The Lonely Planet guidebooks are an exception. Man, those things are made to survive just about anything you care to put them through, even the huge ones like for Western Europe or China. Among other things, the spines are double-stitched for extra strength. It’s darned near impossible to destroy a Lonely Planet guidebook.
Did I say anything about your collection? No. I said “on the average”. And on the average, I see thousands of books come through the processing department a year and only a small handful fall apart after fewer than 5 circulations.
What you describe is very unlikely and I’m sorry all of the books you bought were the duds of the batch. So as I said, try again pumpkin.
I’ll tell you what really fucking pisses me off. When I was in engineering school, every goddamned textbook was $80, $100, $120, at a time when I was eating mustard sandwiches to save on grocery bills. Students complained about it, as they always have and still do, and often we sold our books back to the bookstore at the end of the quarter, because we needed the money to help pay for next quarter’s books.
The textbook publishers would have shut down the resale market if they could have. They ran ads in the school paper saying, “These books are an investment. You’ll need these for years in the future, as references.” True enough, but of the textbooks I saved from back then, HALF OF THEM FELL THE FUCK APART!!! :mad::mad::mad: The textbooks I have are worse — much worse— in quality than the general trade books I have. I have general trade books that are 60 years old and still in good shape, but my textbooks have broken spines, pages falling out, paper turning yellow, peeling covers, and so on. Even the textbooks that just sit on my shelf are coming apart. Changes in temperature and humidity and aging of the cheap paper they are printed on is quickly turning them into confetti.
So anyone who is in school now - don’t keep your textbooks any longer than you need them. You’ll be able to buy better references later, when you have the money.
Yes, you did. You responded to a post where I was talking about my books.
Well, change is coming here too. Frankly textbook companies have been pretty badly hurt by file sharing - it is ludicrously easy to make a PDF of a textbook and share it peer to peer.
I am not endorsing this action nor providing any instructions on how to do it that haven’t been covered in the media. But it points to the fact that students are comfortable with ebooks as an alternative to expensive and cumbersome physical textbooks - and it opens the door to legal means for them to get this content.
CafeScribe is one of the first to do so - and while the etexts do seem expensive there, it does seem cheaper than traditional textbooks. I think prices will come down here as demand drives it.
And I said “On the average, that’s not true.” That’s because it’s rare for this to happen to newly purchased. Your books, if a significant number of them fell apart, are well outside the average.
What do you mean by “no alternative”? Because if people were willing to pay enough for quality products then there would be suppliers willing to meet that demand. There are millions of people with billions of dollars waiting to be invested in ventures which appear to be profitable. And there are thousands upon thousands of publishers who go under every year because they did not quite find the niche where they could make a profit. If they thought they could make money making expensive books then that’s what they would be doing. Or is their going bankrupt part of the conspiracy? There is no limit to who can enter the publishing market. There is stiff competition and only those who have the right vision of what the public demands will survive. If you believe there is an unmet demand for expensive books then I recommend you go into that business but I can tell you there are already a number of publishers in that field and they are not doing better than any other business.
You might want to check out this guy who decided to self-publish a high quality book as a matter of love. He’s losing money on it.
All this “capitalist conspiracy” is just nonsense. If there is a need where someone can make money by fulfilling it then it will be met. It is even true with illegal drugs. If there is no supply it simply means there is not enough demand to justify the supply.
I think you’re right in this case. I don’t think enough people want high quality books for them to be profitable on the mass market. Most people will take the cheap ones every time, and there aren’t enough collectors to make up for it.
But what about the analogy I gave above about advertising before movies? It certainly makes it more profitable for movie companies, or theaters, or whoever it is that profits from allowing the ads. And if enough people boycotted movies, companies would have been forced to drop them. But it’s a small change that lowers the quality of the product and increases profit that most people aren’t going to complain about. If the free market is designed to give the majority of the people what they want, then it has failed in this case. It has instead given the majority of the people what the companies can get away with.
To connect this to books, what about the poster upthread who complained about $100 school texts falling apart? A “collector’s copy” of biology 101 isn’t going to sell, but if there were texts that sold for $110 or $125 that used superior glue or sewn pages, I’d be willing to be that companies would find a market for it. OK, so maybe not Biology 101, but a more advanced text that major students might use for reference in the future-- whatever. You get the idea.
The complaint that I’m seeing is that companies are skimming for profit, and offering no alternatives. Not enough people are clamoring for no commercials before movies, or for slightly higher-quality texts. But if people were given the option to pay an extra 50 cents to not see an ad, or $10 for a book (again, obviously not a paperback romance) that won’t fall apart in a single reading, I think there would be not-insignificant amount of people who would buy it. The problem is that it’s not profitable enough for companies to do it.
It’s the problem of the free-market, as well as with democracy. For example, let’s say that 35% of people buying text books want a higher quality one. It’s still not profitable enough for companies to make the higher quality ones, but it leaves a huge minority of people wanting a different product. In 2000, 49% (or really 50.5% :)) were unhappy with the election. The free market obviously isn’t as simple as all-or-nothing, but the example stands. Why would a company lower its profits by catering to a minority? They wouldn’t, but it means that 1 in 3 (for example) people wish there were an alternative.
I can find a number of publishers producing books intended to last for decades as a treasured keepsake - options like leather covers and full color illustrations are easily available.
It’s for Bibles, though - I doubt Der Trihs is helped much by this.
It does not matter how few people want something. If they are willing to pay the price where someone can make a profit it will be made. The problem is when people want something and do not want to pay for it which is a common attitude. “I am the center of the universe and all others should offer me what I deserve at the price which I think is right.” The world does not work that way, thank Og. Nobody is entitled to other people’s work any more. If you want something you can either make it yourself or pay someone else an amount acceptable to him. People are free to set what they will accept for their work and for their property. I do not want the government telling me what I should sell my things for. People who think the government should impose such things always imagine the government’s view will agree with their own but they would be shocked to find the bureaucrat in charge has instead decided their house is only worth $2500 and will be expropriated at that price.
There is nothing like the free market to produce what we need. And if the free market does not produce what you want at the price you want it just means you are undervalueing the worth of what you want. Raise the price you are willing to pay and someone will do it.
Of course it matters how few people want something. Clearly Hyperelastic and BrainGlutton (and I) would be willing to pay the extra $20 for a text that doesn’t fall apart. Not the extra $100 for the leatherbound edition. But the $20 extra text doesn’t exist. Why not? Maybe we’re the only 3 people who would pay for them. So companies haven’t yet produced them.
Exactly my point. If enough people wanted the better binding and were willing to pay for it then it would probably exist. And if it does not exist then there is a business opportunity for you right there. But you are not entitled to have what you want. That is not how the world works thank goodness. Other are free to offer you their goods but you do not have a right to force others to offer you what they want.
I will point out that I have printed books myself and had them bound professionally and that I have had old books re-bound. I just do not see why this is such an issue. You love that book so much? Go and pay to have it re-bound. I also take very good care of books and they last me forever.
Something interesting dropped into my hands today that warrants mentioning in this thread. I have a hard cover book from 1974 where the dust jacket is specifically listed the edition as “Reinforced binding”. It goes on to say “This reinforced binding features Smyth sewing with study drill cloth reinforcement. The pyroxylon impregnated cloth is washable, damp proof, and soil resistant.”
The price for this high end binding? $7.25.
Unfortunately most of my other hard cover books from that period are book club editions that naturally lack pricing, but the next book that I could find immediately with it was from 1981 and the price of a hard cover (no info on the binding but it didn’t look impressive) was $11.95.
That’s part of why books are different now: paper costs have increased dramatically and people only have so much disposable income for books. Therefore publishers try to keep costs down. People may pay more for the hot new best seller but once you’re out of that tiny fraction of the publishing market things become much more competitive and pricing is one way to get an edge. It doesn’t take a conspiracy of greedy publishers, just the opposite really since the quality of books being published now comes from them trying to undercut each other.
As for people not wanting to pay extra for ‘quality’ books…
I swear, some people talk as if each and every book they buy must be able survive for decades. Do you all honestly have everything you’ve ever read stashed away on bookcases? Why? Realistically, what proportion of books do you ever reread? There are thousands of new titles released every year. Why not read something new instead?
And if, thirty years from now you have the urge to reread a book, buy a new copy. Or take it out of a library. Or download it. Save yourself 30 years of having to provide space for an ‘inert’ library of hundreds of books you won’t ever reread, all of which eat us space, take time to dust, have to be moved from house to house. (Hundreds? Maybe that should be thousands? I read at least 2 books a week, that’s a thousand in just a decade…)
Personally, I have two bookcase of books I consider references (books of quotations, an unabridged dictionary, a gorgeous atlas, cookbooks, etc.) All of which, incidentally ARE better made: better paper, sewn bindings, etc. Clearly books the publisher KNEW would see on-going use. They cost relatively more, but they are worth it to me and I gladly paid ‘extra’ for them.
On the other hand, I consider at least 95% of the books I purchase to be functionally the equivalent of magazines: Buy it, read it, get rid of it.
Generally by putting it onto the ‘freebie’ shelf under the department bulletin board, but sometimes I pass them directly along to someone I think might enjoy that book in particular. Some especially badly written books get dropped directly into the trash.
So long as the pages are printed clearly enough that I can read them, and they don’t crumble away on the first pass through, good enough.
And, yes, I’d prefer those ‘once’ books to be as cheap as possible. That way I can afford to buy more of them. 
I’d say that I re-read about 75 to 95% of the fiction that I buy in books. If it’s good enough to read once, it’s good enough to re-read. I have, in fact, gotten the urge to read something that I read once 30 years or so ago…and it wasn’t in the library. Libraries must purge their stacks, you know, and frequently science fiction and fantasy titles get purged pretty thoroughly, if the title was even purchased in the first place.
I would prefer to read something new, when I can find something worth reading. But I should NOT have to put up with a paperback that falls apart in my hands when I’m halfway done with it. This was not my mistreatment of the book, when I took it back, the clerk remarked that a lot of that title was coming back, because of the shoddy workmanship. The writing was great. I did NOT even have the option of buying it in hardback, it was only issued in mass market PB.
I think that the publishers want to make HUGE runs of only best sellers, and not bother with quality. Right now, they publish stacks and stacks of what they think that people will buy without much thought, and then they accept the huge amount of “destroyed” books as the cost of doing business. I have become pickier about the books that I’ll buy, because I figure that they’re done so cheaply that I might as well buy them used. I’d be willing to buy a higher quality book at a higher price, and keep it nice, but I imagine that the publishers are not interested in my trade.
Just a general comment: It drives me crazy when someone speaks as though businesses have a perfect handle on any market. Businesses are working with imperfect data, too, and would only know that X doesn’t work in the market if they’ve specifically investigated X. Don’t assume they have.
There have been a lot of failed businesses and products and a lot of new companies started up to take advantage of markets that others couldn’t see. Please keep that in mind before saying, “If there were a market, someone would be exploiting it.” No. There can be a market without anyone ever exploiting it.
Of course that is true. And intelligent entrepreneurs find those opportunities and exploit them. But you do not have any right as a consumer to dictate where a company should invest or what products it should make. That is their decision to make. If you think they are missing an opportunity then you have the right to go into business yourself and try to take advantage of that but you do not have the right to tell others how they should run their business.
I don’t even know what the hell that’s supposed to mean. The “right”?
What’s the actual difference in production cost, anyway, between glued and sewn-sheet?
It means that some people seem to think they have a right to certain products which companies are not making and therefore the government should enforce that right by making the companies make what they have a right to and at a price which they deem fair.
I assert they have no such right and companies should be free to make and offer for sale whatever they want, not what some egocentric wants.