Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

SlowMovingTarget t1_j1b88jo wrote

Physical books are more expensive, and more cheaply made, yes.

There are fewer presses than there once were. The high-quality presses are now competing with cheapo presses in China and in some cases India. (You can walk into a shop with ripped off eBook in India and walk out with a printed and bound book 15 minutes later.)

And all of those pressures are balanced against digital books.

2

Fresh-Horror-1088 t1_j1cmett wrote

Especially the penguin books, the page quality is shit. Earlier the same book had good, white, smooth pages now yellow newspaper type.

2

CrushedByTime t1_j1coihy wrote

It’s less India’s fault and more that pulp paperbacks no longer exist, because Wattpad and Scribd wiped them out. New novel platforms in Asia like Naver and Pratilipi also offer new ways to access written content by bypassing traditional publishers.

So publishers have basically turned to publishing less controversial and interesting books for guaranteed crowd-pleasers. And those can be priced higher.

0