The PHB I preordered from Amazon fell apart within 30 days. Amazon replaced it for free because it was within 30 days, and so far the replacement has held up.
I preordered a second PHB from Amazon as a birthday gift for someone in my gaming group. It fell apart too but he hasn't replaced it yet.
The DM in our home group preordered a PHB from Amazon and it fell apart after about two months. Amazon wouldn't replace it (over 30 days), but WotC replaced it for free and even included a copy of Horde of the Dragon Queen for his trouble. Unfortunately his second PHB is now falling apart.
A third friend purchased the PHB from Amazon a couple days after it was released, and his binding also started to fail. He bought some book binders glue to fix it himself and so far is happy with the results. If my copy starts to fall apart, I will probably take this approach.
And finally, a fourth friend purchased the PHB (FLGS around the release), and so far has not had any problems.
So my gaming group / circle has used seven copies, five of which had poor binding. Some of us are probably a little more rough with them than others, but we've never had a common quality problem like this before now. Personally, I've been collecting D&D books for years and treat them carefully.
If your retailer will not replace the book directly you can send it back to WOTC and they will replace it. I did mine a few months back and it took a couple of weeks but the new one has held together much better.
I think the link with instructions I used is at: http://wizards.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/409/kw/defective/track/AvNzyQpgDv8S~eJhGgQa~yInHcEqWi75Mv~W~zj~PP8f
Note that you don't have to provide a receipt, I replaced mine another replaced theirs without it.
Annoying, but not really WOTC's fault and there were no issues with the replacement so I can't complain.
Interesting. I bought mine from my FLGS and the binding seems to be holding up fine.
My 2e books are in the worst shape, but that’s mostly because we played the hell out of them.
I got mine from Amazon as early as possible (had to be shipped to my country, so about a week later than release), it was dropped, thrown, badly transported and violently read so far and it still holds remarkably.
Similiar for my gaming group, even though they treat their books better.
.Mine fell apart after about 2 months. I use it too much to have it away for that long for a replacement. I decided to try and fix it myself.
I purchased some BARGE All Purpose Cement, applied with a short bristle/wide head brush. So far it has held up for the last 3/4 weeks.
If you can part with it, I would go with getting it replaced from WOTC. I've heard good things about the replacements.
It must be an amazon thing, because I bought 2 PHB's from 2 of my local FLGS and both have held up, no problems. Same with MM and DGM. Maybe the binding issue has been fixed with newer books, and possibly the second printing will address these problems. Good thing is people are returning their books, which will give Wizards and indicator that their book publisher/binder is shitty.
I listed just the facts and avoided speculation in my first post because I do not know enough about the printing industry or how books are typically distributed to resellers. However, I have wondered if the preorder numbers on Amazon were so high that the printer was rushing production to meet Amazon's demand. Pure speculation on my part. I try to support my FLGS (I purchased the DMG and three adventure books from them), but I still may order future books from Amazon.
One of the early batches had poor bindings. So yea it's a semi-common problem.
But WotC replaces the books, and the new batches are fine.
I know of two that have fallen apart, both purchased from game stores. It's not amazon, it's all books from the first run.
Both were replaced without questions, without receipts, months after their purchase.
Multiple people have complained about this. Wizards must have fallen on hard times to be unable to print the books well. If they fail at that, it doesn't matter how high quality the content of the game is. It is great they are sending out replacements for free. That shows responsibility and good customer service.