This week, I finished reading Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen. It’s a lively and fun story set in an Expanse-like future, but this isn’t a book review :) Rather, I’m asking a question of Amazon: what’s up with the variation in print quality between Kindle Direct Publishing books printed at the same facility, within just a few months of each other?

There are plenty of videos out there that show you what hardcover print-on-demand books look like, at least at a superficial level. But readers see these books from only a few inches away. How does the quality compare to books printed by the big publishers?