We found Entertainment books to be a no brainer sell. But ran into problems the 2nd year we ran it. The first year we got 500 books up front no paying for them, gave them out at curriculum night that almost every parent attends and told them to look through them and send in a check the if they wanted to purchase or return the book if not. We were told by the rep not to have them sign out the books well we sold a lot and we got books back too... I guess entertainment cushions with a percentage of books that don't get sent back or paid for... our school came out as like only 1 book unaccounted for. All the teachers got a free book too. The following year the rep suggested sending a book home with every student and an order form for outside orders... well parents did not like this idea at all... felt it too pushy and kids actually were saying "mom you have to buy it it's mine..."
We had many left over so the rep said keep them and give them away for free at our spring family fun but only to those who sign up to pay for one in the fall.
I sold Entertainment books with my son's boy scout troop unsuccessfully. For the amount of effort I put into it, the profit was marginal. However, the book has changed - at least in our area. The cost has gone down from $30 to $20 and the profit has gone way up to $12. per book! Also, every student that sells 5 books gets one free and all teachers that help out will also get a free one.
I'm sure this was because of the direct competition in our area with Kidstuff books that had the same profit as stated above. We decided to run with both books this fall and let parents decide which one they like better. Should be interesting.
We have sold Entertainment Books for the past several years. We used to sell the small ones, but swithced to the larger book ($20) two years ago and our profit has improved. More people want the bigger book. We make $7 per book, there are no upfront costs, they credit us back for any not returned by the students (we sent one book home with each kid with the order form) and each teacher gets a free book as well. It's been an easy fundraiser that we do in Sept each year. The one drawback is it is a lot of work for the person running it. The order forms, letters and books all come packaged separately so it needs to be put together and they you need to keep on top of the kids to get those who don't try and sell to return theirs. My wife and I handled the books last year for the school, and it was probably a total of 12-15 hours over the 3-4 weeks. It's worth it.
We just did this as a council fundraiser and although I love the book, it was harder to sell than I could imagine. We tried one box and sold 6 books. The amount that you get from selling them is also very low. Only $4.00 of every book sold, not even 25%. that didn't matter so much to us because it was just council and we were raising money to scholarship other units (our expected income comes from dues)for a few things but that's a pretty low percentage.
