Author here, thanks for the comments. Let me address a few points in turn:

> The fact that the quality is merely "subpar"

Like I say in a comment somewhere in the thread, a friend who owns a real Martin Eden from Penguin and saw mine said the typesetting was giving her a headache. I'll only know when I read it, but it certainly looks like crap.

> The author's problems are coming from digital printing, not the print-on-demand business model specifically

Many commenters seem to be fixating on this, but I don't think it fairly represents the thrust of the article, and I don't really have anything against POD as such. I don't think that books should conform to a certain abstract ideal of purity. My complaint is about their concrete quality. And as long as Amazon prints at this level of quality, I'd like to be informed before buying.

> Separately, paper quality has gone down industry-wide

I've noticed this in Penguin Classics, although many Spanish publishing houses are infinitely better. At any rate, most of the Amazon PODs are not even close to a modern Penguin.