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The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
91–100 of 193 posts
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#92I was excited when I opened this post, but apparently the author is complaining about this? Here is a comment I made few months ago complaining about why this isn't a thing already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46219555 I kept getting disappointed when authors I liked were printing kindle-only or digital only books and short stories, that I would gladly pay extra for the cost of printing. I have no interest i…
I tend to buy hardcovers but sometimes it’s not possible. I agree it’s a sure-fire way to avoid print-on-demand.
Like I say in the article, I don’t mind about print-on-demand as such - it’s the fact that these books are not particularly rare, they often come with bad defects, and they are pretty pricey.
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#93I think the first one I received was a copy of Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming, probably around 15 years ago. I complained about it back then. These days, all books published by O'Reilly are PoD. Quality ranges from bad to worse. It's such a shame. They used to use RepKover binding like NoStarch does.
I've found low volume books from Lulu.com to be perfectly acceptable, though. Although the hard cover does feel a bit cheap.
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#94I've gotten a few of these and each time I've filled out the Return form, Amazon's response has been "ok, we're refunding your card, no need to return the item".
Yes, as I mention in the article, that has happened to me to me a few times as well.
There may be something about the products being custom-made that causes this. I’ve had it happen with one that had a noticeable print defect (On Writing Well) but also to a few where I simply didn’t want a print-on-demand.
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#95I think it is pretty obvious. While Jack London's martin Eden is out of copyright and public domain now, if they order Penguin edition they still have to pay them some money for it. So Amazon calculated that it is cheaper to print their own. My guess they could not do this for non-public-domain books without securing rights first.
But I don’t think Amazon could “pirate” a Penguin edition like that without their consent. Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy is like you say, but they stripped it out of all mentions of a publishing house. I didn’t mind that one in fact
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#96This article really resonates with me and I'm somewhat relieved to see someone else feels the same way. I love physical books for general reading and will often buy both physical and ebook format for technical books to get the best of both worlds. I now cannot stand print-on-demand books and, like the author, I can spot them very quickly. The quality is abysmal, and I might as well be printing them myself at that poi…
But why do print on demand books have to be low quality? It’s actually a pretty genius idea. You order a book, an automated machine prints out a high quality book indistinguishable from a regular paperback, pops it into a box and it’s ready for shipping. You could probably print one in under 5 minutes, no fees to store the books, you could have 10 times the “published” authors.
> But why do print on demand books have to be low quality?
Because they're not fabricating any printing plates or using an actual printing press, or any technology that gets you a high quality result. A print on demand book is basically going to come out of an office laser printer, because that's the technology for low-volume printing.
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#97Many people are mentioning bookshop.org and I would be happy to try it out but I want to note that they don’t ship outside the US and UK.
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#98This article really resonates with me and I'm somewhat relieved to see someone else feels the same way. I love physical books for general reading and will often buy both physical and ebook format for technical books to get the best of both worlds. I now cannot stand print-on-demand books and, like the author, I can spot them very quickly. The quality is abysmal, and I might as well be printing them myself at that poi…
But why do print on demand books have to be low quality? It’s actually a pretty genius idea. You order a book, an automated machine prints out a high quality book indistinguishable from a regular paperback, pops it into a box and it’s ready for shipping. You could probably print one in under 5 minutes, no fees to store the books, you could have 10 times the “published” authors.
I print books myself at home and have a lot of Amazon books lying around. What usually is the problem with Amazon printed books is that the author didn’t put in the extra time to get everything right. Professionally printed books for example use slightly gray letters on creme paper. Like for websites, this lowers the contrast and feels more natural for humans. Furthermore, many Amazon books are just poorly formatted. Text too big, margins too wide, cover misaligned with spine, text not justified properly, and things like that.
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
But why do print on demand books have to be low quality? It’s actually a pretty genius idea. You order a book, an automated machine prints out a high quality book indistinguishable from a regular paperback, pops it into a box and it’s ready for shipping. You could probably print one in under 5 minutes, no fees to store the books, you could have 10 times the “published” authors.
> But why do print on demand books have to be low quality? Because they're not fabricating any printing plates or using an actual printing press, or any technology that gets you a high quality result. A print on demand book is basically going to come out of an office laser printer, because that's the technology for low-volume printing.
Laser print quality today is on par with printing plates/offset printing, especially for just text.
Re: The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
#100It seems the author is complaining that the low cost supplier for a hobby is providing low value supplies. If the author instead went to that various used book stores around they would find treasures and probably enjoy the hobby more.
I also buy used, nothing against it, but it’s not easy to find the books that one has in mind.