Definitely use a real book printer!
I haven’t gotten my book to the printing stage yet, but agree with JFBookman's comment that you need a real book printer. I don’t agree with FocusOnEnergy's suggestion to use a local print shop that mostly does flyers and business cards. A real book printer has huge, efficient presses and buys book paper in vast quantities, which cuts costs substantially. A real book printer can offer you a wide variety of book sizes. A real book printer has high-speed binding machines on the premises, can generally offer multiple binding types, and can tell you the pros-and-cons of each binding type. Your local print shop can’t offer any of this.
I also find it hard to believe FocusOnEnergy's statement that newspaper publishers print many books. Advertising flyers, sure, but books, no. The paper size and type is totally different with books, and I don’t see how a newspaper printer would sew signatures and attach bindings.
As for FocusOnEnergy's claim that a writer should be near their printer, this doesn’t fit with how the book industry works. The publishers are mostly in New York City. The printers are mostly in the Midwest (especially where I live, Ann Arbor.) If the big New York publishers send their books hundreds of miles away to be printed, we writers can, too.
Another factor is book storage and order fulfillment. Here in Ann Arbor, some of the book printers offer storage, and there are several book storage and fulfillment companies within a few miles of the book printers. A local printer can’t offer that, either.
Definitely use a real book printer!