Dissappointed In Book Quality Lately? Options

Is anyone here besides me, dissappointed in the quality of books being put out today. I'm not referring to their content (although you seem to be getting less and less of that also), but more in terms of construction. I know most occult books don't sell in volume to warrant the nice, hardbound tome of a book we all (most?) yearn after as a way of connecting with the scribes of antiquity, but it seems even the nicer-looking "perfect bound" books fall apart rather quickly. I still have books from the seventies I've had since they were new that are still in fairly good shape. I even have some of my mother's books from the 40's that are not damaged. yet, I find that new books I buy have only about a 50% chance of surviving the first reading.

Anyone else come across this problem?

all the "paper" publishing houses are closing their doors, slowly but surely, those that have adopted "print on demand" technology (and the reason there are no more hardcovers) are going ok so far, but the content in the books is what i see depleting ever faster, the demographics of sales driving the checkbooks of the publishers - even agents have quit the business, and that's a big deal - what's the point in writing printed books anymore if it dosen't get published, not because it wasn't good or they didn't want to publish it, but because 'spotted dick' just signed his 200000th book deal (more of the same old stuff about the same old thing) and they had to spend all their 'author money' on that! - is it the investulators demanding more and faster return, or are we on the bleeding edge of the demise of the printed book?

for example it costs x amount to print a book and distribute it, and it costs x - (paper, ink, printing, distribution, packaging) to produce it on burn-at-sale rom, and that's a big, big difference in the pocketbook of the investulators

i see books being released on flash before you know it, with a great big save-the-trees campaign to promote it - the burn-at-sale machines are ready today, the publishers are only waiting now for the music industry to sort out the pirating and buying issues so they don't get burned - and it only takes one company to put a paperback-sized screen on an ipod to pull it off tomorrow

the larger chain bookstores are dragging their feet though, as they will have no real unfair advantage anymore over the tiny subject-focused bookstore, either can produce a book on-site with the tiny credit-card-machine sized box

e.