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Never had any shadowing but then I get them printed at a professional printer but it's still standard 20# paper. If you are doing it yourself, don't print it on an inkjet - then you might get some bleedthrough, but a laser printer shouldn't.

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Lonman snip~~

Ya, we do print them ourselves.. and yes, with an InkJet. That's why we've stayed away from the double-sided option. I've never considered what it might save overall to have it professionally double-side printed ... AND duplicated. I'll check into it.

I'll be interested to see if it would, in fact.. save us some $. Thanks very much, Lonman, for that "food for thought".

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With the cost of laser printers these days, it might be worth it. I just bought a color laser for $400 new. 23 pages per minute B & W, 8 pages per minute in color. I am getting the duplex unit (so I can print double sided at home) for it next month which will add another $300. When I get them professionall printed next time it is going to cost me approx. $270 for 15 books. That is a give or take, sometimes they run a special & I try to get in when they do that they'll do double sided for the price of single - which will cut that price in half. Once I own all my stuff for the printer, it will take the cost of the paper & a new ink cartridge & i'll be able to do a complete reprint - double sided for about $100 or less. It will pretty much pay for itself after a couple of reprints & at that cost, I may be able to do it at least 2 times per year instead of 1.

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Shotgun ,
You should try printing (1) book double sided without sheet protectors
and have it bound. See how it looks and test how it holds up at your gigs.

I'm sure sooner or later I'll have one of those rowdy nights were beer gets spilled on EVERYTHING . But so far I've been lucky

Shotgun ,
You should try printing (1) book double sided without sheet protectors
and have it bound. See how it looks and test how it holds up at your gigs.

I'm sure sooner or later I'll have one of those rowdy nights were beer gets spilled on EVERYTHING . But so far I've been lucky

I'm actually very lucky with my books. My brother works for a printing company and he make me new books twice a year for free. I print the updates at home with a laser printer I picked up for $200 and they look great. Gotta love hook ups save ya a bundle.

Inkjets will bleed and have other problems because you're using a liquid ink. Lasers are actually a melted powdered plastic that's been 'fused' onto the page.

They make a paper designed for damp environments that makes the books last much longer that are also nearly tear proof. A place here locally uses it and I'll see if I can find out more.

I have come to the conclusion that there's NO EASY way to make/maintain the books. I just eat it up and do it with Excel. But at over 30k songs and even double printed on my (new) laserprinter that supports back-to-back (duplex) printing, the cost is still high, being over 700 pages, even Kinko's binders are not large enough for binding anymore.

it takes me about 15 hours to finish my books, which I upgrade about every 2-3 months, since I add about 30-60 CD's in that amount of time.

some day, I'll be able to to make it easier. I'm in the process of reducing to single listings... will continue to have multiple versions of the songs, but unless someone asks, I will select the "best (according to me)" version for them. Hopefully that will drop things down to a more manageable 15k titles and books that are not a royal PITA to print.

$0.02

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One possibility is when you get to dealing with that many songs list the best but also list the alternative manufacturers you have the same song from. Regulars will know what to do - new people will just list the one you put down.

If you were digital you could list artist, song title and manufacturer - sort the ripped music by artist or song title and then drop in the manufacturer code they selected.

Now if they'd come up with a way to add the songs automatically from computers on the tables - now THAT would be nice.... if they wouldn't get beer in them or stolen.

some things i have learned in my time:
- buy your own laser printer... apprx 2500 sheets per toner cart. not counting the cost of the printer, i figgured about 3 to 4 cents per sheet
- buy paper on sale and by the case. you need at least a 84 brightness and 24# paper for being able to print on both sides; or you will see image bleed-thru
- at $20 for 5000 sheets of paper, you really do not save lots of money by duplexing... YOU DO SAVE weight though and thickness; but add in some extra work
- offer to print other's books, easy way to make some easy money


FYI: if you use the printer for your business, you can take the cost off your taxes (if you use it for personal, you have to only take a % of the cost off)

Type Size:
- print sample pages (first page of sort) in various sizes, write on the corner of the page with the font size
- take the samples to the bar and have the patons vote on the size they like...
- my research is that 11 is good, 10 is pushing it, and 9 is not readable by most, 8 forget it!!... so 10pt is the popular size

I went from access to KJPro (which runs on Access back end), and print with 2 column format

You can set Access up to do that as well. That's how I do my artist page.

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One other point of advice. New laser toner cartridges are expensive as heck, but most of them can be refilled multiple times pretty cheaply. A new cartridge for my laser printer costs about $75 at Staples. I can order 4 refills from a seller on ebay for about $35 total.