I've puzzled over this recently. I wanted to deprecate the use of books at my shows. Sure, it's a lot of time and trouble to create and maintain song books, and it's much easier to hook up some lappys or wireless devices to use instead. Yes, your patrons may be wowed by the availability of the server interface, *but* some will always be tech-clueless, and unable to handle the change without a lot of fear and resentment.
Also, if I step into a new club, and hear some karaoke going on, my *first* instinct is to grab the book and start browsing, (then begin to smirk at the poor KJ's lack of obscure titles I like to perform, then browse some more for obscure titles he has that I wouldn't mind trying out once or twice) - by going to a book-less environment, I would be robbed of a good part of this pleasure - sure, I could search for my obscure tracks, taking valuable computer time from the next poor regular that actually knows what he wants to sing, but then the browsing portion is mostly trashed.
I really like the idea of keeping a book that *doesn't* list everything - perhaps the top 2-3000 tracks, or perhaps by genre - printing a set of mostly country books if you're performing in a country/western bar, etc. - and leaving the rest to computer searches. That way the patron gets a good idea of what you have, is able to be impressed a bit, and can browse among popular titles, at least, for what he/she may want to sing. The obscurist, like me, can then go to the next step, either ask the KJ or be warned, and find there is a whole lot more available by doing a computer/iPhone search, and be content either way. This will likely be my compromise, as soon as I can wrangle my library down to a reasonable size without lots of duplicates and such.
I think the printed book should contain no duplicates, and only the popular tracks - stuff that actually had Billboard status in the last 20 years, or is in rotation on local radio stations, perhaps - and a few with kitsch value, like The Anniversary Song, regardless of how horrible it is? - This way you have smaller, more manageable books, no concern about updating them, and everyone's happy, hopefully.
So, what do I need kJams to do? create a songbook from a playlist (not just the Library). Simple, hopefully. Until then, I will be doing the create playlist/copy/paste/create .csv/import into my M$ songbook program/fix formatting/print to PDF/take to my local print shop routine.
