The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
alexerhardt.com118 points by aerhardt 20 hours ago
118 points by aerhardt 20 hours ago
The blame is somewhat misguided: what's blame to here is cost-cutting, not printing on demand. If you're willing to pay, you can get POD books that, certainly to the untrained enough, are indistinguishable from "real" books.
For example, Lulu's hardcover books with linen wrap, dust jacket, "premium" B&W printing with 60# uncoated cream look pretty darn good: https://www.lulu.com/pricing
I agree with the broad point of the article, but the author misidentifies what's going on. The author's problems are coming from digital printing, not the print-on-demand business model specifically and Amazon isn't the only company doing it.
The older books were printed using a process called offset printing. It needs large economies of scale to be financially viable, but it produces higher quality books. The newer books are printed with digital printing, which is just a fancy version of the laser (typical) or inkjet printer you have at home. I believe Amazon POD uses inkjet, but not sure. The result is a worse quality book, but also one that doesn't have thousands of copies taking up inventory space until it's sold. Virtually all publishers are moving low volume works this way. The fact that the quality is merely "subpar" instead of unusable is a testament to how much digital printing has improved in recent years.
Separately, paper quality has gone down industry-wide. Paper mills are simply choosing to focus on higher volume papers like those used in cardboard instead of producing fine paper. That means shortages, price increases, and publishers making do. Also, POD publishers don't want to keep every type of paper under the sun. They standardize inventory to keep prices down.
To make things even more confusing, the same work might be printed using multiple methods and different papers, with different inks. It's common to do a first run with POD to gauge market demand and then offset if sales continue. Or offset for a collector's edition, or vice versa to allow more colors.
That's one part of the story, but I think you're glossing over issues.
For one, digital printing allows anyone to sloppily OCR public-domain works (or download them from Project Gutenberg), typeset the text haphazardly, and put it on Amazon. The result is terrible for reasons that have little to do with the limitations of the technology. Take the Russell book: terrible kerning ("Proble ms"), an AI-generated cover... and I suspect the rest is about as bad.
Another problem, I imagine, is that the technology also encourages "real" publishers to aim lower because there's less at stake?
This article really resonates with me and I'm somewhat relieved to see someone else feels the same way.
I love physical books for general reading and will often buy both physical and ebook format for technical books to get the best of both worlds.
I now cannot stand print-on-demand books and, like the author, I can spot them very quickly. The quality is abysmal, and I might as well be printing them myself at that point.
I too used to default to Amazon, as the price was often about 30% cheaper. However, I've come to realise that you get what you pay for. In the UK, I just buy from Waterstones or local bookshops, as then I can trust that it has likely come from the publisher or at least can inspect in advance.
I am never buying a book from Amazon again.
It's also incredibly annoying that Amazon slurped up AbeBooks way back in 2008.
It is annoying, but bookshop.org is a good alternative to both Abe and Amazon, presenting a single shop front to lots of bookshops.
Is there a way to filter out such books when you browse Amazon? They should at least tell you it's an "on-demand" printed book before you order?
Why not just go to a better online seller? One of the books mentioned:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-problems-of-philosophy-warb...
I haven't found one, like I mention in the article; I'll edit it if someone proves me wrong.
I'm starting to get a feel for a pattern - the books tend to be more expensive, and also take longer on average to deliver (a few weeks, instead of a few days). The latter would be normal for rare editions and some third-party sellers, but if I'm ordering a popular book and it takes longer than usual to deliver I can kinda smell the dead rat. But the only way to know for sure is to open the box in disappointment.
Not only am I sure there isn't one, I'm sure there will never be one. That might reduce profits for Amazon slightly.
i don’t know of a way. but even if you can, it will almost certainly be done away with.
i’m so jaded im sure it would end up like trying to filter out shorts on youtube. click the “show me less of this” only for it to show you more.
Not that I can tell. It’s probably an intentional choice, just like how they don’t let you filter by country of origin.
I'm buying ungodly numbers of books and I'd say more than half of what I get from Amazon is PoD, and print quality varies. In my country (Poland) they have one huge advantage: the price. It's quite often somewhere between 30%-50% cheaper than alternatives which is significant given book prices.
One thing that is pretty annoying is when a PoD book that had colors in the original no longer has them, e.g. on charts, but text still refers to them with color names.
I'll likely stop buying from Amazon too because over the years quality of PoD books also seems to be dropping, it wasn't that bad years ago.
Somewhat related:
Amazon has a huge fake ebook problem as well.
I recently spent $2 buying an ebook that is still copyrighted. It is cheaper than the first item in search result that has more reviews. I thought, it's an ebook, what could go wrong.
Upon opening it, I found that the formatting is completely off. Words are concatenated. It was impossible to read.
A few days later, I noticed that the book is gone from Amazon store. I cannot open the link from my order page, and I cannot even ask for a refund. I had to ask customer service to do that. I guess this was a pirated book that was taken down.
It was a shame Amazon did not even notify me of this.
And I hope this doesn't happen on kobo or elsewhere.
That has been a problem since the beginning of ebooks --- I happened to be browsing the Sony e-book store on a day when they offered a $10 credit, so I bought a copy of Heinlein's _Space Cadet_ --- it was so badly formatted and so riddled with errors I had to go to a library to consult a print copy so as to fully enumerate all of the typos in it. Since then I was issued a check for the price-fixing lawsuit, and that purchase was transferred over to a different e-book store where there was a better copy (though I haven't had occasion to re-read it since).
That said, I've found at least one typo in every ebook I've read, even _Dune_ which I didn't get around to buying until it had been available in the Kindle store for _years_ ("pogrom" was mis-rendered as "program" and there was a formatting error in the glossary). I've been reporting all them using the interface, but not sure if they ever get fixed...
That said, it's not limited to electronic texts --- my second printing of J.R.R. Tolkien's _The Fall of Arthur_ also had a typo in it, but at least for that I was able to reach an editor at the publishing house who assured me that it would be corrected in later printings.
It's not just Amazon. I bought a copy of an ARM assembly book from a proper bookseller (Blackwells) which was a proper hardback for a high price--something like £80, and I received a print-on-demand mess with a hardcover. The print was there but barely legible, a dotty mess which gave me a headache. I returned it.
I can see print-on-demand working very well, but not until the quality issues are sorted out. Being charged top dollar for something which is substantially inferior is unacceptable.
Yes, this.
Even hardcover books from "real publishers" have arrived with low print quality. The most common problem book-printing problems I have a real problem with today are
1. text that is gray (not black) and
2. text that is dotted (not solid)
If you ask me, the following checkboxes should be standard ratings on all books sold:
[ ] "solid, black text"
[ ] "acid-free paper"
[ ] <we could add a few here>
Related, I used to buy 3rd party black laser printer toner that was guaranteed and warrantied to be made to OEM spec. It never, ever was, no matter how many returns/replacements/retries/print-settings-adjustments/other-part-replacements. Always gray text, always. Buying actual OEM black toner reliably results in (close enough to) jet black text. It costs more, but it's the only way to be sure for self-printed materials AFAIAA.
I've experienced this. Actually when I received the book from Amazon I thought it was a counterfeit copy, only to discover that on the very last page it says: "Printed by Amazon Logistica Italia S.r.l".
Amazon's business shouldn't be printing books and obviously they should state clearly that the book you are purchasing is printed by them.
The current solution? Just return the item.
> The current solution? Just return the item.
Yes, and write a low stars review explaining the problem. Returns alone don't hurt future sales of identical items.
That sucks for the author of the book though, if their books start getting low ratings for something entirely out of their control.
Bertrand Russell has been dead since 1970. I think he'll be okay. Or no worse off.
No matter, never mind.
It does indeed, yet if the review makes it clear that the text of a book is not at fault, that the crappy print on demand edition is the issue, it should not matter too much. It would even give them arguments to ask a few pointed questions to their publishers.
And aggregated over all the books that use print on demand, the editors will notice.
In my experience, when you return them Amazon refunds you and tells you to keep the book.
Regarding quality, I have noticed a considerable decline in non-on-demand quality of paperback books in recent years as well. Paper is often really bad, printing quality even worse. Very often the text is grayish pixelated, I'm guessing this is because the publishers have stored some subpar digitized version of prior editions, which on reprints comes out like an ereader from 20 years ago.
I often specifically look up old or first print editions of books (paperback or hardcover) and then buy them used from Abebooks etc.
However, the quality of the on-demand books via Amazon is hit and miss. It's not universally bad. Sometimes it is very good paper and sharp print. Sometimes it is cheapish white copy paper. The covers are universally bad. In Berlin they apparently come from Poland.
I also got on demand books in similar qualities from other German book sellers (buecher.de for example). On their page at least it's somewhat recognizable that it will be on demand, because they have some details about the manufacturer (themselves in this case).
I'm not necessarily against those on demand books, but I would really like if Amazon and other sites would
- let me know when I have to expect those books
- customize the quality options (e.g. paper color)
A lot of comments very dismissive of anything "print on demand". As an author of a niche book in both hard/soft, I chose Lightning Source/Ingram because they produce quality books. At that time (2012) I could have gone the "easy" route and used Amazon but even then there were complaints about quality. I've received quite a few compliments about the physical quality of my book, primarily the paper back edition which I believe was 60lb cream paper stock.
Note that authors who take the easy way and use Amazon KDP w/ extended distribution appear on sites like BN, Books A Million, etc via the Ingram distribution but the physical copy will still be printed by Amazon and be inferior.
Some clues you can look for in general are - Amazon in the past two years has basically stopped stocking non-KDP POD books so they will almost always say avaialbe in X weeks (or if "Prime" 3-5 days). Amazon books are almost always a page count divisible by four and IIRC 828 pages is a limit on many trims.
So if you buy off of Amazon, check first to see that the Amazon listing looks like too.
It is really unfortunate that Amazon (and a few places in India) ruin it for everyone.
I don't think POD is the problem either, as there's another comment here that they're seeing non-POD books with the same quality (or lack thereof). It's the printers they're using.
I first starting noticing bad print on demand editions from Oxford University Press almost 20 years ago.
I've gotten a few of these and each time I've filled out the Return form, Amazon's response has been "ok, we're refunding your card, no need to return the item".
My local book store accepts online orders and I can fetch my books from the shop a few days later. I am finding this more convenient than Amazon, even if a little more expensive. I also appreciate to have a book store in town, for the few times I have to find a present and have no idea and little time.
For the convenience aspect: Amazon deliveries routinely fail, require me to fetch the parcel at the entrance of my condo at inconvenient times, or require me the get my parcel at the condo concierge, again at inconvenient times, or the parcel is dropped at a random place.
I never had to return a book bought at the store. I do not even know their return policy. It may definitely be an issue someday in the future.
Replying to myself
Christmas 2023: I ordered a number of books from the local bookstore. One failed to delivered, so
Christmas 2024: I ordered most of my books from Amazon. No two deliveries went the same (see above), total randomness.
Christmas 2025: I ordered ALL my books from the local bookstore (+600$). I started shopping earlier (end of November) and everything went smooth! They kept my individual orders at the shop and I could collect them all in one go. No stress.
The online shop of my local bookstore is simple and efficient. I can read book excerpts, just like on Amazon. But the total absence of clutter makes for a much more efficient experience and a huge amount of time spared.
I don't have any reason to believe this is not a scam. If Amazon had any good intention in doing this, why didn’t they simply note on the webpage that this book is printed on demand? Those introduction on pages look exactly the same as those for the original edition. It’s only once you’ve received the book that you realise Amazon has printed it themselves. I don’t like this game, and now I never buy books from Amazon unless I absolutely have to.
Buy second hand books if you can: wider selection, good for the environment, lower price (usually), supports small businesses (usually).
Not sure how feasible this is for new publications, but yes, absolutely buy second hand. I have a fairly large stack of yet to be read books gifted to me by people cleaning up book shelves, as well as large number of books from second hands store.
Most of these books are printed before 1990, so I know that no AI was involved, they are normally hardcovers, as those survive better, or are at least taken better care of.
For technical publications though it pretty rough. My go to book store normally have print on demand labeled as such. I don't have the best of luck with print on demand, so I tend to find an alternative.
I will add that using eBay and ThriftBooks, it's super easy to get your hands on used books even if you're in an area without a large bookstore.
When I was searching for a good copy of The Wizard of Oz to read to my kids it was impossible to use Amazon. Since the book is out of copyright but still popular the results are for terribly formatted print on demand paper backs that don't include the illustrations. It's out of copyright, spend a little effort and do a good job!
I eventually found the series in hard cover from Books of Wonder. I buy from them or seek out used hard cover books for out of copyright books now. Abebooks is still useful though they are owned by Amazon so who knows for how long that will last.
I like to buy books and would never buy from Amazon. Haven't for a long time for many reasons.
I find it more enjoyable to browse a local bookshop or charity shop and, if I want to buy something specific online I'll go with bookshop.org.
Bookshop.org will also pair with local book stores and share some profits. Win-win
It’s ironic that in the 90s, we were warning about large retailers like Barnes and Noble pushing out smaller shops. Now we’re nostalgic for that experience also.
Amazon has truly ruined many things. We traded so much for the cheap convenience of fast shipping and a few dollars off.
> We traded so much for the cheap convenience of fast shipping and a few dollars off.
There's more to it than that. The fast shipping and a few dollars off was a good deal.
But modern Amazon no longer offers fast shipping or a few dollars off. And, separately, they've stopped being willing to provide an amount of packaging that prevents your items from being damaged in transit. They're betting that having provided a good service in the past means they never have to bother in the future.
It is not just the print, it is also the way pages are cut and bound. The printed area is not where it should be on the page.
I remember getting some questionable quality books from amazon which didn't match up to the usual standard of a publisher. No Starch Press called this out in the past saying amazon sell counterfieght books. https://x.com/nostarch/status/1183095004258099202
I'm not sure what actually happens, but I mostly stopped buying paperbacks on Amazon a good while ago, and if I do, and I'm unhappy with the quality I'll return it.
The last 3 books I’ve purchased from Amazon (UK) have been of questionable quality. The most recent was Designing Data–Intensive Applications (O’Reilly) and I’m still not sure if it’s print on demand, counterfeit- or just a reject. Roller marks, damaged pages, slightly off print. The returns process is inconvenient, one-offs are okay but on multiple purchases it’s fatiguing and so the book stays.
This isn’t specific to Amazon, I had the same issue with Waterstones in the UK (online)
I now just buy second hand (Abe, WOB) and hope for the best.
Your DDIA book might be an international version. Check if it says the edition is only for sale in India.
I’m a very prolific reader who primarily reads ePubs and occasionally printed books (mainly because I’m running out of space to keep books at home). One thing that I’ve noticed in modern prints is the subpar spines. I’ve books from 90s with their spine intact and going through continuous reads vs recent buys that come apart and require a rebinding on just few reads.
I think it is pretty obvious. While Jack London's martin Eden is out of copyright and public domain now, if they order Penguin edition they still have to pay them some money for it. So Amazon calculated that it is cheaper to print their own. My guess they could not do this for non-public-domain books without securing rights first.
Honestly love them and dont see the issue at all.
Have seen a few people bootstrap themselves with POD and then move into traditional publishing.
Demanding people keep a massive stock of something just in case you want one is the height of privilege.
I suspect there are real quality differences between PoD books published through Amazon and these ones, which may be printed in a similar method but perhaps not the same quality of electronic formats.
My self-published books via whatever it was called before being subsumed under the Kindle brand seemed decent enough quality, but I have received others from Amazon that were pretty bad (photocopy bad, for example).
It’s easy to tell when these books are printed by a high-volume inkjet printer. They are not as pleasurable to read. It’s a certain fuzziness, like when cinemas first went to digital, and when planetariums got rid of their optical star projectors.
I had a friend over and we talked about the subject. She owns a Penguin stock copy of Martin Eden and upon checking my print-on-demand copy her first reaction was: "Yea, this looks like crap, but above all, the type is making me dizzy".
I only mention it in passing the article but I'm regretting not showing pictures of how bad the page typesetting can get - perhaps I'll revise it this week. There's a substantial qualitative jump from "this book looks like a cheap knock-off" to "reading this is giving me a headache".
And yes, while I don't have a clue about the printing process, the image of an inkjet printer has also come to mind on occasion!
Isn't paperback basically dead in the US because most sales are digital now?
Tbh i've given up on dead tree books with the lone exception of a few hard covers because ... space the final frontier.
Mass-market paperbacks are definitely dying, but trade paperbacks continue to sell (at rates lower than mass-market, obviously):
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/p...
(trade paperbacks are the larger paperback editions printed on better paper than the mass market paperbacks, but still soft-cover.)
John Scalzi posted about this a few months ago:
"All my recent books went from hardcover to trade paperback and almost all of my backlist in mass market has now migrated to trade. The role of mass market paperbacks is now handled almost entirely by ebooks."
I gave up, bought a kobo libra2 that never saw an internet connection (you can find updated firmware online to download) and now just borrow epubs in the soulseek library.
I hope the kobo store has rigorous screening of their books, unlike Amazon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47386280
These days it's hard to even get a proper book to read.
I also just brought the cheapest oldest b&w model kobo reader still on sale and put epubs on it. Haven’t even updated the OS. Just works. Sweet.
That works for the books you copy over, but those that come from Kobo will be downloaded as part of a sync that also does updates.
There are excellent english book stores in Madrid, and if you enjoy collecting books, you'll most likely enjoy the experience of going to one and buying a book there. If the book you're looking for is out of stock, they can usually get it for you the next day. There is literally no reason to buy books on Amazon.
This is partially why I don't buy print books anymore, unless I have no other choice (like random region restrictions on ebooks I want to read).
Sadly, I'm completely locked into the Amazon ecosystem for ebooks, but at least there I know what I'm getting.
Are you truly locked in?
I still have a kindle 4 from 2011 that works fine. If you have a lot of Amazon only ebooks, there’s nothing stopping you from keeping an old device for those.
I switched to a Kobo and have zero regrets. It has overdrive/libby support and I can check out books from my library directly to it. The Kobo store is fine as well and I can maintain a calibre library for everything else
I converted all my Amazon purchased books with Calibre and now read them using a Boox Go 7 - between that and Standard Ebooks I’m probably set for life.
I buy books which are classics or longsellers usually from used book stores or at flea markets, or generally from book stores where I can inspect the books before buying.
I strongly recommend abebooks for buying physical texts.
FWIW, they sold to Amazon in 2008.
https://techcrunch.com/2008/08/01/amazon-to-acquire-abebooks...
You're still dealing "somewhat" directly with an individual seller, who "usually" gets all the details right, and you get the edition you want.
I've bought some older hardcover books from Springer (and not for very cheap, mind you) and even then you can get some absolutely despicable print-on-demand abominations. Some appear to be created by scanning the original works in low resolution and then printing using some crappy inkjet. Good luck deciphering any subscripts in the formulas! Of course, to add to the insult, the binding is usually terrible as well.
It's a shame. Even for many classics the only way to get a decent copy is to either buy them second hand (often unfeasible) or to bind one yourself.
This is just a symptom of the broader enshittification of Amazon. Buying anything these days requires wading through a sea of low quality shit knockoffs and duplicate product entries all populated with useless reviews.
At some point leadership completely went off the rails on the quality vs quantity of its selection. I don’t shop somewhere because they have the biggest selection, I shop there because they have the BEST selection.
Some of this could be solved with better software via the search and browsing experience but that too just keeps going steadily downhill.
There's no real point to Amazon anymore. They generally aren't cheaper, especially once you factor in shipping, the entire site is a mess, you risk getting scammed and you can't really find what you're looking for anyway.
The only area where it makes sense is speed of delivery. If you really need something in the next 24 hours they are the fastest. For just about everything else the customer experience is far better elsewhere.
Amazon doesn't have any warehouses within the country, Germany is the nearest, so everything takes a week or more to arrive.
I noticed this years ago with technical books. IIRC, Manning was the first publisher that I noticed doing it. Pages so thin that I could see the text on the reverse side as I was reading it - it drove me crazy. O'Reilly started doing the same.
I had a PDF version of On Lisp (Paul Graham put it on his website for free some time after it went out of print). I used lulu.com to turn it into a printed book (1 copy for myself). I love it. The cover art isn't great (low-res image; not Lulu's fault), but the paper stock is amazing (I got to choose it!). The print quality is also great.
Lulu provides some evidence that you can run a profitable business and still offer users the ability to do _very small_ print runs (1 book). I wish they (or someone like them) could work out a deal with publishers that would let me choose the paper stock I want when I order a book online.
But, maybe there are other options...
Two quotes from the article:
> I purchase most of my books through Amazon. I don’t find the speed of delivery that valuable, but the competitive pricing (especially factoring in Prime), ease of ordering [...]
> To add insult to injury, print-on-demand books seem to be significantly more expensive than stock equivalents
That's the classic enshittification playbook right there. Hook 'em with low prices. Once you've captured the market, lower your costs and raise prices.
Vote with your wallet. Go to a bookstore. Small and local is fun if you don't have a particular book in mind. If you do have a particular book in mind, check Barnes and Noble's website. It will tell you if it's in stock near you. If not, order it. If you go to pick it up and don't like the quality of the print/binding -- return it.
edit: fixed spacing for quoted text
It's annoying because Lulu actually has a storefront where you can buy books they print - but only in the versions, sizes, paper, and options that the author/publisher picked: https://www.lulu.com/shop
It seems the author is complaining that the low cost supplier for a hobby is providing low value supplies.
If the author instead went to that various used book stores around they would find treasures and probably enjoy the hobby more.
Another problem that could be largely solved by shattering Amazon into itty bitty pieces.
if you appreciate books, you don’t buy them from amazon. that’s been true for a number of years now. of course, if someone is tight on budget and wants to get a book, I wouldn’t go at them for getting the cheapest option available, which in 99% of cases, amazon is. but for people that can afford it? no excuse. I find it to be immoral to buy from amazon. my wife and I have switched years ago: small local libraries > dussmann > amazon
Often local booksellers will have the ability to order pretty much anything in print too. Here in the Netherlands there are only a few exceptions I can't order¹ locally, and even then I can usually find them on the national Amazon alternatives (i.e., Bol.com, which sucks, but isn't nearly as evil as Amazon).
For affordability I would recommend anyone interested in reading to visit secondhand book fairs for the breadth of titles available, and yard/church/jumble sales for the chance finds. Instead of buying a book immediately when you come across a title you like or got recommended, maintain a wishlist spreadsheet and sync that to your smartphone or print it when you go hunting for books. The author of this article follows Umberto Eco's philosophy of book hoarding (as they should, and as I do), so they will have quite the collection to pick from already. Delayed gratification for any desired title is totally compatible with that.
And obviously: if you can't afford local booksellers, join a library — that is way cheaper than Amazon, and better for all concerned.
1: Frustratingly, this includes the mass paperback editions of Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive series.
I don’t have issues with print on demand books but they should be clearly labeled and Amazon should invest in increasing quality.
In fact I love the idea of high quality print on demand books that are distributed everywhere.
Is it really the enshittification of books, or the enshittification of printers that's responsible?
Based on another HN thread today I was looking at Charles Petzold's book Code and noticed a lot of the recent reviews complain that most of the images are completely missing from the latest printings of this expensive book, rendering it worthless.
If you want to buy books nowadays, and care about quality (or about not having your money go to fund fascist billionaires), your best bets are bookshop.org for new books, and alibris.com for used books.
The enshittification of Amazon. Full stop. When the MBA types with excel sheets took over everything started to go downhill.