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roachboy, I like what you wrote. I think your experiences are shared by many others, including me. To each medium, its function. I don't think many other readers would prefer a monitor over a book for longer works, especially cover-to-cover reading such as novels. There are many people out there who fetishize the book. They like the look and feel of them.
And in defense of academic presses, a lack of production quality is often not due to laziness, but due to a lack of resources. Most academic presses can only hope to recoup a fraction of a book's costs through sales. It would be difficult to justify major improvements considering the book's subject matter and market. The smallest changes in a book project has an incredible impact on cost. I couldn't imagine what it was like before computers.
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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