I had a friend over and we talked about the subject. She owns a Penguin stock copy of Martin Eden and upon checking my print-on-demand copy her first reaction was: "Yea, this looks like crap, but above all, the type is making me dizzy".

I only mention it in passing the article but I'm regretting not showing pictures of how bad the page typesetting can get - perhaps I'll revise it this week. There's a substantial qualitative jump from "this book looks like a cheap knock-off" to "reading this is giving me a headache".

And yes, while I don't have a clue about the printing process, the image of an inkjet printer has also come to mind on occasion!