Karaoke Forums

nmnnm

You can get the plastic protectors on ebay bulk for a reasonable price. At office depot they have monochrome laser printers for about $125 You can get toner refills on ebay at a very reasonable price and print books a lot cheaper than Kinkos. You also have the option of printing both sides.I buy the binders with the plastic wrap to insert a sheet but we put cd labels in that. ..

You are doing all the work but it's about the cheapest. Also I use landscape and 3 columns and get more per page.

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Get an estimate for complete books at Office Max. If you redo them that often, ware and tare isn't that important......remember your time is money.....you hand them a cd and your books are done.......Babs informed me of this, or I wouldn't have known about this service

Stay away from Kinkos rule number one, not that you mentioned them, just FYI!

Calculate how many pages your books have, can they be condensed - maybe a smaller font but still readable?  Double columned?  You print double sided.  
I use a Dell laser printer with a duplexer (ability to print on both sides automatically) & it works great.  My books are about 320 pages total (both artists & title), with a 12 point Arial Narrow font, double columned.  It takes about 160 pages to print 1 book, my toner cart in the printer will print up to 4000 pages.  I usually print 10 books then split them into separate title & artist sections.
Otherwise call some of your local Ma & Pa shops, sometimes these prices are better than the big boy prices.

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I use Office Depot and I bring a CD with my book on MS Word and they print right from disc. I have them stuff the sheet protectors and install them in the binders for me.

I use a two column per page and the smallest font I can get away with. I have them copy the pages back to back as this saves paper. I use cheaper binders and high quality diamond clear sheet protectors. My binders do not take that bad of a beating and I get a great deal on them when I buy 50 at a time. The sheet protectors however do get abused so I use the quality ones and they last much longer. By the time I'm ready to reprint I figure the books and sheet protectors are diseased and moldy from drink spills so for hygiene reasons I discard them.

Because I work a full time job and do this as a sideline my time is at a premium, so it's soooo worth having them do all the work. I just go in and pick them up when they are done.

I did some smart shopping and found an office supply distributor that would sell direct to me if I purchased in case lots. Yeah I have to buy 50 binders and 4000 sheet protectors at a time but it saves me a ton of money.

I have considered laminating a front and back covers and purchase a machine that does a spiral bind. We have a few KJ's here that use them and swear by them. Of course you have to invest in the machine...$175 and the binding supplies so on your first reprint you will have to eat that cost but from that point on it would be a money saver.

There are several KJ's here that have gone to Laptop Kiosks for looking up their songs. They have no books. Just slips. One fellow is 100% digital so you can enter the song into the Kiosk and it relays your song to the main hosting computer and it enters you into the rotation so No Books and No Song Slips. His initial investment was like $500 for a couple of used laptop slave computers 486's will work fine (with anti theft cables of course) and the network cards and software. Basically the cost of printing books once maybe twice.

Hope some of this info helps.

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FlipSide Karaoke
Scott

Kiosk!  Use junk computers for kiosks!  Singers like them better than books, updating is free.  You still have to have some books but you can get away with less than half the number.

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Okay, who took my pants?

mnmbmn,mn

To cut cost on your books
#1) smaller Font
#2) Print two sides on 1 page
#3) Skip the plastic protectors and have the pages BOUND its inexpensive and the despite what you think the books will last without the pages protectors ..NOT FOREVER but for 6 months until your next printing

I hate to keep harping on this but so many people resist the idea of kiosks just because they are afraid of the unknown.  A book will cost at least $25.00 and that's about what you pay for a junk computer.  A computer weighs about the same as 5 books and it does the work of 5+ books.  I don't know of anyone who has given kiosks a serious try that isn't still using them.  If there are such people here please speak up.  No printing, instant updating, no slips, no entering into rotation.  I've had lots of beer spilled on mine but they keep going.  Customer's love them because the search is faster and they don't have to write anything down.

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Okay, who took my pants?

That is my approach. I have a small collection since I am amateur (6700 songs, 4800 unique) but I print up books that are artist *and* title -- flip it over to get the opposite type -- and have them "perfect-bound". They have color cover pages, clear plastic covers, and look more professional than 98% of the KJ books I have seen. They cost me less than $14 apiece printed only 8 at a time.

I don't agree with the books lasting without the page protectors, but that's the wonderful thing about opinions... everyone has them.

I've dealt with books that don't have them, and ones that do... prefer the ones that do!

It all depends on your gig also.  If you have a gig were everyone is drunk and spilling  beer all over the place and mishandling books page protectors will help
preserve them a LITTLE.  

But if you are going to REDO your books every 6 months I was SURPRISED how well they do hold up without them.   I would suggest to have at least 1 book made without and bound as a TRIAL.  They will save you money in the long run.

It all depends on your gig also.  If you have a gig were everyone is drunk and spilling  beer all over the place and mishandling books page protectors will help
preserve them a LITTLE.  

But if you are going to REDO your books every 6 months I was SURPRISED how well they do hold up without them.   I would suggest to have at least 1 book made without and bound as a TRIAL.  They will save you money in the long run.

,mn,mn,mn

Have to agree with ExWeedFarmer (as painful as that is)...

I haven't used a printed book in a bar gig for almost 4 years now. Started out with kiosks that printed slips to a wireless kiosk and now working on a "touchscreen" version.

We have 4 gigs where we leave them there and don't move them at all, we just shut 'em down and cover 'em with a black cloth.

And he's also right that you can just use junk computers. The ones we use are win '98 machines with 3gb (yep just THREE gig) drives.

No binders, slips, pencils, sleeves and update in a flash...

We GIVE AWAY BOOKS... in the form of a "pocket cdr" as adobe PDF files. Since the discs are only 14 cents (at MicroCenter) each in packs of 100.

I just want to mention that the lighting in a bar may not be the same as in your office/home.

I made up a preliminary test book with small enough font to read easily at home, but in the darker bar setting it was nearly unusable. Print a test page and see how much you can get away with in terms of reducing font size in your venues before printing up your books.

I am using 14 pt bold fonts now, but different bars have different light levels.

As for the kiosk, yes it may work in some settings but I cant imagine setting them up each night for a weekly gig, or if you travel around sometimes to different venues and or private parties. Sound like a good idea for a bar with karaoke 4+ nights a week but otherwise, why bother.

The cost may be reasonable but you are talking about a lot of wireing and setup. Unless it can be done as semi-perminent it does not sound practical. With speakers etc I already have to make 6 trips back to my truck to cary everything into the bar, 3 kiosk computers could easily double that even if my bar had the counter space.

Ok Weed, it has been brought up enough times now...my curiosity has been awakened (talking about kiosks-of course)
Could you provide or point one in the direction of "kiosks for dummies"
The what, where and how to...so to speak.
Seriously

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Music speaks to the heart in ways words cannot express.

Okay, well first of all I would like to say that Dr. Fred is right in that set up and tear down can be a pain.  You will be setting up one to four extra computers (four I think would be overkill)  I usually only had one at small venues and two at larger spots.  But you are trading extra work at the beginning and end for less work during the show.  Cabling was never a problem and the setup doesn't change from day to day so once you have it all working it's just a matter of turning the machines on and you're good to go.

As for the ABCs of the thing, I can only speak for may software which is no longer on the market because it is an antique.  AutOKdj has something like it but the last time I played with it I was not impressed.  That may have changed however.  

If you're going to use kiosk software I strongly suggest that you get one with a keyboard lockout feature so that the customers can't access anything but the kiosk software.

As for the advantages over books.... that is a matter of opinion but I know by about the third show in the new spot I all but stopped getting slips.  The folks really like the fact that you don't have to write anything down.  One BIG plus is instant updating.  You can't very well reprint your books every time you get a new disk so your books are always out of date.  Not a problem with kiosks.  I personally like it because the whole thing is a no-brainer once it's set up and by the end of the night I was usually a no-brainer too.

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Okay, who took my pants?

pm cstanley... he sells a great kiosc software!

Wireless X-terminals and kiosk software running on your hosting computer. Setup includes plugging them in, and no more.

OK, it doesn't exist yet. But Linux on VMware along with a pretty hefty
hosting PC, and it would be straightforward. Were I to produce systems for
large-venue use, that is what I would do.