[xn]

I bought two Springer books from Amazon that turned out to be print-on-demand. The font size and weight made them uncomfortable to read so I returned them.

I bought another self-published book that was also print-on-demand. The larger font size made it readable although the font weight makes the footnotes look quite bad.

I wish Amazon would show on the product listing that it's a print-on-demand book since they're inferior to traditionally printed books with the equipment currently being used.

[slugboy]

Unfortunately, nowadays, even books bought directly from Springer are print-on-demand (PoD). This isn't so bad for paperbacks, but the hardcovers tend to be glued and have very stiff spines which make the books difficult to keep open (though this has improved of late).

Compare with the older Springer-produced PoD hardcovers that were Smyth-sewn and of very high quality.

[JackFr]

I had the binding break on a brand new Springer math textbook about 25 years ago which was very disappointing cause that book was expensive.

[bombcar]

It’s unfortunate because Amazon PoD books have been big quality - sometimes. But the person setting them up has to opt for some of the higher price features, and check fonts/print samples.

(One of the advantages with PoD from Amazon is you can order boxes of your own books at cost.)

[b112]

Probably, they chose the DEV team which coded this, for their hatred of books. EG, no dogfooding.

[icoder]

Kind of odd that it's a different font, if they'd work closely with the publishers there would be no need for that just take the closest paper size available on-demand, adjust the margins accordingly and otherwise print it exactly as it was intended.

[layer8]

You’re vastly underestimating the complexity, variety, and idiosyncrasy of tools and formats used by publishers.