I was also very confused. If you're going to sell a fake book, why not just fill it with blank pages? Why go to the extra effort? Did they really think I wasn't going to notice when I opened it and it was full of information about hamsters? Were they hoping I'd just put it on my bookshelf and never actually read it?
We concluded that they probably run some kind of big automated print-on-demand counterfeiting operation, and have a database of textbook PDFs from several publishers. They probably had the wrong entry in their database for this title, and linked it up with the wrong contents. Perhaps next time you order a small-animal veterinary handbook from Amazon, you'll find it full of block diagrams and transfer functions.
I imagine that if they had printed the correct PDF, I never would have noticed. The book was printed on high-quality paper and well bound.
For what it's worth, this wasn't a cheap purchase.
I'm guessing it's because they didn't manufacture the book at all -- they probably took a used book that was worth next to nothing and put a new cover on it, hoping that some people wouldn't open it until their return window closed?
We concluded that they probably run some kind of big automated print-on-demand counterfeiting operation, and have a database of textbook PDFs from several publishers. They probably had the wrong entry in their database for this title, and linked it up with the wrong contents. Perhaps next time you order a small-animal veterinary handbook from Amazon, you'll find it full of block diagrams and transfer functions.
I imagine that if they had printed the correct PDF, I never would have noticed. The book was printed on high-quality paper and well bound.
For what it's worth, this wasn't a cheap purchase.