Karaoke Forums

We use plastic dutang report covers. Our books at Staples (we do our books complete every year or two), 18 copies each (cheaper in bulk) for 5 cents a double sided page. Artists A-L and L-z (and new releases), the same for Titles, usually 18 copies of each. And yes at shows all books go out. Song slips are paid by advertisers. Check my gallery for pics.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

thats where I get mine done... Staples, and the binding is plastic.

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

Okay, this is ALL a great discussion.... however, No one has actually fessed up to the dollar amount per book.

When I use printed books (and yes, I do use them for private parties albeit less and less) the cost to produce the book hovered around $13.50 per book.

I've printed 15 books so that's $202.50

This does NOT include any kind of maintenance... updates, repairs etc.

wow, that's cheap. How many pages??? at .08 cents a page, mine run me $15 just to print, then 2.44 for the laminated covers, and $2 for binding brings me to $20 a piece!

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

I don't sleeve my pages either. I use Latshaw's songlist generator. Creating a new book is as easy as pointing your finger at your hard drive and say "PRINT" .It creates my books quickly, accurately, and inexpensively for under $5 a book including cost of paper, binders, and ink. I purchased a Samsung ML2851ND duplex laser printer for $120 about a year ago, and this thing is fast. It will create a 100 page (50 double sided pages) in about 5 minutes! I have my books separated by Oldies (artist and title), country (artist and title), and pop (artist and title).

This way is so cheap and easy I can honestly say it is no big deal to print books, and keep all my songs up to date.

Mrmarog

For my crowd it seems that books without protectors just do not work.

I dont think the people INTEND to spill beer, but I dont think I can go 5 shows without a few of the binders getting beer/drinks spilled on them.

I dont know if it is because the bar where I run karaoke is quite dark or what, but except for the beer spilling I don't think they are especially drunk.

Even if the binders with sheet protectors cost 5 times as much, I think they save me some money.

Even without beer, some of them migrate to people outside, and we have regular rain, and while I usually get them inside soon when it rains they sometimes move out after a rain and get set on a damp table or chair. Also some damage can occur at the start of a light rain.

Our books, 18 copies each, Artist and Title (a little over 10,000 pages) costs us about $400Cdn including the 13% tax. Plastic covered Duotangs were about 50 cents each for about $36. They last about 2 years. Liquid gets spilled on themwe leave the book out and open. By morning they are dry and maybe a bit wavy. They are put on the bottom where the weight of the other books help flatten them out. So total cost of the original books are $220/year. Add ons are minimal less than probably $50.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

The plastic ones work well too. It's just sometimes you have to fix them. You may notice on occasion one has popped out of it's hole. They're not a continuous spiral all the way through like the wire ones I use. I've never had a page ripped out either way.

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[shadow=pink][glow=deepskyblue]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[updown]~*~ MONKEY BUSINESS KARAOKE~*~ [/shadow][/updown][/glow]

Cost per book around $20

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[shadow=pink][glow=deepskyblue]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[updown]~*~ MONKEY BUSINESS KARAOKE~*~ [/shadow][/updown][/glow]

Babs: The spirals I'm getting are continuous, exactly like the wires ones, except they're plastic. So you must mean the Cerlox binding, Like this:


and like this:



The ones I'm getting are like this:



Not sure what my cost per book is/has been, but I'll venture a guess at well over $50 each. I'm getting smarter, though!
Went to Staples to pick up toner tonight and they were out. I will have to wait until they get more in next week before I can print. Grrrr! On the upside, I got a $10 off coupon because it was out of stock.
When I get my new ones done up next week, I'll post my cost here.

This is where I produced a "dummy" book. I went and pulled out -- manually -- about half the songs. I made sure I had all the commonly-sung Elvis and Beatles, then pulled out a lot of those. I pulled out tons of Frank Sinatra, and three quarters of Celine Dion. I pulled out a lot of the songs from artists that are rarely sung (Beach Boys, Four Seasons, Styx, Kiss, Smokey Robinson, etc.)

I ended up with about 6100 songs -- out of my 944 CDGs 10,200 unique -- that included all the songs that had been sung at my gigs in the past, most all of Sound Choice Foundation 1&2, all of ChartBuster Essentials 1-3. It also had all my new stuff from 2004-2009, where there was no coverage in the Foundation.

Then I used Latshaws generator to create a two-column book and had those printed with a "perfect" bind. They cost $12.00 apiece, with a color cover page and a plastic sheet on both front and back. They are about a half-inch thick, and have plenty of things for people to sing. I mention that I have a few songs not in the book, both more recent and some older, and that they should come up and ask if they have a special song they are used to singing.

I put the date on the front cover. I plan on printing only a couple of copies of the next version to replace damaged or soiled ones. I have it set up with the copy shop so I just need to email them the PDF with the new book and cover graphic, and they can print them for me to pick up.

Works for me, and at $96.00 for 8 books, fully printed with no big stuff job, it is pretty economical. It took a lot of work to create the text file/spreadsheet with the culled library, but now I can just add the new stuff and occasionally cull songs from an artist that doesn't get sung.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Mckyj, I love this idea - I think it's time to do that - will bring in a book and begin the job. Unfortunately more than half of my book (way more than half) is not available on CD anymore - I had a bad drive, told me it wrote the file on CD and it didn't...drive went totally and presto, no file. So, I think I'll finally have to resort to just using my Hoster software, generate the book, and in the process of doing that I will cull. Really, having these big books is just a waste of space and energy anymore, and then I won't have to continually look at a HUGE pile of songs that have never and probably never will be sung. Uggg.

Agree too Mickey. I am re-doing my books this week and purchased Latsaw Songlist Generator at Lone Wolf's suggestion last week. Removing popular but hardly-ever-sung artists is a good idea although might seem counter-productive to everyone except the kj. The master book will still reflect those removed naturally.

I am about 1/3 of the way through editing out a few thousand songs and am considering going with the spiral-bound book suggestions of Diafel and Babs, instead of my regular binders and sheet protectors. Previous costs have been around $34 a book which included springpost binders, printing and sheet protectors from costco. I think i'll go by Staples today and inquire. Thanks for the info y'all.

Diafel - Those spiral ones will work great, plastic or wire. One tip I will give you is clamp down the ends, so the spiral doesn't start to work it's way out. I find when they put them in they don't always take care to turn down the ends enough.

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[shadow=pink][glow=deepskyblue]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[updown]~*~ MONKEY BUSINESS KARAOKE~*~ [/shadow][/updown][/glow]

Karen, if you send me a spreadsheet of your culled songs, in the usual format (artist,title,SC8146-07), I will crate a ZIP file for you of "dummy" KMA files. These will be small fake KMA files, which will work just fine for Hoster generating a database. Then you do:

Tools->Build Songs Database
Remove Folder
Add Folder (the one you unzipped the file to)

Then build database, and print songbook based on that. Then you just do the same thing and Add Folder your real songs directory.

The Spreadsheet will look like:

[pre]
disk-track artist title
AKS10001-01 Wilson, Gretchen Here For The Party
AKS10001-02 Wilson, Gretchen Redneck Woman
AKS10001-10 Wilson, Gretchen Pocahontas Proud
...
SC8146-02 Lynyrd Skynyrd Sweet Home Alabama
SC8146-03 Allman Brothers Band, T Rambling Man
SC8146-04 Lynyrd Skynyrd Free Bird
SC8146-05 Allman Brothers Band, T Whipping Post
SC8146-07 Marshall Tucker Band Heard It In A Love Song
SC8146-08 Lynyrd Skynyrd What's Your Name
SC8146-09 38 Special Caught Up In You
SC8146-11 Ozark Mountain Daredevi Jackie Blue
SC8146-12 Charlie Daniels Band, T Uneasy Rider
SC8146-13 Wet Willie Keep On Smilin
SC8146-14 Allman Brothers Band, T No One To Run With
...
ZMP062-03 Stone, Joss Fell In Love With A Boy
ZMP123-01 High School Musical 2 What Time Is It
ZMP123-02 High School Musical 2 What Time Is It (No Backing Vocals)
ZMP123-03 High School Musical 2 Fabulous
ZMP123-04 High School Musical 2 Fabulous (No Backing Vocals)
ZMP123-05 High School Musical 2 Work This Out
ZMP123-06 High School Musical 2 Work This Out (No Backing Vocals)
ZMP123-07 High School Musical 2 You Are The Music In Me
ZMP123-08 High School Musical 2 I Don't Dance
ZMP123-09 High School Musical 2 I Don't Dance (No Backing Vocals)
ZMP123-10 High School Musical 2 You Are The Music In Me (Sharpay Version)
ZMP123-11 High School Musical 2 Gotta Go My Own Way (Duet)
ZMP123-13 High School Musical 2 Bet On It
ZMP123-14 High School Musical 2 Everyday
ZMP123-15 High School Musical 2 All For One
ZMP123-16 High School Musical 2 All For One (No Backing Vocals)
[/pre]

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.