I have a spreadsheet with the formulas for calculating costs of printing books at Lightning Source (LSI), CreateSpace, and Lulu. Let me show you the per-book printing cost for each: 300 pages, paperback, 5.5″ × 8.5″ $ 4.80 LSI $ 5.10 CreateSpace Pro Plan $ 7.00 Lulu (publisher grade paper) $10.50 Lulu (standard paper) 650 . . .
[Updated Feb. 13, 2013 & Dec. 10, 2014] When I first answered this question, crowdfunding was still a new idea. (Crowdfunding is when you request donations from lots of people, usually online, and usually the donors/backers receive some type of perk based on the amount of their contribution.) You can get money just by asking . . .
POD is a process: Print On Demand. Any printshop running a digital press — such as a DocuTech, an Indigo, an iGen, a Nuvera — can provide POD services. They print only the quantity you need. There’s no minimum of 500 or 1,000 copies. Kinko’s and AlphaGraphics are POD shops, just as Lightning Source is. . . .