I would think that the sweet spot for publishing anything would be proportional to the size of the press in use. So choosing who you go to will make a difference. I mean, if you have access to a press that is web-fed it will have a lot of play in abilities (though these guys only deal LARGE volumes due to the equipment operation costs), but if you go to a local mom and pop printer that can handle a 17×22 sheet you can still get a better price then say single page printing source.
You talked about page count but not page sizes, which will directly affect the number of pages the press can squeeze into a parent sheet, so you may want to think about that as well since the number of cuts will increase price.

Check this out for some ballparking
http://www.printindustry.com/printing_quote_for...

Additionally, I would recommend talking to a local community college (one that does desktop publishing courses) and see what they can do for you. That is a real world experience that they could use as a teaching tool and I know when I suggested to my teacher to print a homebrew setting book he was thrilled with the idea.

I personally recommend Ventrillo for group conversations. Just my 2 cents on that one.

As someone who hopes to someday publish a game-related work, this is very educational and will probably serve as an excellent 'must read/hear/see' primer on the subject of RPG publishing. Thanks for doing this experiment in transparent publishing.

JJ

I would think that the sweet spot for publishing anything would be proportional to the size of the press in use. So choosing who you go to will make a difference. I mean, if you have access to a press that is web-fed it will have a lot of play in abilities (though these guys only deal LARGE volumes due to the equipment operation costs), but if you go to a local mom and pop printer that can handle a 17×22 sheet you can still get a better price then say single page printing source.
You talked about page count but not page sizes, which will directly affect the number of pages the press can squeeze into a parent sheet, so you may want to think about that as well since the number of cuts will increase price.

Check this out for some ballparking
http://www.printindustry.com/printing_quote_for...

Additionally, I would recommend talking to a local community college (one that does desktop publishing courses) and see what they can do for you. That is a real world experience that they could use as a teaching tool and I know when I suggested to my teacher to print a homebrew setting book he was thrilled with the idea.

I personally recommend Ventrillo for group conversations. Just my 2 cents on that one.

As someone who hopes to someday publish a game-related work, this is very educational and will probably serve as an excellent 'must read/hear/see' primer on the subject of RPG publishing. Thanks for doing this experiment in transparent publishing.

JJ