amazon is ruining books and readers will not escape

I talk about that book in this video: • long live scientific d...
The book is fine. The copy I have is absolute garbage.
#booktube

[@mysnackr]

I'd rather pirate the book and cashapp the author $20

[@orbatos]

That's at least 80% more than they would get.

[@howwitty]

Joe Biden said he would eliminate junk fees but he never went that far because the publishers have too many printing presses, fancy wigs, and gold dubloons.

[@leow.2162]

Yeah but if you want a nice print copy, your pirating options are fairly limited

[@hulkmt]

​​@@leow.2162 bro's about to pirate 200 sheets of physical paper

[@sillygo0oser]

@@leow.2162 eh. I don’t have enough room in my house to hoard books, and my mom is a hoarder of books and gonna be honest, I don’t want that for me. I’d rather have a small bookshelf with my favs

[@travishayes6678]

2024: Please support your small, local scammers over big corporate scammers.

[@brianbutton6346]

The funniest comments have some truth.

[@okra7648]

What a wise comment.

[@TheAlmightyAss]

Sad truth of capitalism innit.

[@lankyjuggler]

The fun part of this one is that she somehow supported both.

[@StephenYuan]

Not everyone trying to earn an honest living selling a product is a “scammer“.

[@potatopotatow]

It’s time to return to the golden age of local bookstores! We can build from the rubble that Amazon left behind!

[@etiennedud]

Come to paris, lot of bookstore. You just need to learn french 😅

[@lunasophia9002]

One of my local bookstores had a print-on-demand device and the books it made were, of course, awful :(

[@buddhabillybob]

Locals have made a bit of a comeback. It's a tough market, but many small shops have found a way to survive.

[@lunasophia9002]

@@buddhabillybob That kind of thing is going to be very regionally dependent; several of the ones in my (admittedly expensive) area closed and haven't gotten replacements :(

[@penguin.8201]

Local book stores are amazing, but often they never have what I'm looking for. Not saying its their fault but, a good online marketplace sure would be nice too

[@reniesulaweyo4383]

Ok, but. Hot tip: phone your local bookshop and let them order it for you. They have access to other big book distribution for commercial buying behind the scenes to get you most stuff thats current and they can order from the publisher for the rarer ones. If the book is not in print, go to a local or an online used book seller. They will have out of print titles already and will hunt them down if you ask them. I guess ebay is a source for second hand books, but this screams overpriced and you could have gotten it cheaper. Or, final option: go to the library and let them send a request for that book from another library if they dont own it.

[@JD-vj4go]

Local book shop? Do you live in Shangri-la? Agree completely but the closest I have to a bookstore is a Barnes and Noble over an hour away. I'll bet a lot of people are stuck getting books online.

[@reniesulaweyo4383]

@@JD-vj4go I admit I did live the high life, haha. Our local bookstore owner retired last year and sold his bookstore to a chain because there was noone to take over. (Small city, 40k people btw.) In bigger cities it usually is easier to find one. I agree that chain bookstores like B & N aren't great, but they can be the stand-in if there's nothing else near you. At least it's still not Amazon and they should be able to get you those books via commercial distribution. 1h is a long distance, hence making as much use as possible of phone is probably good. It sucks, but at least in the us I have been told 1h driving distances aren't to uncommon.

[@ninatrabona4629]

Print on demand is okay if you know what you want. Ebay and similar online sites can provide bargains. But Jeff Bezos denied Americans the opportunity to wander around and look at the books and talk to book people in bookstores 1:49 when he started Amazon. He put hundreds of bookstores out of business and now seems to be trying to put the few reputable publishers left out of business.

[@markc17]

And guess who owns the major distributor of books including secondhand to independent booksellers, yes Amazon does.

[@willardchi2571]

I've "adopted" a bookstore, from which I order books online whenever their price + shipping is not much more than the same book on Amazon. I always check the bookstore's website before I buy a book from Amazon, to see if their price is close to Amazon before I buy a book. Most times, it will cost me twice as much to buy from the bookstore, but sometimes it's not that much more, so I'll buy from the bookstore. Most of the books I buy are not in stock, so they simply order it for me. Takes a little longer, but I have plenty of books to read. I greatly miss the many used bookstores I used to visit weekly to see what new volumes turned up, and I almost always left with several hardcover books and had great fun doing it (in the same way that some people would rather go fishing than buy a fish from the store). Amazon ruined that for me. Many old ways were better.

[@EyeMWing]

Print on demand CAN be done well - I work for a major printing company and it’s done on exactly the same hardware, same paper, etc. as printing long run books. However, many publishers plus Amazon have moved to having them done in their internal print shops at cut rates using equipment and techniques intended for disposable books like write-in student workbooks.

[@Charlie_Duz]

My heart sinks when I receive a book with "Printed by Amazon" on the last page. The covers curl up like they're trying to escape (who can blame them?), and the text looks like it was done on a home PC. Everything about them sucks. Plus they don't smell right. Books are important!

[@tomsavage7279WalteroftheSea]

Agree-cheap and nasty but the prices they charge ain’t cheap at all!

[@RobbyGoodwin]

Also Amazon throws your single book purchases in a poly mailer and it shows up damaged!

[@lunasophia9002]

Print on demand is /terrible/. Within the past 5-10 years, one of my favorite tech publishers, O'Reilly, moved to print on demand, and one of the major tabletop RPG book sites uses it too. As you say, they're /garbage/ books, the paper is cheap, it's not cut with holding the book in mind (very sharp edges), the text is not aligned right... so many things. I just don't buy books from them any more because the quality is so low, especialy compared to what it used to be.

[@talideon]

Ugh! And one of the great things about O'Reilly was the quality of their printing and binding. 😞

[@ColasTeam]

It's very useful for books that would be ridiculously expensive to buy otherwise or might not be popular enough to warrant a print run. But I do wish they were more attentive.

[@lunasophia9002]

@@ColasTeam It might be useful, but the reading experience is abominable. I'd rather not have a printed book than have a print-on-demand book.

[@at0mly]

I stopped buying O'Reilly books and I used to consider them the reference.

[@lunasophia9002]

@@at0mly Same!

[@TempusFugit366]

Ebay bookseller here - this is why I always put multiple pictures of the books I'm selling. Yes it takes more time than using the stock image. Yes it might put someone off if they see any damage (though I'd rather that than them buy it and want to return). The reason I do it is that it seems to me that lots of people REALLY hate print on demand, so by having real images they can see a) that I actually have the book and b) that it isn't print on demand.

[@JMcMillen]

And people like me thank you for that. I know I was looking for a particular edition of a book and at least 90% of the listings were just a stock photo of one of the covers, but no guarantee that's the cover you would receive, nor the condition of the book in question. I eventually found what I was looking for in a small lot of books by the author.

[@mcpick606]

And we appreciate it!

[@JB-js4xi]

I've bought nothing but used books for the better part of 45 years. Saves trees. The author struck whatever deal they struck with their publisher and that doesnt matter to ME as much as a good deal and less trees chopped up.

[@Yesica1993]

Thank you!

[@Pleanal]

I wish everyone's spur of the moment rant videos were this well articulated and clear.

[@MrsDetroit622]

And concise!

[@johnjenkins9445]

yes.. this is what i wanted to say.. well founded logical rants are good for the world.. thank you :)

[@dallassukerkin6878]

My late wife was a printer - she would be so annoyed to see this sort of thing creeping into her industry! Print on Demand sounds like a good idea until, as you so fully pointed out, the cost-cutters get in there and suddenly a book is not something of value that you can keep for life but is as disposable as a weekly magazine used to be.

[@DaniErik]

My wife bought some sheet music off Amazon and it turned out to be awful print on demand. The ink had bled to the point that the 16th notes just had a single super thick beam and half-notes almost looked like quarter notes.

[@nightowl5395]

How annoying 🤨 I don't even like 'download and print off' sheet music. It really wasn't that long ago when you could buy a booklet online via Amazon (even for a short single piece and printed, say, by Alfred Publishing) but now the only option seems to be pay to download and print off yourself 🙄

[@stinky789]

I buy from used bookstores, thrift shops, local bookstores and then brick and mortar corporate shops if I have to. Ebay for used books that are hard to find. The worst part, I worry, is that by not feeding the algorithm, the books I like will not get published for not being profitable enough.

[@CorbiniteVids]

We had a similar thing when I worked at Big Book Store that shall not be named. We hated actually ordering POD because customers would often try to return them (because they're trash) but they were listed as non-returnable. Every once in a while though someone else who didn't know that would take a return, which is how we ended up with "model train for beginners" by Jolene Arriaga on the actual shelves which is... a pure fever dream of a book.

[@RandomNPC15]

I had no idea that print on demand books were a thing, now I'm terrified

[@JMcMillen]

Depends on whose doing it. I know DriveThruRPG has been great for people that want physical copies of old table top game books or game books from small publishers that can't afford to print tons of books that may or may not sell.

[@NA-zs2sw]

My partner received a Vegan Japanese recipe book her birthday from her Family. It was an Amazon on-demand printed book and had the usual quality issues and misspellings and... recipes that required meat! We checked out the author's page on Amazon and it seemed they had 'published' the same book with a dozen different titles with the same recipes... I think people are using this service to sell books that are completed scams but are easy to do because people naturally trust a physical book because normally they would have to go through editing at a proper publisher.

[@your-mom-irl]

Lmfao the recipes had meat

[@EmilBjrn]

This seems like a classic case of a book written by a large language model / GPT

[@ezakustam]

In all fairness, Japan in general never fully understood the concept. But a dictionary and a current translation program could solve that problem pretty easily.

[@Rynewulf]

@@ezakustamJapan 100% has pescatarian, vegetarian, and vegan food. Theyre pretty known for it, it just sounds like a fake ai cookbook

[@LordVader1094]

@@ezakustam What an ignorant thing to say. Japan absolutely has vegan cuisine.

[@tfpp1]

“…because I’m a boomer” Girl, you are NOT as old as my parents. 😂

[@walterbrown9651]

boomer as in "gonna straighten these mfers out"

[@Purkinje90]

boomer now just means you're not part of the cool, younger generation

[@georgelayton6641]

@@Purkinje90 So, an illegal boomer!

[@artbyeliza8670]

@@Purkinje90 no - it means you are part of the "Baby Boom" that happened after WW2 - up to 1964.

[@Serai3]

Inorite? WTF does that word even mean??

[@TheBookedEscapePlan]

This happened to me once with a work of literary history scholarship. I thought I was getting a paperback from the 80's. When I got it, the binding was terrible, the paper atypical, and an Amazon print-on-demand barcode was on the inner-side of either the front cover or the back cover. I didn't even buy it on Amazon.

[@BS-vx8dg]

In other news, Dr. Collier has been entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as *Youngest Boomer* .

[@internallyinteral]

Damn if that's boomerism call me a boomer I'm tired of paying more each year for a lower quality product.

[@appa609]

Nah I know some 26 year old boomers

[@Hailfire08]

She got Planet of the Apesed

[@littlerattyratratrat]

@@Hailfire08For verbing Planet of the Apes, you rule the Internets..

[@literallyjustgrass]

​@@appa609🙋26yo boomer reporting in.

[@mehblahwhatever]

I always thought it was weird how all the big tech companies didn't turn a profit so throughout the 2010s, and it just turned out that we wouldn't really see the negative consequences of that until now when they're actually trying to profit. A profitable Amazon is no longer the same good deal to a consumer that the unprofitable Amazon was.

[@cv5953]

Enshittification is the monster that keeps growing even when you don't feed it

[@LordVader1094]

Despite the fact that "unprofitable" Amazon still made huge amounts of money. They always set their standards so high, it's impossible to retain quality.

[@ninatrabona4629]

I have read that there was an oil company that kept cutting prices and selling at a loss, buying up their competitors and increasing market share and then letting their prices zoom up into the stratosphere when the competitor were gone. You think maybe this is happening again? That time it was late 19, early 20th century and the culprit was John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil.

[@bngboing]

think about monopolistic tactics though... amazon being unprofitable wasn't a mistake, by undercutting the market its competitors went out of business

[@malexander1089]

i used to work in amazon’s print-on-demand department. and yeah. amazon hires any and everybody and the people that usually wind up in that department are already tired of doing their jobs in the rest of the warehouse and come to that department to do even less. That said, there’s a lot of us that couldn’t stand the thought of pushing out had books. the finalizers (people who do the final quality checks) are forced by leadership to pass books that everyone knows are bad and it’s a constant battle between management and maintenance to get the cutting, binding and cover laminating machines to operate correctly to make a quality product. as far as errors on the cover or in the text are concerned, if whoever submitted either to amazon to be printed made a mistake on submission, that’s how that book will be shipped. the quality team has a file showing what cover image was submitted by the client, and even if it looks crazy, if it matches what was submitted that is what will ship.

[@thylacoleonkennedy7]

There's at least one example I've seen of Amazon selling 'self-published' books that are straight up plagiarism accompanied by terrible grammar and typos. Gotta love the free market!

[@CorbiniteVids]

Or ai generated nonsense

[@stevechance150]

She's complaining about the physical material. Although I heard that Amazon has had to limit "authors" to submitting no more than three new books every day.

[@cv5953]

Lmao putting up those Brandon Sanderson numbers

[@j.w.1079]

Scammers are grabbing web novels off of royalroad and sell them on Amazon en Masse

[@thylacoleonkennedy7]

@@stevechance150 I know, but I think they're both part of the same problem, which is Amazon prioritising the quantity of books sold over the quality of them at the expense of the consumer.

[@CF565]

I get all my books either from special orders at my local indie bookstore, the publishers directly, or Abe Books. Lots of the sellers on Abe Books are brick-and-mortar used bookstores, which is extra cool. Often it's a bit more expensive, but I always get what I pay for, and have a clear conscience from my dollars going to the people who actually are personally invested in book industry and culture.

[@kathrynmctigue9005]

I was just going to recommend Abe books as well. They have a copy of the 2001 edition available for under $8 with free shipping... Buying used is definitely the way to go!

[@neverplus_pbb321]

Another nice thing about Abe books is that they (at least recently) had an an option to remove print-on-demand books. I like ThriftBooks too, but they don’t have this option and, having been burned with poorly printed garbage, never buy new books from them. You can see it (POD POS) happen when some lovely old textbook on the wishlist goes from having no new copies to having over 50 available. I also remember getting better quality print on demand only a few years ago-I’ve genuinely been put off buying new books.

[@dawnmoriarty9347]

Abe books is apparently owned by Amazon

[@lovemylife648]

Every book I’ve ever gotten from Abe’s Books had very poor binding and the pages were either not intact in the book fully or there was pages that had page numbers out of order. I never buy from them now. After 3 different book purchased 3 different times with the same issues.

[@CF565]

@@lovemylife648 I've bought 100+ books from there over the span of almost 15 years and I've never had that issue.

[@chrisl6546]

I have a small publishing house as a side gig. We do print-on-demand through someone that does decent printing (we actually have a few different sources depending on quantity), but we won't sell you a paper book directly from our site. We can't stock and ship at prices that are even vaguely competitive (for our own products) as compared to wholesaling to Amazon and letting them ship, and it would mean managing stock and fulfillment either ourselves or through a fulfillment shop that takes a cut and can't compete with Amazon, either. But we'd rather you buy the ebook anyway - we collect more on it and you pay less - and we don't do DRM so you'll never lose the ability to read it.

[@lunasophia9002]

If you can't afford to be in business then you shouldn't be in business.

[@chrisl6546]

@@lunasophia9002 We can afford to be in business just fine. But moving dead trees around isn't cost effective for small publishers.

[@seijirou302]

@@lunasophia9002 good thing dumb comments are free or you wouldn't be able to do anything at all.

[@chrisl6546]

And FWIW, the Big 5 don't want to sell single copies to you either. They want to send truckloads of stuff across multiple imprints (so they look like more than 5 publishers) to Amazon, and mixed cases to your local bookstore and let them deal with the retail level shipping/selling.

[@reniesulaweyo4383]

​@@chrisl6546 Yup. I wrote it above, but often the local bookstore can just order stuff for me, or if something isn't in print, a used bookseller is also an option. Or checking out an inter-library loan.

[@kimwelch4652]

The dilemma is that electronic books are ephemeral, they will all disappear -- poof -- into nothing the first time civilization has a bad day. It only takes a few seconds without power for the big network storage servers to go blank, and backup materials start going bad in five years. Getting it in print on paper, even if it is a sh*tty print on demand gives it a bit better chance of survival. Sure, iron gall ink on vellum will last longer, but iron gall is hard to get -- and a lot of work. You have to scour the used book shops to find a good printing of older worlds with sewn in signatures and maybe you'll get acid free paper, if you are lucky. But, they're hard to find for some subjects. In the end, even my old rotting acid-paper paperbacks have lasted longer than floppies, tapes, and CD's. Heck, photocopy paper lasts longer. At some time in the future, we are in for a very dark, dark-age.

[@mabainter]

What? I mean, yes digital can disappear, though the most likely scenario there is from DRM not tech failure. Nothing you described is accurate. Losing power doesn't wipe data. Yes, some media isn't archival but neither is paper as you note. And our last dark age came despite using those materials.

[@kimwelch4652]

@@mabainter Most of the data is on high speed virtual solid state drives which require backup because they do lose their data if left unpowered for a fairly short amount of time. However, even the backups on hard-drives, DVD, or tape don't last 50 years. IBM is trying to scribe data on glass plates, which I'm wondering what happens if the racks are knocked over. The most durable records we have are on clay tablets that were accidentally baked by a fire when their storage building burned. Those have lasted almost 10 thousand years. I personally have lost a lot of data on magnetic media and even some corroded CD's. Most of the data we have today will not last 50 years because people forget about and don't copy it to new media. Some of it future archeologists will morn over.

[@mikedl1105]

No need to blame boomers. We're still going to physical stores and thumbing through physical books before buying them

[@candidobertetti27]

I can feel you, Amazon's on-demand service killed the print quality of all books. All I can tell is that if you can order it from the original publisher you might be lucky and receive an "original" copy, but this will cost you much more. I ordered a book from the Oxford University Press, it was a good one but it cost me twice the price on Amazon and it took 2 weeks for delivery.

[@Walkercolt1]

Try finding a GENUINE copy of Sir Harry Ricardo's "engineering Bible" "High Speed Internal Combustion Engines"-Oxford Press 1914-annotated 1934! Last one I saw legit was $600+ !!! Or "The Compleate Works of Edgar Allan Poe" for under $300! (ANY poetry for that matter!) $190 for Rudyard Kipling's "Tales From the Afghan Plains". (First publishing of "Gunga Din") or even Dashiell Hammett works!

[@mrpieceofwork]

I believe the term is "enshitification"...

[@Tamacat388]

We dont have to give a shit post sort of name do we?

[@UnMoored_]

@@Tamacat388Allow me to suggest that you look up a journalist-author named Cory Doctorow, who originally coined this term in reference to what big companies, especially ones like Amazon, are systematically doing. It’s a very useful term.

[@Kelvinian]

@@Tamacat388 I had the exact same complaint about this as a descriptor when it was invoked by a friend. Best arguments I've heard for it are that it covers too broad a range, and that the terminology also being degraded is part of the point. Still, I don't care for it, it has too much of a cynical irony-poisoning about it. The phenomena is a more or less standard capitalist race to the bottom by iterating toward the cheapest option with the best short-term returns possible.

[@ant5803]

you can also call it "platform decay", for those who don't want to call it that. my buddy and i were talking about the term, looked it up, and it comes from a blog post.. nothing crazy. (literally just sourcing from the wikipedia article here)

[@JohnTyree]

The term is being misused here. The enshitification that's happening is not the book itself being a low quality garbage print, it's the platform (eBay, Amazon) that used to be good for consumers and has now switched to being good for shareholders / sellers. That is the transformation that the blog post describes, not just "It got worse because capitalism happened." It's more specific than that.

[@ian_simbotin]

Fuck, I didn't even know they did this. Christ, this so fucking outrageous. Everything is turning to shit so fast. We're doomed.

[@thisbushnell2012]

The love of money (or low cost product) is the root of all evil.

[@bobs182]

Enjoy today, tomorrow will be worse.

[@michaelbenham3603]

Ugh I didn’t realize this was going on and now I’m gonna notice it and it’s gonna piss me off

[@yearight1205]

Find a local book dealer and if you need a specific book they can surely get it for you. Keep in mind that's much easier for me to say living 30 minutes from a big city, but perhaps you could also find one online or call in orders that a store ships to you.

[@dc9662]

My wife calls you, "Angry physics lady," and is happy that you have a second channel just for complaining now.

[@ian_simbotin]

That moniker is more appropriate for Sabine H, if you know who I mean. Your wife might have to find a different appellative for Angela. I guess she's just "The nice astrophysics lady"

[@dc9662]

​@@ian_simbotinOh, I know her. She's something else entirely. I don't see anger as a bad thing, it's a valid emotional response. How that anger is channeled is what matters.

[@UnMoored_]

Thanks for pointing this out as I clicked on it because it appeared on my recommendations without realizing it was a second channel. The fact that it was very short, wasn’t enough to get me to realize it either.

[@ian_simbotin]

​@@dc9662 Yeah, ditto

[@vyvienn]

Weird, but I’ve never had that problem. Maybe I’ve been lucky. Sounds like the best deal would be to order the book and have it sent to a local bookshop for pickup. As long as the small print does not say otherwise, you should not be obligated to have to accept the book if you don’t want it. So, always read the small print (I was also not aware that this is a thing when it comes to ordering physical books). Please be aware that we are in this mess in the first place because consumers are cheap and lazy and have supported this type of sale. Nobody had to take Amazon up on the offer. Ironically, e-books are not immune to horrid formatting and printing errors, for which I partly blame editors.

[@jamdoodles]

This is why I have Barnes and Noble or someplace like that just order it in for me and I go pick it up

[@CorbiniteVids]

They sell POD too, depending on the book. Doesn't hurt to ask to be sure that that's not what you're getting if they order for you

[@sszibler]

Can someone explain the “boomer” joke to me? Is she merely preemptively calling herself that because complaining is suppossedly a boomer thing (even though everyone younger hypocritically complains about boomers?)? I guess I’ve occasionally seen this and it’s awful, but my Expanse and Stuart Jefferies copies look pretty good to me.

[@Robohazrad]

Yes that’s the joke, I’ve also seen this joke applied to gen x. The joke is also that gen z and millennials are too scared to actually talk to managers even though they want to.

[@stoicepictetus3875]

We buy books at our local bookstore(s). The walk is healthy. You meet other people. You get to browse and get ideas. Sometimes you can sit there and have a coffe and read (or talk). It's just wonderful.

[@robertphillips93]

Well, as an actual boomer -- and as an Amazon customer who bought books there when they were the only item on the menu -- you could be overlooking features that bring the whole picture into better focus. Amazon matches consumers (not investors in) of information with suppliers with unprecedented efficiency. Only rare book and specialty sellers do better. But even they seldom offer remaindered titles for half off, as Amazon does. Of course there are absurd asking prices for some books, just like many other items. The ancient principle still applies -- caveat emptor, baby.

[@robertphillips93]

@@btd7664 Yes, well I haven't had fast food in a couple decades . . . and if the lass or anyone else is offended by my post it was certainly not my intention. On the contrary, since nearly everyone agrees that change is both inevitable and much needed, the only thing required of each is to decide is whether it is they who can change or only the others who ought to.

[@jaylavelle9318]

“The world grew cheap, as worlds must.” Henry Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1904)

[@DavidMFChapman]

A friend published a beautiful book of lunar photos and the Italian Amazon POD version was crap.

[@Gooberpatrol66]

A tech platform ruining something? Never heard of that one before

[@SG-js2qn]

Authors ought to dump publishers and sell directly. Seriously, especially for ebook format. Just like musicians need to dump labels and platforms and create their own market. I kinda get the feeling, though, that real old school entrepreneurship has been lost.

[@MM-xc2zk]

I’ve ordered one book in particular from Amazon twice, and both times it was bound horribly, but even worse it was passed off as a first edition, both times, even though the colors of the binding materials are completely off. I refunded it both times, and the second time I mentioned the scam when prompted for a reason for the refund, which I’m sure no one reads anyway. Seems very illegal, especially when there wasn’t even an indication at the end that it was reprinted by Amazon. The book in question is Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon. I’m sure the Amazon page still has it listed as available in hardcover.

[@drewhunkins7192]

Fantastic post! Glad to see someone addressing all this. I peruse Amazon's bookstore constantly but never buy from them. I get the ISBN from Amazon and contact a local brick and mortar bookstore and order the book from them.

[@czgibson3086]

I haven't bought a book from Amazon since their packaging got so bad about ten years ago that every book routinely arrived damaged.

[@totlyepic]

I'm almost entirely done with physical books. At least with ebooks I can expect consistent quality and, if need be, fix whatever's shitty myself. I know not everyone prefers e-readers to paper, but I've just been burned too many times trying to grab paper copies at this point.

[@Ryan-ly3ix]

Book store employee here. These print on demand editions are becoming more common even from publishers and wholesalers (like Ingram). We live in a garbage world.

[@buddhabillybob]

I feel your pain! Please do a long video on how the used book market has declined. BTW, I have several good used shops in my town. If I ever see that very interesting looking book, I will send it to you!

[@CardboardBots]

I had no idea that Amazon was selling print on demand books as if they were the real edition. Or maybe that’s the misleading listing of the eBay item

[@thingfish000]

One used to find discount bookstores in places like strip malls. Those were the best.

[@scottbeavan6896]

I have been caught in similar scams. Book that I bought was actually unreadable.

[@SherdsTube]

I'm so glad to see someone talking about this. I've been looking for discussions about it for a long time. I'm sick of receiving what are essentially photocopies of books, without any prior warning that they're print-on-demand. I make exceptions for small presses that can't afford to keep huge stocks, but recently I received a PoD Penguin Classics edition! It's outrageous that major publishers are also allowing Amazon to print interior copies of their books.

[@Kim_Miller]

I think the biggest sting I've got from buying books online is when a book turned out to be a galley proof copy for spelling and grammar check etc. It was even printed on the cover with that message, along with a Not for Sale line. I think it's still on a shelf somewhere.

[@MatthewJamesMullin]

Ugh, I had an ebay experience like that. Everything the seller claimed about the item other than it's general shape was false and the as soon as I was refunded as soon as they figured out I wasn't going to let them gaslight me. And now I am stuck with a useless piece of metal and plastic and the seller gets away with it.

[@daveys]

I recently bought a book that suffered from this problem of the poor printing and dodgy binding. Absolute trash, returned for a full refund.

[@davidmarshall2399]

The audacity of posting a rant that's not 45 minutes long. That's not why I subscribed

[@ConradSpoke]

I bought a "Collected Works of H. P. Lovecraft" through Amazon, and the thin pages were transparent. Garbage binding. Sent it back.

[@jsterling6805]

May want to actually start going to the bookstore. What a novel idea.

[@MrSeedi76]

I only buy books of Amazon if it's the absolute last option. First is always the local bookstore, then other online retailers or eBay or a local used bookstore (I bought so much there that I always get a discount without even asking), and if all else fails and there is no other way to get it - Amazon.

[@anselman3156]

I stopped buying from Amazon after getting books with several typos and missing pages.

[@elliotwalton6159]

It's the realities of publishers not being able to carry inventory. The costs of printing and binding books is entirely unreliable and changes daily. It's hitting the small press industry hard. KPD is a terrible necessity for some publishers and authors to make and keep their catalogues "in print". It's the "better than nothing" solution if you don't want to go to your library or through the second hand market.

[@vincentparr3136]

Great video and just have to say seeing the Arthur plush warmed my heart

[@LunaJLane]

Well, I was expecting more but I agree with some comments about going through Jack Sparrow to get the book version and not print versions from ebay or amazon. I prefer to get printed books if I know the author (read their other books) and I usually go through local retailers that have the actual books for me to see. When I have gone through amazon in the past, I haven't yet found any sellers that have done this.

[@nathandensley9104]

Just bought George Orwell's Coming Up For Air on Amazon and it came to me in that letter sized book where it's not even copy and pasted right onto this oversized page. I lost it at home when I opened it.

[@fading9514]

Listening to you complain is therapeutic 😂

[@AdrianBoyko]

The last time I bought a book on Amazon, I bought it used from a dealer who said that they don’t sell print-on-demand .

[@Poemi10304]

Most physical books I still buy are niche - manga (translated Japanese comics) - so luckily for me, they have to have special permissions for limited publishers, and the quality is pretty darn good these days. Sadly, due to lack of space, I primarily read ebooks now.

[@r8chlletters]

Every time I buy a book from Amazon it’s damaged. Nice, hardbound books that have ripped and damaged covers, corners dented. Also you aren’t a boomer honey. You’re not that old. I’m not a boomer I’m an Xer and I’m 55…

[@Ellen_Seokjin]

Omg, I'm so sorry this happened to you. I totally understand your frustration. In my country (Brazil) Amazon has the monopoly of book selling, sadly

[@Atomhaz]

I bought a history book on Amazon. I think it was something by Virgil. The pages like don’t line up… it looks like they were cut by a toddler. I returned it and ordered a new one and the pages were also messed up on the new one. Like… how does that happen? Is this a stylistic choice or something?

[@BlackSeranna]

Thanks for telling us. I only order books from eBay and usually they are older copies. For new books I go to book stores and small book shops. No Amazon for books.

[@starsea3313]

Thanks for letting us know! From here on out, I'll avoid buying books from Amazon, or even Ebay.

[@benconnolly9883]

Man I get this. My mom got me a copy of Dracula for Christmas, which I was initially excited about, but it was from Amazon, so the font was uninteresting and poorly formatted, and the cover was blurry and vague, like a stock pattern. When I settle down to read it, I will be checking out my library

[@CodyBrumfield1]

You’re very funny and I’m grateful for your posts even if no one else is. We should be mad about this even if we have bigger things to be mad about at the moment.

[@validpostage]

"even if no one else is" is this supposed to be negging? wtf?

[@CodyBrumfield1]

@@validpostage No. I didn’t mean it like that. I meant because she doesn’t have a zillion followers like some shittier science communicators. I was a little drunk and said it poorly. I didn’t even know you could “neg” via KZbin comments. I apologize if it came off that way.

[@justinecooper9575]

Your description reminds me of the editions I used to get from the Science Fiction Book Club.

[@johnlarkin8226]

Thanks for telling us about this--I had no idea. When I buy books these days (as opposed to using my local library), I have been buying used books through Amazon, which are not coming from Amazon, and so far, those have all been real used books, not reprints by Amazon. But honestly, I mostly use the library.

[@OriginalGrasshopper]

I recently purchased a brand new book on Amazon and noticed how there was a horizontal white smudge going through the same spot on every page on the right hand side. The book was VERY hard to read since one or two sentences per page were illegible. Little did I know until seeing your video that this was most likely due to it being printed on demand. And now I am very hesitant to ever buy another book from Amazon.

[@davidl4191]

I live in a town of only about 35k people, we have 3 truly awesome bookstores and a small college with its own bookstore. Not only would I rather give any of them my money than Amazon, but they employ (and are owned by) some truly great people. Plus, there is nothing like walking into a good bookstore that sells both new and used books. Even just that lovely bookstore smell, simply fantastic!

[@Yesica1993]

I've greatly limited my Amazon buying for various reasons. (Including being broke.) I have been seeing more and more Amazon reviews saying that books are physically poorly made. It's hard to know what to believe, online. But this is the first time I've seen an actual person saying it. I appreciate that.

[@heatherstiara8033]

It’s very hard for indie authors to get good quality books. Authors now are buying them in bulk, going through them, showing amazon the garbage ones and getting a refund, then selling them at a discount price to readers. Amazon needs to get it together.

[@seranelson5745]

Also, any long enough book that becomes popular because it gets made into a miniseries or movie will be split one book into two separate books - for instance “ Shogun “ by Clavell, “ Frank Herbert’s “ Dune”.Not sure of the quality but now charging double for parts one and two of what used to be a single book. Fortunately I have owned both for years.

[@andreacook7431]

I very seldom buy physical books any more. Between reading authors with publishers that DON'T sell physical copies, having poor eyesight that makes small print hard to read, and having hand issues that make holding a paperback open, I'll take the ebook any day.

[@mikeymad]

Thanks for this update - it is a sad state of affairs when the standard is garbage... - Cheers

[@davidliddelow5704]

I once bought an amazon book on failure modes analysis and it was literally just several sheets of ordinary ink jet printed paper held together with two staples. I wish i was making this up!

[@user-eu1io4qp2i]

Dude, I'm sure you're making this up!!

[@abesapien9930]

I bought a hard cover of a Reader's Digest Series "Call of the Wild" for $20 online, and the seller showed it had a nice, pristine cover. It arrived with the cover letters faded out, showing "Ca-- of the Wil-" instead. A few months later, I was in Half Price Books and saw the same copy of the book--with the letters all intact!--for $6. Womp, womp. They won.

[@twwc960]

I agree with you about the poor quality of Amazon print on demand books. It doesn't have to be that way. I've seen print on demand books that look good. I think Amazon does this deliberately to encourage people to switch to Kindle. If printed books look bad enough, people won't think ebooks are so bad by comparison.

[@zamdrist]

I've been a tech worker for 30 some years and honestly, I'm bullish on AI and just tech in general. Maybe I'm just getting old, but this video somewhat validates my thoughts. Authenticity matters. Authenticity doesn't go out of style.

[@dortheaford8083]

I hesitate to buy books from Amazon. I once bought a book where they squeezed a 500 hundred page novel into 200 pages. The print was very tiny. I am not old, I can read small print just fine. But this was ridiculously tiny. I sent the book back. A different time they sent me a print on demand book with small print. This was at least readable so I kept it. But it just wasn’t the quality that I wanted.

[@fstateaudio]

This is an issue with electronics components on eBay too, people just ordering stuff from Amazon and having it shipped to you at a markup.

[@seanswader7425]

Should’ve just watched the movie on prime with commercials since it’s probably stuck on freevee and you can’t watch their “free” content without commercials because it’s trash and probably a scam, but at least you don’t have to worry about not being able to read the pages

[@AlucardNoir]

Does the book have an e-book version? And if so, is it only sold on Amazon?

[@-johnny-deep-]

Is it not possible to be sure you won't get a reprint edition when ordering through Amazon? When I specifically select either paperback or hardcover, it seems like it tells you whether it's a "reprint edition" or not. For example, for this book, if I select the hardcover, I see a Prime price of $20 (vs the $35 list) being sold "Ships from MyUV, Sold by MyUV", and that the "edition" is "First Edition" rather than "Reprint Edition". Are you saying that this could really end up being an eBay sale *through* Amazon's reprint service? Do they do "reprints" in hardcover as well as paperback? Also, if I pick the paperback version and scroll down to the book details it does at least say "Publisher ‏ : ‎ Free Press; Reprint edition (March 26, 2016)". But I do agree that Amazon makes it far too easy to buy a poor quality reprint. Sadly, many people simply don't care. Finally: this ebook is also available on oceanofpdf 😊

[@mikeramsay5964]

That happened to me a couple times, so now I look at who's publishing it and, also, looking for reputable versions recommended by others.

[@uter]

While I have experienced the occasional sloppy cut and light physical damage which is standard for all Amazon orders, overall I've been pretty happy with their POD. The cream paper is surprisingly nice, much heavier and higher quality than mass-market paperbacks. Also, POD books are often published directly by the author rather than a big publisher, which is nice.

[@g.mitchell7110]

Have you tried Barnes and Noble? I'm genuinely curious because I don't know if they do the same thing; I've bought maybe ten new physical books this decade, and all have been good quality.

[@cryionic]

ye I had some issues with some other thing these days and I also thought contacting customer support would help in some way. I'm stupid.

[@BamsenSlagbjorn]

Noticed this 10 years ago when I made my first and final purchase from Amazon. I bought a bunch of books at once because I couldn't find them locally (or nationally) and had to order from abroad. About half of them were weird and low quality, the other half were fine

[@Paul_Wetor]

On the flip side, I recently bought an Amazon print-on-demand version of a 1988 book and it looked great. I have an original copy and they look pretty much the same.

[@turntablesrockmyworld9315]

I order 70% of my new books through an independent local bookstore unless I need them right away. Problem solved. Used books I go to used bookstores, or for rarer/more obscure used Abe or sometimes Ebay small sellers.

[@steubens7]

are the new copies on thriftbooks for 17$ the amazon prints?

[@neverplus_pbb321]

Often, yes

[@user-zd7id9rx3f]

I hate buying a book printed on paper that has a low brightness. Makes it more difficult to read.