Some questions about printing & design

A friend of mine recently died. He was self-employed in the publishing business selling reference guides to railroad enthusiasts, which is how we became friends in the first place. I am currently talking with the family to see about keeping his business alive.

Here is my dilemma. I'm an economist by trade. The graphic design shouldn't be too difficult as it's mostly charts and tables. I think I can manage this OK. What I lack, however, is the knowledge of printing to know whether or not I'm getting ripped off. Anybody who is an economics geek like myself gets really annoyed in cases like this.

The reference books are 10.5" tall by 4" wide, saddle-stitched. Forgive me as I don't know my paper weights, but the pages are .004" thick and the cover is .010" according to my trusty calipers. Depending on the release, there would be 8 or 12 pages of color, with the books maxing out at 104 pages because of the saddle-stitching limitations.

He would typically do runs of 1500 copies at a time, paying between $2.50 and $3.00 per copy, for a total of $3500-4500 per press run. Like I said earlier, I have no idea if he was getting ripped off or not. While I'm thinking about it, how much more expensive does perfect binding run?

I could use a brief debriefing on the printing industry. Here are the things I'm curious about:
-How much do prices fluctuate across the USA and around the world?
-Does geographical location (relative to say, pulp and paper production facilities) affect the price of printing?
-In general, is the cost savings achieved from using a distant printing company always offset by the higher shipping costs?

On a completely different subject, why are Apple Macintosh computers so popular in the graphics and printing industries? For my regular job, Apple/Mac products have never been practical and to be honest, I don't like using them at all. Before my friend passed away, we had several friendly debates on this subject because he swore up and down by Mac's. Those were good times.

Anyway, given the situation I've suddenly found myself in, I don't especially want to learn Macintosh stuff all over again. The last Macintosh I used was the SE30 and it broke on me in 1992. It's been 14 years since I last used a Mac. Give me the pros and cons about why I SHOULD use a new Mac. How difficult would it be to take my friend's Adobe Pagemaker/Indesign files (created on a Mac) and transfer them over to a PC assuming I have software for the PC as well? How do most printing companies respond when you present them with files created on a PC?

Thanks for being patient with me. I have a lot to learn.

This is the kind of project that cries out for Lulu.com.

It's cheaper to put color images on a CD than it is to print and bind them.

InDesign files from a Mac will work with a bit of eyeballing and tweaking on InDesign in Windows.

You'll need to check carefully--be aware of things like fonts, etc.

Don't just import it and run to the printer.

And Macs are better

I should note, these "color" pages are not color photographs. They are color maps. I just counted, none of them use more than 10 colors.

There is a reason for the awkward size. I think I mentioned earlier these are reference-type books for railroad enthusiasts. The railroad companies issue materials using the exact size. Part of the appeal is the size because it fits into your back pocket very nicely.