Quote:
Originally Posted by Lonman
I have to disagree with this. I still use Access for my books, this is all manual entry mind you. Every time I add new songs, I print a list first of what I am adding, then compare to my existing song list, then any duplicates found, I go & compare which version is better and list accordingly either adding the new one & deleting the other, or leaving the old one and not bother with the new one - although I don't purposely buy duplicate songs to begin with if possible - compare what you are buying to what you have before the purchase.
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Walt, I've done the same thing as Lonman, in regard to building my books, even though I use a custom book making program that was built by a personal friend ( engineer/programmer ) who thought he wanted to market it, but later found that there was too much competition, and abandoned the project, but left me with a very good beta program that has served me well in the last 8 or 9 years... what Lonnie and I and most of the old timers that have been in the business for a while, and that are still using book making methods, is that, initially you are going to have to spend some time (many, many hours) getting your book to where you want to print it... I have eliminated 99% of my duplicates, and only print about 4000 of my 14,000 songs in my current book... customers won't want to spend hours pouring over your books to find obscure songs, that maybe only get played once or twice every couple of years... so I have culled out those obscure songs, as well as most duplicates, and my book is a manageable size and weight
... now every time I add new selections, they go to a page in the "New Music Section", at the very end of my books, then about once a year, when I publish a new book, I cull a few more songs that haven't been sung in a long time, and add the songs from the New section. Now more and more, I look up any songs for clients that can't, or won't look in the book to find their song requests...that is why the singers database in Hoster has been one of the most used features in my shows in the last couple of years!
All I'm trying to say is "There Aint No Shortcuts!". Everybody that has a good looking functional song book has spent countless hours getting it to that point, and their customers won't appreciate it anyway! lol
