Comment by jn6118
8 days ago
This 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 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.
Something I don't understand:
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.
I can't speak for jn6118, but for me the reason I tend to avoid used books unless there is no other option is the lack of reliable quality standards. Used book listings rarely come with pictures of the actual item being sold, and the same used book listed as "very good" may be nearly brand-new from one seller with minor wear to the dust jacket, and from another have a broken spine, writing inside, discolored pages and an unpleasant odor.
I can't recommend ThriftBooks highly enough. I'm a "very good" or "good" but not "acceptable" customer and I've felt the quality was consistent across the probably 30 books I've ordered from them.
Shop at abebooks and limit purchases to those which have photos of the SKU in question.
> Something I don't understand: Why don't you buy used books?
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.
OK I love used books but this diatribe is a thing of beauty.
Geez, I have issues with bent bindings and people who lick their fingers to turn pages, but you take it to a whole other level of grossness. You did forgot the common practice of reading on the toilet.
It's also incredibly annoying that Amazon slurped up AbeBooks way back in 2008.
Alibris (https://www.alibris.com/) is a great alternative. I do basically all my book buying there.
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).
Isn't AbeBooks for collecting old books? That's what I use it for. Abebooks and eBay. lots of out of print vintage niche books that way, like early JA->EN translations of novellas.
biblio.org is a good alternative where I am (although personally I don't see the problem with having either the print-on-demand books or buying used from Amazon as an option).
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.
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?
I haven't found one, like I mention in the article; I'll edit it if someone proves me wrong.
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.
Why not just go to a better online seller? One of the books mentioned:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-problems-of-philosophy-warb...
I can't necessarily speak for that specific book, but a youtuber I follow (who has POD books as one of her particular bugbears) has stopped recommending bookshop.org after personally getting POD copies from there.
They don't work for Germany unfortunately.
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 :)
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Not only am I sure there isn't one, I'm sure there will never be one. That might reduce profits for Amazon slightly.
Not that I can tell. It’s probably an intentional choice, just like how they don’t let you filter by country of origin.
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.
> Professionally printed books for example use slightly gray letters
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.
> 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.
Fwiw the quality of the print from the few letterpress books I own is worse than the print quality on a decent hardback.
Laser print quality today is on par with printing plates/offset printing, especially for just text.
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> In the UK, I just buy from Waterstones or local bookshops
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.