After being forced to read books for 4 years, now I'm making one....the irony is astounding

Standing in direct contrast appearance wise to Adrian Shaughnessy’s How to be a graphic designer without loosing your soul, is Sara Eisenman’s Building Design Portfolios. With the later looking more like an actual portfolio and Adrian’s book taking the guise of a schematic; still I have to say the consistency Adrian’s design does work and the look of the book begins to grow on you with its minimalist approach.
What captivated me the most about the first reading were the sections on Book format, showing process and proper packaging. Having selected print and print styles as my area of focus, I really gravitated to the idea of making a landscape styled hardcover portfolio. Sara Eisenman actually advised that print format portfolios are still the most effective means for young designers, further encouraging my decision.
Admittedly I am concerned about the leave behind element when it comes to a book portfolio, while certain sites to provide good rates on small quantity publication. I still worry about the cost and time factors involve with giving every interviewer a book. That and it would be tremendous waste if it were to be thrown away. Perhaps including a CD with all the PDF files organized on it would be a more cost effective manner. Another thought I have for a leave behind would be to make t-shirts. A lot of my grunge/layered style designs would lend themselves very well to current clothing styles, a memorable and unique leave behind to include with a PDF CD of my portfolio works.
A brief foray in to book pricing has yielded some promising results for two websites. However I would feel much more comfortable if they would give the paper options, available fonts and cover materials. They do both posses 4-color printing though which is a plus. Curiously enough the pricing actually decreased with multiple book orders as opposed to a one-book print. Perhaps it is more cost effective to print multiple copies then to print a single book and have to reset all the machines involved, I’m speculating on this but it makes sense to me.