"Helion- Poor Printing and Binding?" Topic

Anyone else suffering a production fault with delaminating covers?

Two of us, one here (nz) and another in UK buddy have noted the plastic laminate on [papercard gloss] covers spontaneously releasing and curling back.

No, absolutely no, bending, crush, twist or pressure applied by myself to a book that after a quick scan was happily sitting on the library shelf in easy reach for weeks.

It is the Acerbi Austrian Light Cav book, that otherwise arrived in perfect looking condition.
cheers
d

Welcome to modern book-binding, SHaT1984. I just received a Pen & Sword reference work "perfect bound"--meaning individual pages glued to a fake spine like a paperback. It will not live a long happy life. I finished a Harper Perennial a week or so back quite literally with a bottle of glue in one hand, repairing as I read. And brand new St Martin's Press hardcovers are so poorly bound these days that I make a practice of looking for back-up copies in thrift shops. I have every expectation of reading the good ones to death.

I may finish the evening with my Library of America Lovecraft or one of my Gregg Press SF volumes, just for the pleasure of handling a non-disposable book again.

Are these printed in home country or printed overseas and then shipped to you or your vendor?

Yep, I'm losing the connection of the lamination on some of the edges of my copy of "Lutzen and Bautzen …", and it came directly from Helion shipped to me overseas.

Kindle gets some of the blame. With fewer hardcovers printed, you need to bring down the cost per unit to account for the fixed costs per book that you have printed.

It's really a pity, though. How many books will we lose to bitrot?

I have that problem on some books from other companies, but none from Helion.

>>Are these printed in home country or printed overseas and then shipped to you or your vendor?

Direct from the publisher ol man!

Helion paperbacks, and I have plenty, are dreadful. No matter how carefully I handle them, never opening them more than about 45 degrees, the covers curl and the plastic starts to delaminate. They are not cheap but I would prefer to spend more for a hardback – Helion hardbacks seem by contrast excellent.
Does anyone know of a range of plastic covers that would fit the Helion paperbacks?

emckinney, people are always happy to blame Amazon, but paper books are still 85% of book sales--and I bet it's higher in non-fiction. (Try just once flipping back and forth between narrative OOB and map in a kindle military history. You won't try twice.)
And major publishers have been working on cheaper disposable imitation hardcovers since about 1970. Amazon has and creates problems, but not this one. We're creating this one by letting the publishers get away with it.

If we're going to go OT to talk about Amazon's Kindle, first let me say that I love the product.

That said, there are a number of issues with it as a "book".

- you don't actually "own" any book you pay for to have downloaded to your Kindle.
- the prices for digital books for the Kindle are silly, meaning that there is no connection between what one costs and the expense the vendor (Amazon) has incurred as Amazon has put a huge profit margin on the books, while writers are making no more than they ever did.
- poor editing or none has taken over increasing numbers of books…in fact, many books look like they've been scanned in from a physical page without any editing…just lots of use of spell checker software.
- while the use of foot notes for historical volumes has increased, it is poorly done and frustrating to navigate.
- no attempt has been made to properly size pictures and maps in historical volumes, given the size of a Kindle's screen. Leaving a map as a 1/4 size of the screen makes no sense when it could be enlarge to the full size of the screen so it is useful.
- the software is wonky or worse, leaving such things as easily "marked" pages so one can return to a given page (like to see a map again), quote or picture.

Dan, you left out that Amazon has the technical capability to rewrite your book. I figure it's only a matter of time before passages they deem "insensitive" or "insufficiently diverse" just disappear or are changed beyond recognition.

That said, kindle is a medium, not a publisher/editor. Don't blame Amazon because whoever scanned in the paper book to create a digital edition couldn't be bothered to read it. (I once had a long conversation with a published professional author who could not understand why "just scanning in" her pre-digital works wasn't sufficient; only a more astute publisher saved her from the fate she fully deserved.) And all those public domain books sold for next to nothing on kindle were pretty much a labor of love. You can generally get a better-edited copy, but you'll have to pay more.

As for the "huge profit margin" there's a fee--$300, I think--to load stuff up, and advertising it is your own responsibility. But Amazon then takes 30% and the rest is yours. Take your manuscript to any of the major publishers and see what they offer you.

For that matter, see what the majors do by way of editing today.

Have you contacted Helion directly? I'm sure that they would want to know if there are quality control issues with their products.

Keep, I admire optimism--from outside the blast radius, of course.

>>Have you contacted Helion directly?

No, not me from 20,000 kms away. Doesn't seem any point. And yes I know all about it, I was a Quality Manager, in print and engineering, many moons ago. Not surprising that 'business' these days have never heard of such a thing.

Despite veering out of control there's enough anecdotal evidence from a few that it is a latent problem, and yes technical or 'cheapness' matters little.

@BillyNM -
Thanks for letting me know its not new. As defects go, its rather bizarre.
Your local library will undoubtedly help you with info. My old attempts at 'book covering' protection looks like a dogs breakfast now, but they don't go anywhere, so…

I'll drop a note to H. just to see what they come back with.., keep watching __ thanks all__
d

Haven't had an issue until last week. Reading "Tigers of Bastogne" published by Casemate. When I opened it after a few reads the first 30 pages fell out of the perfect bind. I'm very careful and never even crack the spines on paperbacks.