> If you have an older, low-volume book, providing a shoddy version will make you more money than letting it go out of print.
From my point of view, what you are describing is "if you're the owner of an interesting but niche work, making it available in a basic version will please a lot of people who want to buy and read it".
The alternative to most of these 'shoddy versions' from reputable publishers is simply no version at all. Not sure why the author of the article wants to enforce this on people who actually want to read these books, rather than ooh over print quality and hoard them as luxury objects.
Most of these are also available in ebook (free ebooks, in the case of public domain works like the Bertrand Russell), which makes me think that the people who don't value paper books in-and-of-themselves probably aren't buying the shoddy paperbacks either.
For someone who specifically likes the experience of a paper books, the option of a better print (or at least disclosure of the print quality) is highly desirable
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Sure. I'm not arguing it's fundamentally bad. But it's going to leave some buyers unhappy because nowadays, the point of paperbacks is that you're paying extra for a reading experience, not the text itself. An ebook is always less (or free).