Fred g.

Nick Caya was helpful and gracious as mediator between me and his formatting staff -- until my paperback came out in print. The page text blocks are egregiously off-center on the page and nearly touch the spine -- text is shifted far from the open end of the page and so close to the center of the book that one must crack the spine to read it. Additionally, the type density is gray, not black. One might assume that type coloration is not the responsibility of the formatting service, but Kindle Direct Publishing Support informed me of this --

"Looking into the wireframe, it does appear that the left-hand pages throughout the interior contain a transparent object layered over the text. When the file is processed for print, these objects are automatically flattened and this can lead to undesired color shifts. This is the most likely cause for any differences you are seeing. To resolve, we would recommend the publisher to return to their native file and create a new PDF, ensuring all layers and transparent objects have been removed or flattened."

Lulu Publishing and KDP Customer Support assign responsibility for these errors to Word-2-Kindle. Nick at Word-2-Kindle blames Lulu. I would warn any self-publisher of a paperback book to be very careful with both of these services.