Crappy paper on Amazon books

Obviously you can only check the prelims only once you receive the product... so my suggestion us not very helpful I'm afraid.

Plus, even if a publisher has uploaded prelim pages themselves, there's no guarantee you'll receive that version if a publisher has that product enrolled it in KEP.

Alas also not true. The ISBN remains the same for the product, no matter who prints it.

Unfortunately not true - product images are selected by the publisher, not Amazon. The best way to know is to check the prelims pages, and if it is a copy printed by Amazon, it will say so there.

They could be fake or they could be Amazon print on demand. I've made some printables for adults with dementia or learning disabilities. I've just put them on Etsy as a digital download but not on Amazon yet because having read the options I'm still debating whether the paper quality will be good enough.

When I was looking for things like this for my dad I offered a couple of things that were just really badly produced on crappy materials. They were also quite uninspiring which is why I sat down and designed my own 📝

You're right, loads of publishers choose to use Amazon's printing capabilities (KEP) to manage their stock. It doesn't mean they are pirated, AI generated or self published books at all. So checking the content/ ISBN/ pictures make no difference as they use the files publishers send to Amazon's Kindle programme.

It's all about stock control essentially. As another PP said, it makes available books that have very low sales numbers which don't make financial sense to keep in print through traditional methods. But for better selling titles, it means if Amazon get more orders in than they have stock, they can print copies themselves to supply customer orders without going out of stock/ making customers wait. But as you've found, one is the issues is their KEP offering is pretty basic, the paper stock is pretty default and it can't handle special finishes, covers, hardbacks etc.

It's a delicate balance, especially for smaller publishers on consignment accounts, as so often Amazon orders way more stock than they need. Which then diminishes a publishers stock so much that they need to reprint stock in order to fulfil normal customer orders. Then sure as eggs is eggs, 6 weeks later in swoops Amazon with a big return of the stock and you have too MUCH stock for anticipated sales (which then costs publishers to warehouse). Popping a book into KEP helps publishers mitigate this.

As a publisher, there is no way of knowing if an Amazon customer will receive a KEP printed copy or a copy that was printed by the publisher. At present, I don't think Amazon has a way of flagging either, and of course, it's not in their interest to, plus they have a model which relies on making customer returning products challenging.

The only way you as a customer can mitigate this, is not to buy from Amazon. Essentially, bad quality paper can be the price you pay for the convenience and price discount of ordering from Amazon. If you want to buy online without this issue is to buy from individual websites for your local bookshop or bookshop.org (saying that, I believe they are supplied by Gardners who also use POD technology for some books but that's a whole other kettle of fish)

Hope that helps?

It could just be print on demand.

Another thing you find, perhaps more applicable to e-readers, though sometimes the book is available as a hardcopy, is that a pre-computer age book that was originally typeset and printed the old fashioned way, is scanned and then republished from the scans, nobody wants to go to the effort of retyping the text, generating new drawings or finding original versions of photographs.Amazon are not the only people doing this, I have one on my desk at the moment which is a facsimile copy published by the British Library.

I just checked the publisher of my shitty non fiction book and it's a proper publisher! So I'm even more disappointed now

Really interesting. I guess for the OP the question would be “do better quality versions of this book exist, or if I want it is it printed-on-demand or nothing?”

I have come across specialist interest and academic books, published by mainstream publishers, that are print on demand presumably because the expected sales are low, but the technology exists to keep them available at low cost. I don't think OUP want a repeat of David Wilkins' translation of the new testament from Coptic to Latin that took 191 years to sell out an edition of 500.

I stopped buying books from Amazon sometime ago due to this. The covers also feel slimy. I successfully received refunds for any they sent to me.

One of the pleasures of books is the print design, quality and feel. Amazon is an abomination to print. In fact, it’s just an abomination—I don’t trust any products sold by them as they do nothing to prevent fakes and dodgy items from being sold. I believe all items are stored in the same place, regardless of which seller you buy from so fakes are sitting alongside genuine products.

If you want to make sure you’re buying the edition sold by an established publisher, check the isbn number and make sure that publisher is listed in the details. I’ve never had a book sent me from Amazon that wasn’t as described in the product details.

What books are these? Seems really weird.

Exactly. Amazon is a place where the “self published” books can be sold, where bookshops won’t stock them. So as well as all the normal well published books you can get, you can also get some poorer quality ones. The info is all there and visible when you buy them in the product details.
The quality of the books you can buy everywhere else hasn’t gone down - it’s just that you can also buy rubbish ones.

I know what you mean op. The paper feels very different in texture to a normal book that isn’t published via KDP. They’re readable and not worth exchanging because they’re all that quality.

Side note, I’m trusting those KDP ones less and less due to the increasing numbers of people doing “side hustles” with using ai to generate the entire book.

You’re buying self-published books. They rarely if ever have the same quality of production as a book produced by an actual publisher. A lot of them are printed on demand. If it says published by Amazon, or Createspace, or Independently Published, it’s likely someone just paying Amazon to print their stuff for them. Could be written by AI. Could be gibberish. Will be printed as cheaply as possible.

A traditionally published book will be of the same quality regardless of where you buy it.

That’s right. I remember when it first started. Ordered all my uni books off it as was much cheaper.

And they still only make you spend a lower amount on books to get free postage as opposed to other things.

If you scroll to the last picture on the images you can recognise the ones printed by them by the back page and barcodes.

I don't think they are fake unless they claim to be published by someone else. Mine say they are published by Amazon. Some are fine, some are not.

Same here.

Isn’t it sad really and I may be mis remembering, but did Amazon not start as being a book selling operation?

Also, in the product information section, it will tell you who the publisher is. If it says “independently published” it’ll likely be the poorer quality “printed at home” style - not necessarily, but if it is a legit publisher, there’s more chance it’ll be a normal book.

We had this about a fact book we got DS for Christmas. It looked like it had been printed at home by someone.

We kept it, but we don't buy books from Amazon anymore unless we can see it for sale elsewhere as well. To confirm it's an actual book.

Problem is with a non fiction book you need to make sure it's legit and not AI shite.

Check the isbn number on the book you’re buying - Amazon lists them for all books. Check that against a legit source and see if it’s the same.
I’ve never had this from Amazon but I’ve not been buying much non fiction from them recently.

This.
I have developed a massive dislike for Amazon, it has gradually filled with cheap tat and following this the quality has gone downhill. It is getting harder to find the branded items that I used to buy on there. Also, if I'm paying for postage I would much rather buy direct from the product's website or support a British supplier, at least I know the product is more likely to be 100% genuine.