📚 Would anyone like to complain about POD (printed on demand) books with me?

Indeed! (But before I make my various pronouncements on PODs, I believe it was you I had an exchange about Zola with earlier? Well, the comments seem to have disappeared! Not sure why 🤔, but anyway . . . ) Unfortunately for me though, our closest local indie bookstore seems to be in its death throes, and our local Barnes & Noble of course just seems to have lots and lots of nothing interesting. And so (for me anyway) this means ordering books online most of the time, which means not knowing what I'll get when they arrive. Two pro tips for the POD hater that I'll share with you: bookoutlet.com has lots of interesting cheap remainders that are almost never PODs, but even if they are, they're so cheap it won't matter. Also, the kind folks at The Strand in New York told me that any book on their site that is listed as being "In Store" is 99.99% likely to not be a POD. You can also email them and just ask, and they'll check for you. I've gotten in the habit of contacting publishers before I order their books to see whether or not they're POD (and some won't even tell me!), which is kind of a pain to say the least.