New paperback book's cover has disgusting rubbery texture

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Brand new paperback book's cover has disgusting rubbery texture.
HOW does one do that with a Paperback???????????????
It arrived from Amazon earlier today along with 2 other books.

LOl, its kinda funny because most people don't seem to care much about textures of books let alone scents, but I have always cared about those details. As a child I always used to smell books a lot, I still do it sometimes now but not as much...and I am usually very aware of a books texture and if I like it or not.

I got a set of the books they based the show Game of Thrones on, and they have leathery covers(doubt its real leather) and thin pages...lol honestly look like miniature bibles. I remember one time on of my friends even honestly asked me all shocked 'are you reading the bible?' As I certainly don't hide the fact I am Not a christian...so I had to show him it was Game of Thrones. Anyways I quite like the feel of them.

What sort of nasty rubbery texture like gummy or like something that's horribly unpleasant to run your fingernails across? Maybe you can write a review of how terrible the texture is on the ebay feedback.

I think I've handled a book with that same cover material. Sort of tacky, like a rubber stress toy. I think it was back when I volunteered in a library. I guess the idea was that a plasticised cover protects a book that you use for reference a lot. This book, though, had dust permanently stuck all over it, which looked all the worse because the cover was black.

a lot of newer paperback books have that (source: i used to work at a library).
it truly is a horrible texture.

i suppose its use is to better protect the cover of the book from things like water damage.

...but i question if the awful texture is actually worth it haha

I've seen some rubbery books because I used to work at a bookstore. Aesthetically it's bad, but functionally I actually don't mind it. These books are less prone to getting beat up than paperbacks, but they're lighter, more flexible, and less cumbersome than hardcovers. If you're going to display your favorite books as a kind of decoration, then hardcovers are the way to go. But for easy travel reading, paperbacks are preferable. These rubbery books are sort of a halfway point. I'd honestly like to see book companies continue to work with these types of materials, but I think they need to come up with something more aesthetically pleasing, as well as something that feels better. Maybe some kind of cheap leather substitute. If they don't fix the style, this trend is doomed. But I think it has a lot of potential.

It's nice to know that I'm not imagining things and other people have encountered same.

And now I'm thinking, as a practical matter does that texture of cover make it difficult to slide a book out of a full shelf of books with that texture of cover because that texture causes the book to stick together?

Y'all with library and bookstore experience, what's you take on that?

Speaking of images, this is my book shelf.

Were I a conspiracy theorist, which I am not, I would be tempted to believe that p.o.d. "books" and irritant paperback covers were deliberately aimed at making us all go digital and abandon printed books. Which is why it is important to patronise independent bookshops and buy real books, both hardback and paperback, and used books, to show real good quality books are still wanted by more and more people.

Rubbery, irritating covers can be simply rectified by covering them with adhesive bookwrap, available from W.H. Smiths.

Funny that this got bumped. I got some books from Amazon recently, with these annoying covers. They were the ones which were print on demand, though annoyingly the website didn't list them as such. I don't care much for the texture, though they're okay in their own right. What's annoying is they are part of a series, and the regular printings all have a textured paper cover. So they don't match and it's annoying. Yet another reason to avoid Amazon.

Oh wow - I got one of those books from the Bronte Parsonage Museum. I could barely touch it.

Pure agony. The actual pages are like rubber.

Many p.o.d. "books" are just badly xeroxed sheets of paper glued together. In some there is no pagination, pages are blank, or the print goes offpage.
Yet they are priced as expensively as real books, and one boasted on its cover "Best quality book"! !

Just get some bookwrap.