Hmm… There was a 30% off sale and I bought 25 copies for $210 CAD. In USD at that time (Sept. 2015), I think that came out to about $160, so $6.40/calendar. They were 26-page, spiral-bound calendars with bleeds, 80# glossy cover, and 28/70# laser white smooth inside paper. Without bleeds is less expensive (but you get a white fringe on each page), and staple-bound is also slightly cheaper. A lighter weight paper can cut the price, too. If I had done staple-bound, without bleeds, and a light weight paper, I could possibly have bought 25 copies for as little as $3.69/calendar. (The more copies you do, the less it costs per copy.) Docucopies appears to have sales pretty frequently, but you have watch for them. When I was trying to get my calendar printed, it seemed as though they had 30% off every Wednesday. I once saw a sale of 50% off, but I hadn’t even started creating my calendar at that point, so I couldn’t take advantage of it. 🙁
Oh, and there’s the shipping on top of that price. At the time I had my calendars printed, there was free shipping to continental USA on orders over $100. I had mine shipped to some American friends who held it until I could get down for a visit. If you want a hard copy proof, there is additional fee for that as well.
If you can’t get a sale at Docucopies; if you’re only printing in small quantities, i.e. ~55 copies or less; and if what you want is a “James Staddon quality” calendar (and you’re happy to go with a template design), you’re best off ordering through Lenspiration. (Just had to advertise a little to support Lenspiration! 🙂 )
I designed my calendar myself, so I didn’t have to pay for that service. As for tips on designing a calendar, I can’t really say a lot. I just looked at other calendars (I have a collection of a couple dozen or so), got ideas, and tried it. Last year I did the entire project on Corel Photo Paint 8. I virtually didn’t know the program when I started and just figured it out as I went along. (And spent a lot of time waiting for the computer to load my huge files!) This year I’m using Scribus, Inkscape, and probably GIMP since our version of Corel is so old it doesn’t have the functionalities I want. Again, I’m learning as I go. It’s a lot of fun! 🙂