Comment by aanet

This post resonates with me. As a book-lover and collector, I prefer my books to be of high quality, long lasting, and beautiful to hold and look at. If I'm spending $ or $$$ on books, I want to get a good reading experience, and that often starts with both the quality of paper as well as the print.

Like the OP himself (hi Alex), I'm also frustrated with the quality of books (many of which are print-on-demand) from Amazon.

Case in point: Algorithms Illuminated by Tim Roughgarden (https://algorithmsilluminated.org/). Great set of books, but poor quality, sadly. All printed on demand.

Ditto with Sebastian Raschka's (early) books from Packt Publishing (Python Machine Learning). Great content, but poor printing (very low contrast, etc).

This is not a debate on ebooks vs paper books, or PDF vs something else. It's about quality of printed books.

I paid $$$ for Kevin Murphy's _Probabilistic Machine Learning_ from MIT Press. Excellent quality paper, great printing. It's a keeper. I'll be reading it years from today. Just as I read (and have) books from decades ago. I might pass 'em on to somebody well deserving, not junking them to recycle.

Like OP, I want my books and my library to be long lasting. It's a joy. And I'm happy to pay a higher price if needed.