Doses anyone have any advice?
Download a "standard" test image, have it printed at whichever print shop you will be using. That will provide a reference to work with. Of course for those who do their own printing the test image provides a standard to adjust their printer against too.
With a "standard" print you can view it in the appropriate light (i.e., wherever it is your eventual product will be viewed, whether that is idea or not) and see how you will want it to appear when displayed on your monitor.
Here is the test image I've used for many years: http://digitaldog.net/files/Printer%20Test%20file.jpg
Here is another very good image, Note that it can be downloaded as a 40Mb TIFF file, down at the bottom of this page: http://www.outbackphoto.com/printinginsights/pi048/essay.html
And best of all about that image, here is a detailed essay on how to use it: http://www.outbackphoto.com/printinginsights/pi049/essay.html
Whether you use a commacial print lab and just want a reference for what they produce, or for use with your own printer, eventually the test image provides a standard against which the monitor display is configured during calibration. Brightness, gamma (contrast), and color temperature parameters are set to provide a match between the monitor's display and the paper print.
And, incidentally there are people who find anything from 80 to 160 cd/m correct for brightness (it depends mostly on the ambient light at your monitor's location), anything from 4500K to at least 6500K for color temperature, and anything from less that 1.8 to more than 2.5 for gamma. I suspect that those last two vary mostly with the color under which the print is viewed and the intensity of the light for gamma.
Another point to note is that there are people here on Lula who get pretty hot about this topic and tend to be a bit nasty about it too. They probably should be ignored on this any any other topic too...
Here is another well written authoritative discussion of this topic, with good perspective. It is written by Jim Perkins, a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/symbiartic/2012/01/17/how-to-calibrate-your-monitor/