> Interestingly, packing books badly was a conscious decision by Amazon. I know this because for the first few years they packed them well. Then they switched t

> Interestingly, packing books badly was a conscious decision by Amazon. I know this because for the first few years they packed them well. Then they switched to just dumping them in a box, presumably because it was cheaper and most buyers didn't care. Is "we changed the packing for less focus on quality-of-preservation, for reasons related to quality-of-broader-experience" really the same as packing books badly being a conscious decision? IDK, seems a bit of a difference there; you don't even have to decide "let's pack the books badly" to move in that direction if your refinements are focused elsewhere, so it may be more accurate to say it was probably an unintended knock-on effect. Also, I've found some purveyors of new books that do a phenomenal job of packing & shipping. Gotta say that if you're shopping at the Abebooks level though, it seems like this kind of recommendation may be wasted? Not snobbery, just curious why Abebooks is the next step up from Amazon if quality is a concern. Maybe "Abebooks + noticing which warehouse is shipping me books at which level of quality" could be a helpful next step, if one is looking to stay in a similar orbit with minimal figurative delta-V to retain the comfortable feel of one's past shopping habits?