Hi. I do the yearbook (all by myself!!) for our very small (170 students) K-8 school. I use Lifetouch. We do a 32 page b/w book with 2 page color center spread of the entire student body. This year, as it's our 100th year anniversary, we'll also be holding a contest for cover design.

I charge enough to try and cover the cost of the book itself. Last year, I got by with $13.00 per book. To cover the cost of the center color spread, I sold "messages" for $1.00 a piece. They covered the last two pages of the book and I got so many that I had to use continuous type and a teeny, tiny font. To fill in any margins or spaces on those pages, I used left over pictures of the kids faces and glued them all over the message pages. . . no matter how small the picture was. Anyhow, selling the messages covered the color photo page. This year, I'll probably have to go with $13.50 to cover the cost of the special cover.

I hold an earlybird sale in March with a drawing for a free book. Then another sale the last few weeks of school.

Something I did with last year's book that everyone loved was I had each student write their name on a peice of white paper with two different sized black permanent Sharpies. I cut those out and pasted them all over their class page. That way, we got everyones "autograph". I used the two different sized markers just to give a little contrast.

How soon do you start selling your yearbook in the year? If you sell advertising, how soon do you start and what do you charge per ad?

Does your PTO fund your yearbook, or is it self supporting with sales?

I'm in sticker shock right now on yearbook prices and have a very limited PTO budget to fund it, and parents which are exhausted from fundraising
(3 fundraisers in 2 months). Tia, Kate