[Exporting PDF for KDP: print book is pixelated]

@lacerto thanks for the welcome, and the thorough answer! 😊

I just checked the color mode of the document and it says "Color Format: Gray/8," and "Color Profile: Grayscale D50." Would you recommend converting the document to CMYK?

[Exporting PDF for KDP: print book is pixelated]

Hi everyone! My wife and I are trying to print a book on Amazon KDP. We used Affinity Publisher to create the interior. We ordered a test copy from KDP, and the font looks pixelated or "speckled" (see the attachment, you may have to zoom in to see it). The lines are not crisp at all, it's almost as if each letter is made up of a bunch of little dots.

I've attached my export settings from Publisher, as well as a screenshot of the exported PDF we used. Could our export settings be the problem? Zooming in, the PDF does look a little blurry, but it doesn't look pixelated or speckled. Amazon recommended the PDF/X-1a format, which we didn't use. Still, it seems strange to me, because we also printed a test copy with Lulu using the same exported PDF and it didn't have the problems that the KDP version had.

 

I'm honestly not sure what the fix is, so any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

Matt