As a result, my printer was now junk, and I had to print at a print shop.
The print shop software started suffering from the same problems the previous publisher had experienced, random dropout of graphics. However, because I was actually in the shop, they let me take over and run the software.
I immediately recognized that the Adobe PDF reader wasn't rendering many of the graphics, which is why they weren't printing. I loaded up Evince software for Windows and printed the document. Evince on Linux prints perfectly, but unfortunately, Windows printer drivers (or Fiery Commander) managed to get a few pages to not print the graphics. Fortunately for me, the few pages that Evince couldn't print were printed perfectly by Adobe via Fiery Commander. Between the two programs, the book manage to get printed.
Having used Fiery commander myself, I have to say that the program isn't bad as far as its intentions. It offers a number of extra controls on printing, not to mention control of multiple machines and print queues. Of course, it kept trying to reset the settings to default values, which is to say that after I printed a document, Fiery Commander had no idea what the previous settings were. I don't know if this is an option, but you have to watch over that thing like a hawk, because one little mistake will have all sorts of bad things happening, like printing on the wrong paper, scaling, printing 9 to a page, etc.
I would also like to add to my previous comments on CYMK printers: I'm now a fan of the Ricoh C5200s. It didn't do a perfect job at reproducing color, but the colors were much brighter. My reds looked red, and deep blues looked blue. The owner of the copy shop where I printed also commented that this was their favorite color pinter.
I wonder if I can afford a used C5200s. Of course, I don't think it has a Linux driver.
The downside of the Ricoh is that the fuser temperature was so high that it warped the paper. It warped the paper because the shop owner told it that we were using 70# offset paper, which is thicker than normal. If we had told it that we had thinner paper, it probably woudn't have warped.
Because the paper was warped, the double fan lay-flat binding that I had developed wouldn't work. If the paper is even the slightest bit wavy, the binding will break when you open the book. A trade book publisher took pity on me and perfect bound the books for $8 a piece, which is still high, but they did a great job, and the wavy paper problem was solved.
It may have been possible to press the paper (humidify then press with a T-shirt press), but I was running out of time. I think I have a winning recipe for the next round of books. We'll have to see.