I'm starting to get a feel for a pattern - the books tend to be more expensive, and also take longer on average to deliver (a few weeks, instead of a few days). The latter would be normal for rare editions and some third-party sellers, but if I'm ordering a popular book and it takes longer than usual to deliver I can kinda smell the dead rat. But the only way to know for sure is to open the box in disappointment.
For what it's worth, I think print-on-demand is a win overall, while there are lots of low quality stuff out there, the ability of small authors to get published and readers to find rarer stuff out weighs that.
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.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-problems-of-philosophy-warb...
If anyone’s concerned about the condition of used books, I’ve found their condition descriptions (https://www.alibris.com/popups/glossary/book-condition) to be reliable (indeed, books are often in better condition than indicated - I’ll happily order anything ‘fair’ or above).
Why don't you buy used books?
Plenty of supply for a book like the one he mentions, Knut Hamsun's "Growth of the Soil." No question that it was made to the quality level of the time when it was published; early 2000's is probably peak.
I understand some books are so new they won't have any used copies. But for everything else, there's an endless buffet to choose from.
To me this is like asking what's wrong with buying used underwear. You don't know anything about the paws that have thumbed those pages. I had a flatmate in my early twenties who would kick off every reading session by scratching his bottom - and then as he read, he'd sniff his fingertips as a focus aid. I am not kidding. But even if the previous owners haven't had repulsive habits, people still sweat, cough and sneeze, rummage obliviously, read naked with their books in their laps, or in their partners laps, put their books down to please their partners then pick them back up - do I need to go on? We have intimate relationships with books, and a second hand book has all the detritus of an intimate relationship with its previous owner. Then there's the yeasts, molds, mildews, weird stains - anything humidity, cooking smells, damp, rotten trash, dense flatulence, halitosis, disease etc has impregnated the pages with. There's nothing noble or romantic about that aggregate odor they all develop.
A better way of thinking about them is that they're like semi-digested bites covered in the dried belly juices of whoever hawked them back up. How hungry do you need to be? It's no different really to dogs tucking into vomit in the street. Each to his own, though.
This is simply an artefact of offset printing.
> Like for websites, this lowers the contrast and feels more natural for humans.
Text printed by an industrial laser printer on cream (or Natural Shade as it's called in the industry) paper looks discernibly crisper than what an offset printer produces.
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.
Why do you claim that so confidently, when many people say otherwise? Are you just going off some metric like DPI?
You're probably missing things like a sibling comment mentioned: "professionally printed books for example use slightly gray letters on creme paper." I don't think you could get "slightly gray" with a laser printer, and print-on-demand seems to basically use bright-white office paper (probably for reasons of laziness and cheapness).
Those people are fetishizing the limitations of offset printing. You simply can't produce sharp blacks comparable to an industrial laser printer with offset printing.
> I don't think you could get "slightly gray" with a laser printer
You absolutely can. But pure black on Natural Shade (off-white or cream) paper looks much better.
Most POD setups use inkjet printers for cost reasons which results in poor print quality.
Most POD presses actually use inkjet because it's less expensive. The result is much lower quality.
Can you link to some high-resolution comparison scans to support this claim? I find it hard to believe that any toner-based process is going to result in a cleaner page and crisper text than a properly made-ready offset press run.
In Blighty, if you can't buy locally, consider www.hive.co.uk
Hive allows you to donate a cut of the profits to a local independent bookshop of your choice, anywhere in the country.
No connection. Just a satisficed customer.
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 point.
I too used to default to Amazon, as the price was often about 30% cheaper. However, I've come to realise that you get what you pay for. In the UK, I just buy from Waterstones or local bookshops, as then I can trust that it has likely come from the publisher or at least can inspect in advance.
I am never buying a book from Amazon again.