Karaoke Forums

Can you really get them done somewhere  for just $3 a book?!?!

I ran across this figure in the other thread this morning.  My book is really small compared to most of you. Around 250 pages.

I've been worrying about the durability of non-sleeved books in my very active room, but at that price who cares?!?!? It would be practically a non-issue to replace them at that price every month!

If not $3, how much would you who have gone this route estimate a 250 page book to cost and where is the best place to go?

My book is about 400 pages. I tried spiral bound. The cost was about $50 a book. They lasted about 2 months. People spilled beer or drinks on them all and they were trash.

Kinkos charges .08 a copy $6 to laminate the cover. and $8 to bind it.

I don't understand how a spiral bound would work if it got wet.  I had a cookbook that just got water wet & all the pages stuck together & was trashed.

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The UPS store will do the actual binding for $3/book, no matter how many pages.  That is only for the binding. You'd have to pay for the cost of copying. And I believe if you want to laminate the front and back pages, you'd have to pay extra or do it yourself (I bought a laminator at Staples for under $100 and use it a lot).

I'm still going to give it a try. Our books don't get abused like most.

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My books, depending on Artist or Title, have somewhere between 150 - 220 pages.

If I send the whole thing to Office Depot, I pay around $15 to $20 per book. That includes printing the songbook and colored paper covers, laminating the covers and spiral bind the books.

I  usually print 2 artist and 1 title book a month, so costs are around $50-$60 a month and I'm always kind of up to date. With 5 shows a week, this is a fair trade off.

If it happens that one book really lasts longer than a year, I just get rid of it. On the cover it says the print date, so regulars know how to grab the newest book. If others catch an older book, they still have a decent selection to choose from. It works for me.

Oh yeah, and believe it or not, those books last a lot longer, than the regular binders with sleeves I used before. And they are sooo much lighter!

I should have done the math in my head. You guys are talking about the cost of binding the books in spiral that's $3. That makes sense now that I think about it.

In that case I'm going to stick with plastic sleeves because my books are always getting wet. At the end of the night I have to hang three or four up on nails I've sunk in  the back of the stage so they can dry out.  If I stack them with the others they just stay wet and start to really smell.

I'm fortunate that I don't have to cart them around. They just get stacked onstage until the next karaoke night.

I'm reminded of the other thread about non-drinking singers. That is as far removed from the realities of my room as you can get in this line of work.

You know, it's a difficult call.  I can't stand touching those sticky plastic sleeves and I'd rather replace a book than have to hang it up at night to dry out.  And if you are unaware that a particular book has been "liquified", some customer at the next show is going to deal with sticky pages that don't turn easily.  Also, there isn't a show I go to where some of the looseleaf binders are no longer working properly and pages fall out of the book as I flip through.  What a pain that is!

I've laminated my covers and sprial bound the catalogs, no plastic sleeves.  I figured from the get-go if some amount of pages got completely destroyed, it would be worth it to remove and re-print just those useless pages!  These binders are a lot easier to flip through, easier and lighter to carry around, and they are harder to ruin in regard to pages slipping out!

Lastly, all these considerations is the very reason one my wife now has a laptop (to check our database for customers) and we introduced the kiosk where customers can also look up what we have!

Clearly, this problem has no easy solution!

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One problem I ran into with my books - I couldn't get binding because they were to thick (so I was told at both office max/staples)  When counting pages, are you guys referring to front and back?  I have 700 pages (350 actual pages, front & back)  What I did that works extremely well, and I've seen other companies around here do it - get a   cover and 3 hole punch everything.  Run 2 zip ties from end to middle.  Works like a charm!  Pages hold up better than spiral bounding.

I produce 9 'perfect' bound books with a color cover page and plastic transparent protective covers for $115. They are only 110 double-sided pages, though they contain both artist and title for 8,000 songs (5900 unique).  I use the MTU Hoster two-column book, though I post-process the book output with a script (so I can get rid of the "book id" and replace it with the actual disk ID).

If your 250 pages is double-sided, the additional would be $8.40 a book at 6 cents per double-sided page or about $21.30 each for my format. If your 250 pages is pages of content, then you could print your book in my format for $0.90 more or about $13.80 apiece.

My next printing will not be until this fall, but at that time I will change format to remove the disk/track number entirely and just put (DK, SPC, SFK) at the right hand margin to list the manufacturers all on one line without duping the title. I expect t hat to hold the line on pages even with my modest songbook growth to nearly 9,000 songs.

I also do something I have never seen anywhere else -- I make two color covers, one "By Artist" and one "By Title". Then I arrange the book so that you flip it over and it looks like the other flavor.

Last printing I had already went through the setup with the copy shop. They took my four PDF files (two cover/rule sections, two book listing sections) and had all 9 made in about an hour.