How much more does it cost, on say a 400 page book, to add 1 color to a b/w print job? I know this is on a company by company basis, but is there an average? It seems like adding just one color for titles and high lights would make the ease of reading and reference a lot greater. Especially for complicated maps.

Most printers will be glad to give you a quote for spot color.  There's no way to offer estimates without more information, and once you have all the specifics ironed out, you might as well go directly to asking for quotes - I don't know of any rule of thumb for how spot color increases costs.  I agree that it can really make your pages look more appealing - I'm definitely going this route for a future product. 

Oh!  I should add that some print on demand vendors (I'm thinking Lulu here) don't do spot color - it is black and white or it is CMYK color, and even a single color page requires the entire product to be costed as color and printed on their color press.  So if you go that route, you might as well make your product as vibrantly colorful as you like, because you'll be paying through the nose for it anyway. 

Publisher's Graphics did spot color for me when I printed Thou Art But A Warrior, and their pricing was pretty competitive. I believe Guild of Blades might also do spot color as well.

We do. But...

It only works one of two ways, depending on the structure of your book. For instances, a cluster of a few pages of colors is easy enough. But color interspersed throughout the book requires that the files be specifically designed so that each page has its own accurate color profile. That seems a bit tricky to achieve with certain softwares.

That being said, spot color and 2 colors are very different things. 2 colors is say, using black and red, but non of blue or yellow. This is something only offset presses can effectively do. Well, we "can" do it, but cost wise 2 color, 3 color, they are exactly the same as 4 color.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.guildofblades.com/retailgroup.php
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com

I'll just point out a bit of advice, as it's germane (if not quite related to the OP).

Don't forget that, if you do spot-color offset printing that you can do percentages of saturation of that color as well. So you can not only do full saturation of the specific color (e.g. Pantone PMS 208 red), but you can also get pinkish colors out of the same spot color using percentages (say, 20% up to about 60%). Thus, by consistently using 100% and one or two other percentages, you can have a range of consistent highlighting (or, for instance, bounding box backgrounds) for the same price as just using spot color. It should have no impact on the cost ot burn your plates (and might even mean a bit less ink use, if volume of ink use is factored into your price).

HTH;
David

David wrote:
I'll just point out a bit of advice, as it's germane (if not quite related to the OP).

Don't forget that, if you do spot-color offset printing that you can do percentages of saturation of that color as well. So you can not only do full saturation of the specific color (e.g. Pantone PMS 208 red), but you can also get pinkish colors out of the same spot color using percentages (say, 20% up to about 60%). Thus, by consistently using 100% and one or two other percentages, you can have a range of consistent highlighting (or, for instance, bounding box backgrounds) for the same price as just using spot color. It should have no impact on the cost ot burn your plates (and might even mean a bit less ink use, if volume of ink use is factored into your price).

HTH;
David