Terrible textbook printing quality

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SUMMARY

The discussion centers on the poor printing quality of textbooks, specifically highlighting issues with the Landau & Lifgarbagez series published by Butterworth & Heinemann, as well as McGraw-Hill's "baby Rudin," Spivak's "Calculus on Manifolds," and Halmos' "Naive Set Theory" from Springer. Users report significant degradation in print quality, including smudged text and missing pages, leading to frustration among readers. The consensus suggests a widespread problem with the durability and readability of these mathematics textbooks, prompting a recommendation to seek older editions for better quality.

PREREQUISITES
  • Understanding of textbook publishing standards
  • Familiarity with common mathematics textbooks and their publishers
  • Knowledge of printing technologies and materials used in book production
  • Awareness of consumer rights regarding product quality
NEXT STEPS
  • Research the printing quality standards of major academic publishers
  • Investigate alternative editions or publishers for mathematics textbooks
  • Learn about the impact of printing technology on book durability
  • Explore consumer advocacy resources for reporting poor product quality
USEFUL FOR

Students, educators, and anyone involved in the purchase or use of mathematics textbooks who are concerned about print quality and durability.

Zorba
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I have been plagued with bad quality printing in textbooks, so many different publishers with a quality of printing that can only be described as ****, and it is doing my head in.

If you're familiar with Landau & Lifgarbagez series of books, to my knowledge they are only published by Butterworth & Heineman, I have vol. 1,2,3 & 5A and in all of them except vol.1 the quality is absolutely abysmal. And I was lucky with vol.1 because a copy that my friend has is missing half of some of the pages!

Another example is my copy of baby Rudin from McGraw-Hill. I have this for at most 1.5 years and it's at the stage now where its difficult to read some of the pages, because the letters are getting so worn away.

Another example Spivak's Calculus on Manifolds. I can't remember the publisher I think it was Breinman or something like that, again the quality is starting to get rubbish too.

Halmos' Naive set theory from Springer, again terrible quality printing.

So my question is, has anyone else noticed this, or am I just particularly unlucky in getting bad textbooks? And if its the former, then why are there so many maths textbooks of really crappy quality printing out there?
 
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I have a copy of L&L, Quantum Mechanics that I can't even give away because it's unreadable. The fine print -- and there's a lot of it -- is all smeared.

If you plan on buying any books in this series, look for the oldest copies you can find.
 
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