Have you published a book?

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Alright dudes and dudettes...

I want to know if you've published a book. If so, are there any tips you can give me: good and bad experiences, agents and publishers to avoid etc.
Also if you have self-published (print on demand) what were the costs?

I appreciate any tips. I've got a manuscript here (of a forensic flavour) that is about 70% done. One way or another it is going to result in a publication of about 500 pages.
And like any new 'parent' I want only the best for my kid  ;-)

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@ Blobzie:

That's good advice for a work of fiction, yes.
However this is non-fiction, based on research that I have already completed. The ethics, X-ray and trauma clearances are all filed in my name.

You've just made me think of something: Edited (asked in PM)

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@ Gadget

Thanks for the link.

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@ T-Bone

Thanks, man, that is exactly the sort of thing I'm wanting to find out. A lot of the straight printing services seem to have software that runs your text through an automated reformatter and there is very little human formatting going on. That's also the disadvantage of some of the print-on-demand services. I might have to shell out more to avoid problems like that. So far the online research I have done says that I can submit electronic texts in Word format (although there is a large variety of requirements, such as whether captions appear in the text or sequentially in a stand-alone file). The images I have in PSD format, unflattened (in case they don't like the label font or size). I am not worried about those images because I can just run them through a batch convert if there is a format issue). What I am worried about is if they want to reduce colours, convert some isolated pics to B&W, over-edit the text so it loses its spirit or cut corners in some other ways. I suppose what it amounts to is I'll have to pay a lot for flexibility and getting it how I want it.