way to export their books again. Looks like it will be going back to paper books and reading books from Gutenberg (as I do a lot anyway).