I just bought The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe in the Penguin Classics edition (black classics with a painting on 75% of the cover page and the title at the bottom 25%).
When I opened the book to a random page, I was yet again utterly disappointed at the small font size of this classic novel. Now, I'm not gonna be able to return it not read the book and enjoy it. I hate it when this happens.
I just don't get why some books in the Penguin Classics editions come with a really good font size while others get unreadably small font? This is not the first time I see Penguin do this. In the past I bought various old Penguin Orange classics and their font size varied significantly although they're all the same old Penguin orange editions from long ago.
Why? Just why? Why does a publisher like Penguin keep doing this annoying thing with their products? Why is there no standardisation of the font size across the similar editions of their books?
by thebestnobody
3 Comments
I have the same question
They’re not trying to make a nice collection. They are publishing extremely cheap books that cost them next to nothing. Probably different people did the layouts of those books. There may be a good reason for the change in font and layout, such as reducing the page count on a very long book to keep costs down. Or there may be no reason at all, they just weren’t at all concerned with keeping them standard.
Even publishers who do very much care about making a series of books go together often have to make concessions based on all kinds of factors, including what printers are available to print the book, what paper costs at the time, etc. You have to plan WAY ahead if you truly want a whole collection of books to be identical.
To be honest I’ve never experienced consistency in the printing industry at any point in my lifetime.