books are failing as physical objects

[@FayeVert]

I work in a library and am constantly enraged with the terrible quality of new books even from legitimate, big-name publishers. You can't perfect bind a book and then glue the spine of the textblock to the spine of the cover! Stop wrapping books in cheap paper! Use actual cloth mulls to hold a textblock in the case! I want to yell at the publishers! Print on demand is also a problem, and we're even having problems with people donating or requesting AI-written scam books.

[@arenomusic]

Oh god, AI BOOKS? A PHYSICAL THING?

[@Matheuzers]

One of the greatest books ever written, "If on a winter's night a traveler" by Italo Calvino, uses its own "misprint" as a plot point

[@bangboom123]

Italo Calvino is my all-time fav author. Love him.

[@somethingnotstupid]

I was gonna make a joke about that happening to me because I just finished reading it lmao

[@cyclonasaurusrex1525]

Written 2nd person if I recall?

[@nathanielreichert4638]

Once upon a time, the end

[@tobeseve4020]

My sister just read that one! She really liked it, I might have to borrow it at some point.

[@michaelkalin2209]

HARD agree that print on demand has become a scourge for online book shopping. it's so frustrating. a lot of the listings are straight up deceptive.

[@cj1986x]

Yes. The last physical book I ordered from Amazon was a Gaelic language book and the store page said they had it in stock, so I assumed that meant they had the physical book in stock. What I got was a print on demand copy printed in my state (the publisher of this particular book is in Europe), They are not transparent about this at all.

[@B0bb217]

Used books is the move

[@maciejstachowski183]

Not only is Amazon rough on books to the point where I think I've only once managed to get a book from them that wasn't damaged in some form - nicked corners, bent softcovers, once they've managed to somehow glue the envelope to the foreedge and the book still has bits of cardboard attached to it - but their PoD quality is awful. And people use it for things where the quality matters - I have a genkouyoushi notebook and a kanji workbook, both PoD, and the paper is just copy paper (not terribly suitable for writing, especially with a fountain or brush pen) and neither of them lay flat without mangling the spine.

[@hiverampiveram]

My copy of that book arrived on the same day you posted about this issue, so I sat there and counted the pages like a sesame street character experiencing a mental break

[@greggoat6570]

I’m glad yours was in tact. Imagine waiting years for a movie to come out and your copy just doesn’t have the second act, like there’s 45 minutes cut out of the middle. Just wild lol.

[@WillLockhart]

Print-on-demand and Amazon resellers are definitely a problem, but the quality of hardcover books has been declining for a long time. I'm a collector, and the best hardcovers imo are from the 1960s and '70s. The boards were often fully bound in cloth, with gorgeous artwork on the dust jackets, and the pages were sewn in, not just glued, which makes them more durable. In the 80s they started doing just "quarter-cloth", where the cloth is only on the spine, and nowadays they don't really do cloth or sewn pages at all except for special editions. Interestingly, while hardcovers now are shit, paperbacks are actually much nicer - and more durable - than in the past. It used to be that the hardcovers were high quality, while "mass market" paperbacks were basically just paper glued together (the spines crack right away and the book will fall apart completely after a couple reads), but they were cheap. Now everything has sort of converged.

[@FayeVert]

I work in a library and I agree. Many of the new hardcovers we receive from publishers are falling apart at the hinges. Poor quality materials, cheap hot melt glues...

[@cmmartti]

I like a really nice quality paperback because they're portable in a way that no hardback book ever is. I have a Harry Potter 6 paperback that has super thin, opaque pages and a flexible cover, which makes it super easy to fold the pages backwards and hold the book open one-handed, say, standing on the bus. This is a 600+ page book but it's barely more than an inch thick. But the hardcover book 5 I have which is not that much longer is more than twice as thick and just a very awkward object to use and carry around, and definitely not pocketable. Also, it takes up way more shelf space than the paperback, and after moving cross country in a small sedan with all of my possessions a couple of years ago I've become distinctly aware of how "stuff" can be such a burden, and I wish I could swap it out for a high quality paperback. The channel "Dogen" on KZbin has a video titled Why Japan Loves Small Things that is about the Japanese culture of the "love of less" and it really resonated with me, because it's something I've embraced whole-heartedly. I own a lot of books, but with only a few exceptions I don't keep books I don't intend to re-read (I've read said Potter books more than a half dozen times, for example). Which means my collection is heavily curated and distinctly reflects my personality and tastes.

[@CF565]

5:37 Yeah this 'small publishers need print-on-demand' is hogwash- I read alot of contemporsry poetry, and many new poets are hyper-niche and sell very few copies, but the books themselves are almost always very nice objects- with nice paper, covers, typeset etc- because poetry people really care about books. Publishers, big and small, *can* make nice books, they just *choose* not to.

[@shatteredteethofgod]

Very similar situation in weird fiction and horror. Runs of a couple hundred copies at most and every single one is a joy to hold and a piece of art on its own.

[@d3nza482]

Different ballgames. "Small publishers" who need print-on-demand are usually SELF-publishers limiting printing to what is sold, trying to make a career or a side hustle out of their work. No one is insane enough, even among poets, to try to live off of their own poetry. Chasing down small printers or finding niche publishers who'll do a small run of one's poetry is a part of that "hobby" - unless one is financed by a prize or grant of some kind, which pays for that work to be done by professionals. Like editors or small niche publishers doing the chasing of their own.

[@martins1964]

a long time ago i bought two penguin classics, one had about 100 pages missing, and another had about 100 pages repeated.

[@sleepiestgf]

this is just italo calvino's if on a winter's night a traveler

[@laurakuhlmann1626]

May I recommend reading "When on a winter's night, a traveler" by Italo Calvino. If you want a story about pages missing, being inserted in the wrong book, and the love for books. It's awesome

[@nathanielreichert4638]

Oh dang, is that suppose to be a riddle or you for real??

[@ferchrissakes]

So what you’re saying is that _on average_ you still got two full books’ worth of pages? So, like, what’s the big deal, man? But seriously, when you say a Penguin Classics was missing pieces I imagine something like 1984 accidentally (or… on purpose!? Dun-dun-duun) becoming just a story of how everyone seems so equal and united under this alternative form of government and isn’t that nice?

[@wendyheatherwood]

Twenty odd years ago I had a paperback copy of Christine by Stephen King that had the 3rd quarter of the book repeated instead of the 4th quarter.

[@brian.montero]

2:13 "Let's see Paul Allen's card"

[@Trepanation21]

__

[@CopperAirplane]

You ever watch elf? This situation is comically greedy. "'So, you really think we should ship 'em?' 'No, I think we should take a $30,000 bath. So some kid can understand what happened to a puppy and a frigging pigeon. Ship 'em.'"

[@LimeyLassen]

Every year Elf gets a little more classic.

[@nathanielreichert4638]

Haha so obscure, but yeah the dad was an ass in the beginning.

[@NovemberIGSnow]

My favorite books as a kid were Shel Silverstein's children's poetry books. And I remember reading how important the quality of the paper was to him, so much that he demanded to control which paper was used in publishing his books. I remember how nice they felt to hold. Just genuinely works of art to hold his poetry and illustrations. I wish that kind of attention to detail went into all books.

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

I still have some of the copies of his books I read as a kid. I read them to my kids.

[@arenomusic]

His music still slaps

[@tj2375]

In my opinion they source the print pages from cheap printers to maximize profits and they just don't care. Cory Doctorow coined the perfect expression for the times we are living in: the enshitiffication.

[@d3nza482]

Cory Doctorow is an obnoxious, juvenile, self-promoting knowitall with an army of obnoxious fawning followers who are very loud on the internet. Thus his vocabulary and attempts at encapsulation of ideas with newly-minted words sound like a rant of young white teen from the suburbs, nursing a struggling goatee and wearing a Che shirt, fancying himself a revolutionary cause he proudly jaywalks and smokes pot. As for the missing pages... someone dropped a section while assembling the book. It happens. It's actually a sign of manual labor involved, instead of automated printing. And I'm gonna make a wild guess that it is probably 64 pages and not 60 that are missing, as 16 pages per sheet makes exactly 4 octavos, while laying out and printing a book of such size on quatros would be sheet lunacy.

[@wophugus]

If I wanted an emotional rollercoaster that ended with me hating and feeling sorry for all the coworkers I would simply work for the government again.

[@pattheplanter]

I also recognise that story.

[@arenomusic]

I wonder what those coworkers think of us

[@teddymasters1347]

The thing about print on demand is there is no reason it has to be garbage. They could use high quality paper and ink, the services just don’t.

[@AsherGrace7]

I have a few print on demand books from about 12 years ago, and you can barely tell. The quality has definitely taken a nose dive.

[@timonsku]

Sourced from various lowest bidders and missing QA :/ Its very likely the pages went missing in the binding process and they did simply no QA for the final product. An extra weighing step at the end that takes quite a bit of time which at the volume these print shops have is a significant expense to catch a rare issue. I hate that we are at this point where we could make things nicer for less but instead opt to continue to scrape the bottom line as much as feasible.

[@Klemeron]

Within a bookblock there are smaller sections, each with paper inserted within paper, called sections or signatures. It's quite common to find books with signatures missing or even mixed up. One of my Watchmen copies had a duplicate signature (repeated the same 20 or so pages twice). It's also why some books have a few empty pages in the back, the content ran out before the pages in the signature did.

[@XatxiFly]

Just for your data, I'm neither much of a physics person nor really a booktube person but as a ~ connoisseur of the KZbin craft ~ I very much enjoy your channels

[@Simplepotato]

Brandon Sanderson might not be the best example to use since his books are so big they push the limits of normal printing methods so much that in the UK and Ireland they split the books in 2

To be fair that's only in Stormlight, the majority of his books normally aren't more than 700 pages

[@ruffshots]

I'll see your Stormlight 1000 page books and raise you some Malazan 1250 page books ;)

[@barmy8219]

@@ruffshots And I honestly prefer the mass market paperbacks of those to the quality of the Stormlight books (At least the last two. I don't remember anything wrong with the first three.)

[@raifsevrence]

​@@ruffshots I just finished that series a couple months ago. At 45 hours long, The Crippled God is the longest book in the series. At least as far as audio goes. Wind and Truth is 62 hours long. No idea what the word count is.

[@johnlogan8672]

@@ruffshotsmy copy of Wind and Truth is 1330 pages long

[@Majoofi]

Back in 1983 I got the two volume compact edition of the twelve volume Complete Oxford English Dictionary as my reward for joining The Book of The Month Club. It arrived with about 100 pages upside down.

[@Man-ej6uv]

all i have to say is this: "unfortunate adjective /ʌnˈfɔːtʃənət/ /ʌnˈfɔːrtʃənət/ ​ having bad luck; caused by bad luck SYNONYM unlucky He was unfortunate to lose in the final round. It was an unfortunate accident. The unfortunate animal was locked inside the house for a week. OPPOSITE fortunate" -via oxford dictionary

[@sizwesokopo281]

😂 that's kinda cool

[@matthewdrury6443]

The Springier (yellow books) print quality has tanked so hard. The meta among mathematicians is to make sure to buy used copies, and try really hard to ensure that the printing is as old as possible. There's gobs of threads on /r/math on the topic. I assume the set theory book was an old print run before investment capital ruined... everything good and holy. Riemann's 1859 paper is the GOAT, so at least the content is probably good.

[@sbares]

> Riemann's 1859 paper is the GOAT, so at least the content is probably good. I looked up the book, and at least from the preview it seems to be utter crap. Within the first few pages, he has claimed such nonsense as there being "no such function" as the prime counting function. It doesn't exactly bode well for a book about mathematics that the author has no idea what a function is... The author also has a paper on vixra (lol) titled "The Zeta Induction Theorem: The Simplest Equivalent to the Riemann Hypothesis?", which should be an immediate red flag (indeed the content of said paper is completely vacuous).

[@Matheuzers]

The Joy of Sets is an amazing title

[@michaeldebellis4202]

Yes it is. I suck at math but set theory is so intuitive and elegant and gets into some profound topics like Gödel’s proof that there are valid theorems that we will never be able to prove and Cantor’s proof that some infinite sets (the reals) are larger than other infinite sets (the integers).

[@pattheplanter]

I only realised that a book I was reading was printed with dark blue ink when I read it on a train - it was in keeping with the theme of the book. Very nice paper, the author (Christopher Moore) obviously cares about the presentation as well as writing very good books. One of his had a phosphorescent pattern on the cover. Again, I did not realise until I woke up next to it glowing. Made my day.

[@drunkpotato735]

“The Great Passage” by Shion Miura has a plot line that involves creating the exact right paper for a new dictionary and I just love a world where such thought, love, painstaking care, and precision craftsmanship goes into every detail.

[@trol68419]

Quality overall has taken a nosedive since COVID. Lots of recalls, dangerous food getting through, etc. Corporations are doing what they can to save money and increase profits, so they'd rather release garbage than increase the price more than they already have. They also try to reduce their workforce as much as possible for the same reason (profits), while expecting the smaller workforce to maintain the same quality of work. Late-stage capitalism has resulted in a civilization in decline.

[@pattheplanter]

All of those corporations hoping that somebody else is employing enough people who are able to afford their product.

[@RHCole]

Psssst it started with deregulation under Trump 1.0

[@miirshroom]

I was in a physical book store doing gift shopping and spotted a book so beautiful that I had to buy it. It was a Penguin Classics copy of the classic Wizard of Oz and 2 other Oz stories by L Frank Baum, and a nice little foreword, and I'd been thinking recently about how I'd like to read the original story (unrelated to the release of Wicked, though that is certainly what prompted this edition to be printed). The most beautiful thing about it is that the edges of the pages were printed in vibrant yellow green gradient and with little silhouettes of the characters. Nice little touch that is the kind of thing you don't get to appreciate fully in a digital storefront and certainly would not be a consideration for print on demand. Along with all kinds of other things that can make a book feel nice to hold and look appealing like embossed titles or parts of the cover being in shiny metallic pigment. Otherwise, unless it's a crowdfunded edition I try to get books from reputable retailers that have physical storefronts as much as possible, even if I'm shopping online and even if it's more expensive. Kindof a use it or lose it situation.

[@jpengland96]

Bookmaking has switched from Offset printing to Digital commercial printing. This is what enabled print on demand at all, as offset printed books require ~1,000 copies per run to be economical if not significantly more. Digital printing is great (for book publishers) for a few thousand copies or less since it doesn’t require them to print a bunch of inventory to sit on. Instead they can do small print runs, maintain minimal inventory, and potentially even do geographically different runs to save on shipping. Also print on demand can be done well… it just usually isn’t. It has enabled publishing of far more books than could have been published before due to low demand. But the tradeoff is that it is usually done cheaply and badly. It also hurts that paper costs increased dramatically during COVID due to drops in demand and industry consolidation. Only a few mills left make really good paper and they’re mostly buried by what’s cheap.

[@happysprollie]

Came here to say something similar. Print on demand enables small publishers to take a risk on books that might not sell high numbers. It also means books can effectively stay 'in print' indefinitely. Warehousing, distribution and pulping unsold copies imposes huge costs - especially as many books are distributed to bookshops on a 'sale or return' basis, increasing the risk for publishers. (It used to be the case that the bookseller didn't even have to return the whole book, just the ripped-off front cover. Don't know if that's still the case.) I love high quality paper and binding, but the costs of doing that are becoming astronomical.

[@MC-su3sd]

I shop at a big chain bookstore in my city (Tokyo) because they have a sizeable English section. So far, two of the eight or so books I’ve bought there in the past year have had repeated sections and omitted pages and strange typos that I think would’ve been caught by the publisher. It’s crazy because these publishers aren’t small companies or anything - they’re big ones that have a greater responsibility because of the sheer number of books they bring to the market.

[@KylerRachael]

It’s wild that for many books you’ll actually get a better quality product by buying a 20+ year old used copy that was actually produced with quality materials than paying twice as much for a ‘new’ copy that will fall apart in a year.

[@KuroOnehalf]

I don't read novels much, but I read a ton of manga, and I have so many pet peeves with how they are printed. Even since before covid, manga has been in a printing shortage. It's a scene that's been growing rapidly, and the american print system is not built to support the demand. Then covid hit and it got worse. This has resulted in some manga getting delayed in their printing, but also, more pressingly, it's resulted in much shoddier printing quality. So many of the volumes I own have fading ink. You might not totally mind the ink fading on text (or maybe you would), but in comics you want the illustrations to look great. The whole point is to admire the drawings, and you can't do that for a bunch of manga you find on shelves printed in the US. Additionally, they often come with a ludicrous amount of scuffs and dings. Corners smashed. Little bits peeling off. If more publishers embraced french flaps this would be way less of an issue, but they continue to not do it, and print them on crummy paper with crummy ink. As collectors items, most of them are poor. You buy a manga made in Japan for a fraction of the cost and it's pretty much flawless. The whole industry there uses these glossy french flaps which always look vibrant and amazing, even 20 years after printing, and the ink is nice and dark. I wish American-printed stuff would look nearly that good.

[@allisonbradley3499]

I'm not a big book-buyer (generally prefer the library) so when I do buy a book it's because I want to reread and treasure it. There's nothing better than a beautiful book that feels viscerally pleasurable to read...it's a shame we're moving past that.

[@JosephDickson]

Amazon prints books on demand, very poorly, I bought one once, never again. It's also why I don't own a Kindle and go out of my way to buy from Amazon's competitors.

[@greggoat6570]

Woahhhhh dude you are so cool and badass I’m sure Bezos is personally crying over personally losing your business

[@lucaspayne2546]

I read a book called Unix: A History and a Memoir by one of the creators which was just bulk amazon printed, with a low resolution blurred jpeg cover. The guy is 83 now and on an interview said he was confused and disappointed when he saw the copy people ended up getting, cause he cares a lot about book presentation (internal type-setting was good using the old 70s typesetter program roff I think but terrible grainy printing).

[@catmate8358]

I had read a book that was missing 20 or 30 pages fifty years ago. It's not a new thing. It just happens here and there.

[@numericalcode]

When I see a book with great paper quality in the library, that usually convinces me to get a copy. Not infrequently, the copy I receive will have different (lousy) printing. I wish I could avoid shopping online but some items are hard to find in physical stores.

[@H9715-fj5fk]

The biggest offenders are the big 4 publishers and ingram pod. The big printing companies in u.s does have the capacity to make better books. Mostly independent publishing houses give you better value for money on quality. In india, taxes are going up on thread, glue and pulp making books going to be more bad in coming years. Though am not from u.s as far as i understand the industry its the decision by publishers as they give out the order to the printers. Most of independent publishing houses and small groups like NDP , Greywolf, Europa, sandorf , dalkey, deepvellum , biblioasis etc make books that shame the big corporations. Also , you should try to support your local independent bookstore as much as possible and avoid amazon and barnes and noble etc as much as possible.

[@rainbowkrampus]

I can second this. Annoyingly, it's the indies that have the best quality. I say annoyingly because while their product may be excellent, they do not have the range of products as a result of their size. Ya know, not about to start buying books I've no interest in just to support a publisher.

[@nathanielreichert4638]

Well said

[@FayeVert]

Ingram is AWFUL. They tried to sell an AI-written book to public libraries without telling them that's what it was.

[@GrumpMcgee-v4f]

I had a similar situation when I bought a copy of Infinite Jest at Barnes and Noble. I think it had around 30 pages missing which was pretty annoying. Luckily I had a family member who had a version with those missing pages who was willing to send me a picture of the pages I was missing so I didn’t have to buy a new one. Also, somewhat related, the look of disappointment when I went up to the salesclerk to buy Infinite Jest still haunts me to this day. Which, I mean, completely fair.

[@turkysanwtch]

I'd highly recommend going to The Strand in NYC if you have a chance, it's a huge independent bookstore in the East Village that's an institution.

[@tobeseve4020]

I recently bought a soft cover Game of Thrones, and all the pages are misaligned horizontally. Some pages the outer side of the page is cut off, so one or two letters per line is missing, other pages are too far in so there's letters stuck in the binding, and some you can see factory markings of where the pages are supposed to be cut, but weren't properly. Plus the ink smudges with my fingers. It's still readable, and I can't be bothered to get another copy, so I've just decided to deal with it, but it's a long book to be mildly annoyed every 30-60 pages. Also! If you want bookstore recommendations for Manhattan! My two favorites are McNally Jackson and Strand, both have a few locations. There's a massive Barns and Noble that a lot of tourists go to, but honestly there's so many amazing independent bookstores in NYC that going to a chain is kind of a waste, imo.

[@alanamccool7409]

Yeah, this is a big problem for me. I have small hands, and none of these big 500+ page novels are easy to hold and read. Then there are all these classics series (even like, Penguin cloth bound classics!) that have terrible binding so they don't even stay open. Is a good reason to buy from local sellers that will find books for you, because they want to keep you as a customer and they know what publishers have quality and what do not.

[@digitaljanus]

We're seeing this more and more at the library system I work for: books constantly missing pages or repeating pages, we've had to return a lot of them recently.

[@samueldoten6111]

The strand bookstore near Union square is a must

[@zrman96]

I went to his convention this year and there was a talk about how they got this book made. It was so long that they had to decrease the quality of the paper so they could physically fit more pages in because they are at the max size that the bindery is capable of handling. I'm not sure why there is such a difference between the two copies that you have, it seems like they would all be the same if they're first edition first printings but I guess not.

[@OlivierEnzo]

You had me believing part 6 would come out in 2 years for a moment :'(

[@raifsevrence]

hehe hehe hehehehehehe...this is the first truly epic series I have come to before it was even close to being finished. It sucks. Technically, I read The Wheel of Time a year after it was first published. Fortunately for me I was pretty young and lost interest in the series at the time. I didn't pick it back up again until Jordan had already passed. It is going to be a long time before Sanderson finishes TSLA. He said Wind and Truth is the *halfway* point...

[@velinion1]

Back in the 90s, I bought a copy of Terry Pratchett's Witches Abroad which I was disappointed to find repeated about 60 pages and then jumped forward. (For axample page 61-120 repeated, and the next page was 181).

[@mystwerks]

The thing is that when you print at such a high volume you end up having to use different suppliers and factories, resulting in inconsitencies. Happens all the time in printing fields, like with trading cards.

[@Flamewarden_Honoushugoshin]

I had to immediately grab my Wind and Truth copy I got this holiday season that I just started reading and check to make sure it wasn't also plagued with this condition. It has a few pages that feel a little thinner I think, but nothing to the degree of straight up missing pages or being that noticeable. I'd probably recommend buying from a physical storefront, never had this issue with books bought from my local bookstore, not sure if they check the product when they receive an order or if they just work with more reputable printing services.

[@GSBarlev]

I definitely have had a book that was missing pages. My solution at the time was to find the text online (it must have been a public domain work), print them out, and stick the folded up printouts into the book. I was a kid (and the printing would have been at a public library), so honestly I think the idea of owning a rare misprinted edition, or the Ikea Effect of having section that I had to hunt for online, heightened my enjoyment of the work.

[@jessietea]

this has happened to me and my partner too! for me it was actually a bootleg kindle copy of Anna Karenina. for him he got a penguin classics edition of melville's short stories and the pages of at least one story had a chunk out of order (it was his first melville and he thought he had just done something odd style-wise, but when he finally realized the story had been completely spoiled and ruined for him). he's also gotten at least one book where the material in the book was for a straight up different book than listed (but the cover matched). oh, and i also got a cookbook recently where the binding had completely ripped/fallen apart in the middle. they did replace that one, but it was super visible and still should have been caught by quality control

[@cj1986x]

I just cannot order print books from Amazon anymore. The final straw was a couple years ago when I ordered a paperback of Camus' The Fall and the copy I got had a misaligned cover. It wasn't even a minor flaw. No one would buy that copy at a bookstore but Amazon sold it to me.

[@MagicAndWires]

The first print on demand book I bought was a misaligned printing of what was very clearly a scan of a much older edition (which might even be the scan I found on internet archive). The worst thing about it was that the pages smelled. And not like, in a nice old paper kind of way but a sour smell, somewhere in between the smell of urine and hay. Never made that mistake again.

[@qlqnen]

I had a UK paperback of Sanderson's Mistborn (bool 2 or 3) where about 30-40 previous pages were repeated and those replaced the pages that should have been there. So like page 350 the next page was 321 all of a sudden and then when you go forward the 30 pages, it's on page 380. I've had a similar misprint like 20 years ago, I think it was a hardcover Robin Cook or whatever.

[@wendyheatherwood]

I had that with a Stephen King book about 20 years ago. In that case it was a whole quarter of the book that repeated.

[@kcrosley]

Ha ha haaaa, Doctor Collier! I studied “The Book as Physical Object” in graduate school while you… my dear little friend… we’re taking kindergarten. Touché! And en garde!

[@pbbbtttt8185]

once read a book where every 3rd page was perforated down the middle. like, cutting through the text block

[@the_journeyman_project]

I have found that Penguin Classics print on demand books have higher quality paper than the original, though the cover image is just a low resolution scan. It would be interesting if you could find someone in the industry to interview. I don't think all print on demand books are inherently bad. I would rather have access to something than have it go out of print.

[@SamBrownBaudot]

Pages that are a different shade of white, with two entire "signatures" missing raises alarm bells for counterfeiting. And we know Amazon has a problem with counterfeit sellers. Think about what has to happen for 60 pages to be missing and that not be obvious: The printing has to be set up that way. If they measured the bookribbon that the pages were going to be glued to, and the covers, for the proper page count and those pages then weren't glued in, it would likely fail so bad that the binding machines further down the assembly line would jam on the codex that didn't fit the size it was supposed to fit.

[@sabalos]

I just listened to you talk about books as physical objects for almost 10 minutes and emphasise that it's about the paper and the binding and not the words of the novel, and still all I want to do is post my unpopular opinions about Mistborn. I think this might be a sickness I do also hate print on demand though. I think I mostly avoid it by paying too much for old books on ebay

[@rediband]

"Why is this happening?" re: paper quality. Lowest bidder, Amazon mostly doesn't print the books, and undoubtedly treats their bookmaking vendors the same way they do any other vendor, or their employees, they squeeze them for every 1/100th of a penny.. And that effectively means there's absolutely no standards for the paper, no hygienics, nothing. Are the books made in China? What if it was lettuce instead of paper Amazon was shipping to you. Would you eat that salad? aka Would you run your fingers all over that crappy paper then rub your nose? Not me.

[@AmeenRidwan]

3:28 "in 2 years when Stormlight Archive 6 comes out" literally made me burst out laughing🤣

[@davidhemrick149]

Some online sellers are better than others. I'm thinking of a big NY chain that still actually has book stores across the country. They at least (to date) package the books so they are not torn and bent upon receipt.

[@tashatylo]

This is why I get all my new (non-used) books from my local indie bookstore, they have quality books.

[@PPunktAlex]

Honestly, "preordering one year in advance and having like 5% of the book just straight up Not In There" is putting my "preordering 6 weeks in advance and having Amazon miss the delivery deadline twice for what -seems- like the complete package" situation into perspective...

[@almishti]

Print on demand is a big thing with a lot of 'book publishing' businesses in India, abebooks is especially polluted with them. They like to bind them in faux-leather hard covers with fake gilding so you think you're getting a quality edition that preserves the dignity that the contents deserve, but it's just to jack up prices and the paper is abysmal, only slightly better than newsprint most of the time.

[@ptonpc]

The race to the bottom and profit is king. It would be interesting to see where they were printed.

[@erkamevlice7006]

Profit-maximizing and cultural volatility shaped by the algorithmic age prompt publishing houses to switch to digital print-on-demand systems, which usually fall short of the quality offered by the legacy offset printing and binding systems we’re accustomed to. They also tend to adopt lighter weight papers to curb costs, contributing to the noticeable thinning of books over the past decade. In Turkey, the standard weight of book paper was around 70 g/m² when I was in college, now almost every publishing house has switched to 52 g/m², resulting in pages so thin they’re nearly transparent, with letters visible from the other side of the leaf.

[@hydrophobicbathtowel6816]

I put warm bulbs in my table lamps. The harsh ultra white paper used in some books is a bit more tolerable with the softer yellowish lighting. At the park in the sun?... Blinding.

[@Hidinginyourcupboard]

I bought a book last year where the text along the centreline of some pages was smudged and some of it was blurred. Really annoying to read :(

[@corey3427]

Strand is a booklover's paradise in New York. You can find great deals on used books without too much digging, and their fiction section is just massive and full of quality. I work in Manhattan and try to go there every month or two at least, especially if I've been having a rough week--it's such a lovely space. Forbidden Planet is right next door too, which is a pretty neat comic shop too. Printed Matter is also worth checking out if you have time--INCREDIBLE independent art book store. You'll find beautiful objects there for sure that you're not likely to find elsewhere. :)

[@mathemagician26]

3:30 “in two years, when Stormlight 6 comes out” 😂

[@mastafull]

I was reading Weaveworld by Clive Barker and about halfway through it was missing two paragraphs (that they included with a loose erratum insert) and after that point there were obvious spelling and grammar mistakes as well. It was very strange and obviously a first printing of the book but I found it rather charming that they ran out of time and just printed what they had. But if we're griping about modern books, I hate how fantasy, horror, and scifi always had interesting illustrated dustjackets but sometime in the 2000's they ditched the artists and went with generic Shutterstock photos instead.

[@jjjjjjjjj3000]

We-all need to keep keeping them accountable, keep being ultra pedantic, keep demanding the best. Some countries (…) make it part of their culture and you can feel it in the daily common life, attention to details of craft, … it’s possible and the only way forward

[@matthehazard6986]

I've had a book which was missing about 50 pages. The thing is, it just repeated the previous 50 pages in place of the missing pages.

[@nihiliprism]

I bought a book from Amazon as a gift for someone and it was also missing like 20 something pages. It was Imajica, Clive Barker.

[@jareds4619]

Wind and Truth (which by the way, awful ending to a series that was one of my favorites) is a bad example because it literally pushes the absolute limit of the manufacturer's binding capability. A page more and Sanderson said it could not have been bound and they would need a new press. As a result, it is made out of low quality paper, which tends to get defects. So yeah, it is bad because it is too big for the manufacturer to handle correctly.

[@kennethmendenhallii1598]

I believe the problem is that the MBAs have taken over nearly every industry. Craftsmen and engineers are no longer in charge anywhere, but have been usurped by the bean counters, leading to the very public downfall of such recognizable companies as Boeing and Intel, as well as the general decline in the quality of all consumer goods like books, appliances, cars, etc.

[@ronwoch]

I have a paperback from one of my favorite publishers that was ordered through amazon. Came with a bunch of missing pages, pages out of order, etc. Wound up buying a signed copy of the hardcover from the author on facebook afterwards, so I wound up with a much better copy. Still annoying. On the flip side, there is a company in India, that goes by Gyan Books (ebay, abe books. etc.) who do print on demand fascimile copies of public domain books, bound in leather, and gorgeous. They are not the BEST quality, but it is a nice way to get really lovely, readable copies of books. They use quality paper, bind them well and beautifully, and they are simply lovely.

[@IainG10]

I will admit to rarely getting a physical book these days; I'm in that stage of life where I move semi-often, and I like the portability of e-books. But I don't doubt that, like seemingly everyone else, publishers are raising their profits by cutting quality. Also highly recommend all Sanderson, and Mistborn is a very good place to start. I just finished Wind and Truth, and will be there in sadness with Dr Collier's partner that after THAT ending, we have to wait at least 4 years to find out what happens next....

[@chasefoxen]

As my personal library has grown, I've run into this problem more and more. One of the worst examples being the book "Proofs from the Book" by Aigler and Ziegler from Springer. The first half was the correct content and the second half was some monograph from a material science journal about crystallography. The content didn't even fit the pages properly and it should have been blatantly obvious to anyone who may have opened the book past the halfway point. Unfortunately, you cannot do that with online shopping so the entire thing was a waste of ink and money.

[@punkdigerati]

2 years, Stormlight 6... If only we could be so lucky. He's not even going to start writing it until after 2030.

[@MotswanaTota-012]

To reduce costs, the printing companies likely run an automated printing process with like 3 people on the floor, who monitor the process, control quality, and parcel the books for delivery.

[@awwsda]

So I know when they print like magic and pokemon cards they weigh the packs to make sure the right number of cards make it into each pack and I'm surprised they don't do something similar with books?

[@GSBarlev]

​@@awwsdaI thought weighing packs was how scammy game stores knew which packs had the rare and valuable holo-foils.

[@MotswanaTota-012]

@@awwsda I was implying that the people on the floor are likely overworked. It's not common for an energized human to make so many similar mistakes. Or maybe the print-on-demand makes the workload inconsistent.

[@lit2701]

@@awwsda I mean maybe they weight the books in packs too? So someone else just got a book with 60 more pages but on the scale it checked out ? :D

[@wendyheatherwood]

​@awwsda the most common problem with book printing, at least when it comes to copies that make it to retail, seems to be pages in the wrong order or inserting the same section of the book twice, so the weight will be fine and the only way to catch it is to have someone manually check the pages and they're only going to do that for maybe a couple of copies per batch, so unless it's a batch wide issue it probably won't get caught.

[@Toasty_Milk]

"In 2 years when Stormlight 6 comes out" ohh she doesn't know does she

[@muazabdul-aziz8258]

had to add that to my comment too. At least we'll be well fed in the meantime!

[@greggoat6570]

Yeah dude she says in the first like 20 seconds she hasn’t read any Sanderson novels. You only commented this to look special and signal to other people how cool you are

[@davidkeller6334]

The oligarchy now expect ever-increasing rates of profit growth; cuts must be made. They've taken the integral of greed, the mantra is now "line go up, slope go vertical"

[@sh4dvok]

"In two years, when Stormlight Archive 6 comes out" for some reason that was really funny But the actual time of SA6 (2031+) works even better for the point being made

[@ESgsPhysics]

A few of the books I've ordered from Amazon over the past 2 years or so are weird publications of books with inconsistent formatting, like somebody printed an ebook, or copy/pasted the text into word without checking the formatting. It's very weird. Linebreaks and whitespace just thrown around willy nilly

[@nocturnus009]

Thank you for THIS. I started the year listening to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora. It further radicalized me after previously enjoying New York 2140. I am also starting the year reading [slower because I am generating notes and boards on Apple FreeForm] Critical Thinking and The Code Book. Happy reading and New Year.

[@marklee81]

I don't remember what book it was, but I read a book where I got all the pages, but they were in the wrong order. Like the front and back of pages 167 and 168 was switched with 189 and 190 or something. I think they were the same physical page, so it was still able to be read, but kind of weird. I have other examples, but that was the weirdest. Print on demand fills a need, I think. If I want a book for it's quality construction, I expect to have to do some digging into what editions have been published and look through eBay or whatever for one with pictures of the actual book I'm getting. No stock photos.

[@joen0411]

I had to throw a book in the garbage about two years ago. It was only slightly stronger than newspaper paper. For some reason it hurt to read. At first I thought I needed new reading glasses but reading anything else was fine. Half way through the paper started tearing as I turned the page. It was painful to read and I just threw it out. I can’t remember what the book was about or if it was any good. Then someone told me about the whole cheap printing thing. I have to look at a book first before I consider buying it. It never would have occurred to me that I would have to judge books by the quality of the printing. But here we are.

[@muazabdul-aziz8258]

Okay I have a theory. So this book was so large that it had to cut out the glossary/appendix. The thinner pages was a result of it literally being that max amount of pages the binder could print. So cutting out 60 pages means they could use slightly thicker pages than the full version. Also side note stormlight 6 wont be out for 6 years or more because he has 7 other books to be published before getting back to stormlight

[@bill_and_amanda]

I got that book from B&N for Christmas (because my mom works there) and I had already noticed the issues with the color and weight of the paper, it was surprising and disappointing.

[@George-rk7ts]

Life would be so much nicer if we all were aware of what the people who see our work thought of it. Excellent musings, as always.

[@lebaronmarcus]

Yeah I also stopped buying books from Amazon because twice the seller sent me an unreadably low quality copy

[@pdblouin]

Thinking about homes as physical objects: I don't want books as physical objects, because my home is not large enough to store any physical objects.

[@perchenonsali]

I've studied german for a few years and can't help but notice the difference in quality between german books and american ones. Even cheap mass produced paperbacks are more likely to be bound in long lasting paper, better binding etc than their english language counterparts...

[@pykors]

Ugh, I had a misordered poorly bound version of Excession and I didn't even realize till I was almost done because it's already a nonlinear epistolary novel!

[@silverwoodchuck47]

The last time I browsed the paperbacks at at a large retailer, I found the print to be gray and blurry in a number of books, instead of black and crisp. Are publishers trying to save a penny or less on ink? No sale from me.

[@jp-sx1rh]

I've bought two dozen or so print on demand books over the past year - mostly old paperback reprints - only one had any quality issues. They were also fairly cheap. In comparison, I bought a set of the Malazan series by Stephen Erickson. Published by a major publisher, not print on demand, but the quality was terrible. The ink smudged when touched, the cover ripped when opening the first book. I'll keep buying print on demand, over some major publishers.

[@n00dle_king]

In two years when 6 comes out… yeah we’re waiting 6 or more. 😭

[@pascal6871]

I have decided 2 years ago to never buy another paper book again. I have so many of them and I love them so much that I can never part with them so they just pile up and get shoved into every corner eventually. It breaks my heart

[@DoktorApe]

I know we're talking about the artifact and not the text here, but I kinda want to read that book on Reimann too.

[@LeafletSmallLeaf]

"In two years, when Stormlight Archive 6 comes out" Aware

[@yarondavidson6434]

Fully agree on POD books. Good idea in theory for some cases, but really bad in practice and in wide use. And of course especially terrible when it's done without being very clear about it on the store pages so that people who buy the book may/will not know about it. But in general, as someone who reads a *lot*, once e-ink displays got good enough, I switched, and now practically pruchase all fiction books as ebooks. The convenience improvements are massive. Physical books I get these days are just comics/graphic-novels due to size (especially with occasional double-page spreads) and colors, and some technical/reference books where there are either enough charts/graphs/images to justify larger/color pages, or I think the ability to quickly riffle through pages to browse through topics will be a massive improvement over an abilility to do actual searches.

[@utopiancast]

I could find NO ONE talking about the pagination misprint in "We'll Prescribe You A Cat" by Syou Ishida!! pages 237 onward are completely mixed up, (for ex, pages proceed in opposite order or randomly skip), both in my library's copy and local bookstores )):

[@willthecat3861]

Lot's of books were (are?) printed... missing pages, pages mis-ordered, upside down... etc. Used to buy them at 'used bookstores' ...for very little...all the time.