> I suspect it’s intentionally designed to be unpleasant to encourage book sales.
If you’re reading a book preview and have an awful time of it, why would that encourage you to buy the book? You’re more likely to close the site and move away.
It is also a lot of work (and intuitive) to publish all the content on a website and then intentionally make it unpleasant to read just to encourage book sales.
When the presentation of the website has the appearance of being deliberately terrible, then I (for one) am lead to presume that the corresponding book will be just as disdainful.
If you’re reading a book preview and have an awful time of it, why would that encourage you to buy the book? You’re more likely to close the site and move away.