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For me word count has always been a better indicator of the length of a book than pages or weight. Then again there are books where the prose is so thick that even 10 pages will seem like 100,000 words. Pages as a measure is flawed because it is only valid if all books have the same font at the same size with the same leading on the same page form and with the same margins.
One of my jobs back in high school was working as a typesetter (yes, hand set type.) The printer specialized in limited run fine poetry books. The paper was also high quality. If we printed 500 of a book it was considered a long run. There will always be a market for this type of book. The skills of typesetting and fine printing will not go away.
The printing in most mass market books and many trade books is cheap. ("Cheap" used as a quality designator, not a price designator.) The type and margins are scaled to fit a folded folio number of pages to keep costs down. The fonts are low quality designed to survive the questionable ink and rough paper used in their production. Textbooks however, generally utilize quality fonts and high grade paper. Most have a superior binding designed to survive hard use.
The worst offenders I have found were the computer books. (Note: O'Riley books are not included in this grouping.) Many of them were written in haste and then the page layouts were done by someone that did not have a clue as to the content of the text. Add to this the selection of a "hip" font that causes eye strain after a page or two and you have a winning combination.
With e-books I have been able to change the base font to one that I like and is easy on my eyes. The Dutch font Sony shipped with the PRS-500 Reader is a fine font (and a better font than Times New Roman that shipped with Windows or the Times font that comes with Mac.) I am not sure what options I have or will have with ePub but that is in the future for me, not the present.
Using an electronic reader I can judge a book by its merits without being distracted by a madman graphic designer out to show the world his or her vision of greatness.
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