Our school does a book fair in February to conincide with parent-teacher conferences as well as a Buy One Get One Free (BOGO) book fair in May. We don't make any money on the BOGO but the kids really benefit from the discounted books. We usually get many popular titles and try to have as many summer reading titles in stock as possible.

You absolutely have to put some effort into it. The Scholastic kits lay out a timeline for when to send letters and the preview flyers, and how to do everything from recruiting volunteers to setting up displays, so that makes it easier, but I put in a lot of hours the week of the fair.

I think some of the great sales figures can be attributed to the fact that all the money we raise(we take our profits in books and vouchers) goes right into the school. We typically do one fair for the media center and one fair for classroom libraries. People like to know exactly where there money is going. Our librarian has even brought the purchases she made with the vouchers to our PTO meetings so parents could see what she was able to buy.

We also did our first ever book giveaway with our fall book fair(an idea I borrowed from here). We used it as a way to kick off our reading program. I thought the giveaway combined with the lower average income status we have this year would mean a drastic reduction in our sales so I was conservative in my estimates and even got corporate donations to help pay for the giveaway, but we were only down $200 over the last fair and with the donor's paying for a portion of the books we actually had a 10% increase! The books seem to be something parents are willing to buy even if times are tough. I also see lots of parents using them as rewards for good grades which is another reason why having the fairs during conferences works so well!

Yes, Scholastic does make it easy with all of their resources--I just logged onto their site to check it all out. It looks fabulous, with so many fun ideas. I'm thinking maybe part of the reason we can't get volunteers is because we haven't actually used any of the resources Scholastic provides. So maybe what's important here is not so much when you have the book fair, but rather that you actually put some work into it?

Our librarians handle our bookfairs. The money is ran through the PTO. At the elementary she tries to have one in the fall and spring. In the fall she likes to try to coincide it with "Fall Into Reading." This past October she made about $1,000 just that night. We are a small school with a low income status. In the spring she likes to hold it around tax check time. March or April. Depends on break and testing and such. She doesn't always get to have one in the spring. She uses Scholastic. I think most of our schools do.

Scholatic makes it a piece of cake to chair a book fair. They give you a great kit with ideas, themes, & how-to's. They also put on book fair workshops. I've done 5 so far & this last one during conferences topped the charts for us. Our librarian asked for the cash profit which ended up over $1000. We more than doubled last yrs. book fair total. They also have an on-line tool section for the chairperson. Scholastic makes it real easy.

Thanks for the feedback here. I love the idea of having book fair at conference times, while parents are already in the building. This year we are having it in conjunction with our winter musical, but not all grades are involved in that so half the parents will still have to make a special trip in. It's also interesting to hear all that goes into putting on a book fair. Our pres makes it sound like there is nothing to it.