I was reminded by a comment in my previous post by James Spinti of our shared frustration with academic publishers of using print-on-demand for highly specialized and highly priced books. Here’s one of the worst examples I’ve seen from my own library.

Here’s the offender:

Here’s its final page count (not including 30 pages of Roman numerals appearing before page 1)

Here is the binding:

The book is well over 3 inches thick and is essentially abused every time we try to read something from it, simply by virtue of opening it up.

Retail Price: $150

Thankfully, I didn’t pay that much for this garbage binding, but then, the $80 that I did spend was still way, way too much. My wife refers to this book heavily for her thesis and I’m not sure that its going to last through the end. But we’re at the mercy of Oxford.

Sigh…