[diamondap]

To all you folks complaining about the quality of POD books, you should know that the book designer has a lot to do with the book's readability. Many self-published authors who design their own interiors choose bad fonts out of ignorance, or make the font too small to reduce page count and cost. Print design is really an art. The big publishers take it seriously, and some self-published authors do as well.

As for blurry covers, a common mistake among self-published authors is not preserving the aspect ratio for cover art. They'll stretch an image, or use a low-resolution image. Again, this is done out of ignorance or carelessness. Major publishers know to pay attention to these details.

POD publishers like Ingram Spark also let you choose the type of paper and cover finish. They can produce good paperbacks. Maybe Amazon's POD system chooses cheaper paper by default. I'm not sure.

[Finnucane]

For our backlist, the titles most likely going to POD are old enough that sometimes all we have work from are scans of the physical copies. Our back catalog goes back quite a long ways. POD quality still varies a lot, though short run digital printing has improved significantly in the past decade or so.

[beej71]

Seconded. The pod books I have printed at Amazon look exactly like the pdf and cover art I submitted. I worked hard to follow their specifications.

Material quality felt "fine" to me, but haven't really done an analysis.