The samples arrived today from the first print shop. I noticed two things immediately:
One, the text looks much sharper now than in the second book, even the small fonts look very good.
Second, the pictures have a much higher resolution. I would say the raster is about twice as fine as for the previous book.

Apparently digital printing has made huge advances in the past few years.

Looks very promising, in any case, and I hope the other samples will be similarly good-looking.

Actually I am hoping to use another printing place that I just found; they promised to send out samples on Monday so I would have them Wednesday. They are cheaper and seemed to be bigger, faster and more professional than the other one.

Well, like always, I will keep you posted.