I'm in the middle of my Scholastic Book Fair (it's my fourth one) and I still have mixed feelings about Scholastic. I personally feel we make them a lot of money with not much return for us. It's a lousy fundraiser - we don't need the books so we only get to keep 25% in cash - and the number of volunteer hours that go into it is huge in comparison to the amount of money we make. However, the kids and parents love it.
The customer service at Scholastic has gotten much better in the last two years. We are one of the largest fairs in our county so they started sending out a rep to help us set up. She's great. The bad part is that we live near the warehouse and they used to let me in to get whatever I needed myself - now I have to fax in the order form and they almost never have anything I need available for reorder.
We do put out all the junk, but I give a speech to every class telling them that they have to buy a book first before they can buy junk. I also give my rules - no stealing (we had a big problem with shoplifting last year but the kids all got suspended - 15 of them - and now it's not a problem), no using your lunch money, no damaging the merchandise, etc.
We pull out all the stops - family night, donuts for dads mornings, teacher preview luncheon, etc. and the school community loves it, but I still think it's a lot of work for not much return.
We've been using scholastics for at least the last 10 years that I've been with the school. I've never run into problems with them. The rep is sweet and our teachers love the selection of books they send us.
As far as the trinkets, we only put out the book marks & pencils. The rest of the stuff stays in the box. When a child comes up to us with a poster, I'm the mean mother that makes them put it back and get a book! We do a raffle for each class and the winning child does get to pick out a poster(this is provided by scholastics). If the child buys a book and still wants a poster then & only then do I let them get it. When I send my kids to a book fair I expect them to come home with a book not a poster!
For our school this is not a real money maker because with me as president, I feel sorry for the kids that didn't bring in money so I let them pick out a little something and we eat the costs. No child should be without a book!
Backhoed noted the perks...I was not aware that the perks might vary by region. We get awesome perks from Scholastic. Each and every one of our teachers always gets a $25 voucher from Scholastic to buy books for their classrooms.
I also know we get different perks depending on meeting certain criteria. Because I did not chair it I cannot tell you exactly what they were, but we got something for letting the rep come to the school and talk to us and there was something else the Principal had to do that got us some other perk.
Plus as I previously noted they gave us $200 worth of books (our choice) to raffle off on back to school night.
It is sad to find out that some schools are not getting the same benefits.
We partnered with Waldenbooks this year (after many mediocre years with Scholastic) and it was great! Great variety,many price points, very few trinkets.
I saw the post from Usborne and we've worked with them as well. Personally I'm not a fan of that book line. I feel Dorling Kindersley is a much better product with a similar pricing schedule.
Originally posted by Ellen Kish: So...I've seen lots of conversations around the topics of Book Fairs. We continue to use Scholastic each year, but our working relationship seems to get more difficult with each fair...either the timing, or the delivery, etc. IS THERE ANY OTHER "GAME" IN TOWN? DOES ANYONE KNOW OF ANY OTHER COMPANY THAT WILL DO A BOOK FAIR?
We parted company this year with Scholastic and partnered with Waldenbooks. It was terrific. The selection was much better, mimimal trinkets and plenty of bargain books. It was a significant improvement over Scholastic. Good luck! QUOTE]Originally posted by Robin Rene: Hi -
I am a publisher rep and am always in contact with librarians who are so unhappy with the Scholastic book fair program and ask me to please get my co. and one of our publishers to design a book fair.
What ones have you done and what did you like about their program and what did you not like? I could use the input from Parents/PTO/Librarians...
Thanks so much for your help and input.
Robin [/QUOTE]
Originally posted by Robin Rene: Hi -
I am a publisher rep and am always in contact with librarians who are so unhappy with the Scholastic book fair program and ask me to please get my co. and one of our publishers to design a book fair.
What ones have you done and what did you like about their program and what did you not like? I could use the input from Parents/PTO/Librarians...
Thanks so much for your help and input.
Robin
