We just finished our Scholastic book fair a few weeks ago. We are beyond frustrated with them. We have a small school and they just don't seem to want to work with us because of it.

We have preschoolers at our school and to get them to send us preschoolish books is next to impossible. And I'm not talking board books with words, but possibly David Shannon books & the type.

We get way, way too much "junk". Not just the posters and trinkets, but other stuff. We keep asking them to send less, but they keep sending more and more. We're also getting less and less books.

$4 books, on the other hand, certainly isn't unreasonable. But those fly off the shelves long before half get to see them and we certainly can't get them restocked within our week long fair.

We are definetly in the market to switch book fair companies for our spring bookfair.

Oh, and as far as the teacher wishlists go, we've exhausted what scholastic offers.

I posted up above about last year's fair. We finished ours last week, I co-chaired it. We had great success, grossing $11,000 (we are a small independent school, about 175 families).

We have the big Scholastic fair, this year it was Deluxe Fair Level II. So we have 10 of the fold-out bookcases and 10 tables of books, which is big. We actually prefer to have a good selection of hardcover books because people buy them for christmas presents and they up our profit. Our adult/hardcover selection wasn't as good this year. There were a lot of picture books and paperbacks that were 3.99-4.99. (We put out the junky non-book stuff strategically -- this year we didn't open up the folding bookcase of stuff until after the kids did their wishlists because we didn't want them taking home a list that didn't have books on it.)

We do great with the classroom wish lists. Parents are so generous, every classroom got 10-20 books.

About the restocking problem. We had no trouble with promptness, our UPS guy is good, but there were some things we just couldn't get in stock. For example, the original (not the movie) version of Polar Express -- we got 3-4 copies in the original fair and couldn't get any more. We would have sold a ton. The rep says that one of our problems is that November is the most popular month for fairs, so it is the time that the least things are in the warehouse. But we really like it just before the holidays, and we don't have time to do it in Dec, so we are keeping it.

Oh, depending on where your warehouse it, if it is in driving distance, you can pick up your own restocks. I think you have to give them 4 hours notice, and they'll have it ready for you.

I think it depends a lot on the rep. Ours is very responsive, although clearly some things are out of her control.

I ran our Scholastic book fair last year and the year before, and we had a good experience with the company. Our fair falls into their large category (can't remember what they call that), so we get a wide variety of books. I don't see 3.99 as an unreasonable price at all; people would pay the same price at Barnes & Noble, but this way part of the money goes to the school.

Our PTO does have a program that gives vouchers to needy students, as determined by our administration. (The principal's office gives us the number but distributes the vouchers for us, so we don't see who's on that list & who's not.) Each child with a "PTO Gift Certificate" can choose a book that costs up to $5, and because of Scholastic's profit-in-books policy we only pay half the cost.

I do hate all the trinkets, but my policy was to simply leave that stuff in the boxes. It meant we had an entire case left closed, tucked away with a stack of trinket boxes on top of it, but the kids weren't tempted by the junk and we had that much more room to display books. (We have steadily resisted our rep's offer to "help" us set up the fair, partly for that very reason and partly because we make a good bit of money doing it our way.)

One of my favorite aspects of the fair is the teachers' wish lists, which get a great response from our parents. I was particularly moved this year to notice that one parent, whose child is in a preschool program that targets low-income families, came to the fair and bought two books for her home and four for her child's classroom.

We have been doing Scholatic at our school forever...I have been running the book fari for the past 4 years..2 fairs a year. I want a new company!!!! It gets worse each year!! Tomarrow is my last day of a week long book fair. I recieved 1 reorder of about 30-40 books on Wednesday, 3 pm. I orderd on Friday and Monday over 100 books and posters. My shelves are empty...had to cancel our family night!! I want someone with excellant customer service. Whay ship UPS...they have thier own trucks!!!

Overall scholastic has been good to us. I run the bookfairs at 2 schools and the only problem that we have is that our schools use the accelerated reading program and I like to have the books marked with a tag if they are an AR book with the reading level and points. Scholastic refuses to give us an advance list of books, so I have to run around with my list of AR tests and make the tags during the first day of our fair. So my request would be an advance list, that does not have to be 100% accurate, or somehow tie into the AR lists and give us the level. Troll used to host an AR bookfair, unfortunately they sold the bookfair division to scholastic who will not.
As for the trinkets, don't tell my rep, but after she helps us setup and leaves, I put half of it away.

I was thinking about asking the same question as the one that started this thread. While we do OK with Scolastic, I feel we could be doing better. Every parent, and I stress every parent complained about the number of hardcover books. I would say it was at least half. We had not one 0.99 book; the cheapest ones were around four dollars. Our county is known as being very affluent, but every town in it certainly isn't!

I've the feeling the woman running the bookfair is NOT doing her homework, nor is she being tough enough with them. Even the trinkets were over-priced, and it breaks my heart when I volunteer to see a kid WANT a book, but have to settle with a crappy pencil. I also felt the types of books were too limited--gone were lighter fare I used to love as a child in the early 70's, and STILL to this day own in my collection (things like Ruth Chew Books--The Witch's Buttons, and schmaltzy stories like "Summer Pony"). It was mostly the mainstream fare you see in the bookstores. And I'm sorry, fundraiser or not, it made my blood boil to see "The Order of the Pheonix" in HARDCOVER for the full price! In this day and age with Amazon and Overstock.com, as well as discounted prices at Waldenbooks and Barnes & Noble, I think they're really pushing the limit.

Sorry about the vent session; can you tell I'm just a LITTLE frustrated?