Book Money
Published in the Desert Valley Times
June 7, 2005
Like most writers, I have fantasized regularly about publishing that “Great American Novel” and being swept away on the tides of outrageous fortunes.
Lowering my sights a little, lately I’ve been toying with the idea of putting together a compendium of old articles into a bound form and selling them at gas stations and restaurants.
Now, with school drawing to a close, my eyes have been opened.
Heck with traditional publishing.
It’s too much like work, and the payoff is hardly worth the effort.
I’m going into the yearbook business.
All you have to do is take a bunch of pictures, spend 15 minutes on witty captions, slap it together with some paste and a pretty cover, and you’re on your way to Bill Gates land.
I say that because our local high school is charging students $120 for this year’s edition of the yearbook.
Stephen King’s latest book, “The Dark Tower,” is selling for $35.
That’s $85 less than the VVHS yearbook.
To be honest, I’ve never seen the yearbook on the New York Times Best Seller List.
(Personally, I think that’s a significant slight, considering the tome is filled with such brilliant literary bon mots as “Sally and Tammy fooling around in the cafeteria.”)
And yet we’re expecting kids (which, like most things, really means “parents”) to pony up $120 for this collection of high school hijinks.
Some folks think this is less about selling books and more about holding high school memories hostage.
Even worse than the fact that it’s three times more expensive than one of the most pricey productions ever produced by an internationally best-selling author, you can’t get the discounted model of the yearbook at Amazon.com or Books-A-Million.
To be fair, kids could have gotten the book for $60 if they had been willing to pre-order back in the fall, much like the $17.99 price you can secure now if you pre-order Harry Potter’s latest adventure at Amazon, which will be $29.99 if you wait until it’s actually been finished, published, and printed.
Can you imagine buying a house using this method?
Where someone requires you to pay $300,000 for a house that’s not even built yet?
(Wait, this is Mesquite…that actually happens here. Sorry, my bad.)
But even at $60, that’s a pretty big number for such a slim book, still nearly twice as expensive as the 672-page Potter tale.
And J.K. Rowling’s sixth book doesn’t contain a single advertisement for such local establishments as Wally Burgers or Fred and Barney’s Real Estate which fills the back pages of our yearbook.
I’m sure it’s not really the school’s fault, since they are most likely the victims of confiscatory pricing by the manufacturer.
(Although it’s ironic that the school apparently has to pay more for a collection of cheesy photos than they pay for 12th grade Calculus text books).
And I’m sure the finished product has to price out at double the original cost to make up for any leftover books that don’t sell.
After all, it’s not like there’ll be a booming E-bay market for 2005 VVHS yearbooks.
But it just seems an unfair burden on either end of the school year, whether folks have to find another $60 in September after selling their blood in order to afford the back-to-school clothes, back-to-school supplies, and that ever-important back-to-school IPod, or they need to come up with an extra $120 after funding their kid’s high school ring, graduation garb, graduation announcements, senior trip expenses, SAT tests, and party supplies for the end-of-school bash in third period geometry class.
I don’t even want to imagine the horror for some of our local families with three or four kids in high school.
What do they do, buy one yearbook, then parcel out the pages?
“Tommy, you can have it on Monday, and your friends can sign pages 18-23. Janie, Tuesday is your day, pages 24-29…”
So next spring, look for my new book, “The 2006 VVHS Budget Discount Yearbook.”
And I’ll only charge $34.
After all, who do I think I am, Stephen King?
posted by Workman Chronicles at 7:30 AM
7 Comments:
Yearbooks and Diplomas have 2 things in common, they both mean a lot when they are new, and very little when they are old. ;~D
Actually, I didn't get one either of the two years I lived in Florida. Something that kind of bothers me today. So I guess yearbooks and diplomas have one more thing in common....
They don't mean anything, unless you never got one.
11:49 AM
The meanings of our high school yearbooks are "priceless."
But are they worth $120? Does that sound fair? Would you pay it?
*Morris
7:37 PM
Morris,
All year I have read, enjoyed, and clipped your articles about my sons accomplishments in baseball this year. Now I am sad to say you have seriously marred my perception of your views.
I am concerned by your lack of regard for the feelings of those students and teachers who worked and fretted over the production and progress of the yearbook all year. I could not decide if you were more upset by the price or the "lack of quality". I cannot honestly believe you think the students "take a bunch of pictures, slap it together with some paste and a pretty cover". I am sure that your intent was not to crush the enthusiasm of those staff members who spent countless hours working on the book. But I can assure you that is what you have done.
I agree with you about the price of the book, so if the over priced book was your main concern, great. It did not come off that way and I fear you have offended the staff. Your opinion is highly visible as well as influentail. I would hope your apology to those who have worked so hard would be forthcoming.
Thanks
8:44 PM
Apologize for telling the truth.
Why, He's is right. Do not waver in your ability to tell the truth Mr. Workman even if it is ugly People have the right to hear!
It is wrong to deprive any child of his or her school memories because of the all mighty BUCK.
You Kellee, unfortunately you seem to have the all too infamous Parenting disease, IF MY BABY WAS INVOVLED...
This is a very common condition, I am guilty of the same problem myself on occasion.
But PLEASE lets not lose sight of what this article was talking about, I do not feel like Mr. Workman was trying to attack or offend any children in the writing of this article.
It is so obivous to me that he is concerned for kids and parents who are at the mercy of this insensitive school system. (And folks just because you take this kind of treatment don’t make it right.)
How can you blast Mr. Workman when he is only sticking up for the numerous kids and families who have been deprived! Not to mention the fact that all year long He is out there writing and supportive of the children with their Sports triumphs and trials.
Try to see the BIG picture, I am sure the kids put a lot of work into this project and I can imagine it is a Beautiful Yearbook, one that some children will never get to enjoy! You want to be mad and point fingers and accuse someone, place the anger where it belongs. Find out how many Yearbooks your school honestly got stuck with because of their GREED!
12:24 AM
Kellee,
I can't believe how badly this has been misunderstood.
What kind of monster would you take me to be, that I would attack or insult hard-working yearbook kids?
The point of the article, 100%, was the OUTRAGEOUS price for the yearbook.
Can you tell me that you don't see how unreasonable this price is?
The remarks about the "15 minutes of captions..." I know the kids worked hard on this. It's actually a big part of my point, the fact that the entire thing was put together by students, and yet some dastardly book binder wants to abuse the school for the yearbook price. The kids did all the work, FOR FREE, and the book binding company makes all the money.
Obviously, I'm not hammering the quality of the yearbook. It was well put together, color on every page. How could anyone argue with the quality?
But it was not worth $120.
And if the quality warranted even $60, we need to look at dialing down the quality.
Finally...
To any of the yearbook staff who might have been offended, to you and to you alone I apologize. I will not back down to school staff or officials, who have robbed a number of kids the opportunity to have a book of memories.
I guess this is the bane of anyone who dares to try and help and defend children. While I am sensitive to the 10 or 15 kids in yearbook class, my intent was to speak on behalf of the 50 or 60 who were not able to get a yearbook this year because of the exhorbitant price.
If I'm wrong for trying to help kids who don't come from wealthy families, then I will gladly be wrong.
*Morris Workman
12:31 AM
Mr. Workman
I am a member of the VVHS yearbook staff. In your article you have over or under emphasized different pieces of information to sensationalize your story. I would like to draw attention to some of the things that you may not have stated very clearly.
First off: Yearbooks are offered at the beginnining of every year in nearly every high school across America at the lowest possible price. This must be done so that the the contract can be negotiated for the proper number of books. Extra books are only purchased here as a courtesy to the students who will have inevetably neglected to place their order. Many high schools do not even offer books for sale at the end of the year.
Second: It is the students responsibility to claim their year book for $60 within the several month period it is offered. The after-the-fact price is always $120. I would also like to point out that even the yearbook members pay full price for their books.
Third: The yearbooks cost the school $65 a piece; the school sells them for $60. It is the adds at the back of each yearbook that make up the difference between what the yearbook fund pays and what it recieves.
Fourth: At no time does any school official or teacher profit from the sale or production of yearbooks. Any excess money made in the sale of books, there rarely is any, is immediately recycled back into the yearbook fund. Students' initiative and yearbook fundraisers, not sales, pay for YearBook camp, and generally make the final payments for the yearbook's production.
Thank you for listening. In the future I would ask that you more factually present your stories and that you take care to not misrepresent your intent in writing.
12:18 PM
Yearbooker,
Thank your for presenting your position on the issue of yearbooks.
I'm particularly grateful that, unlike some others on this issue, you didn't accuse me of bashing the yearbook staff or insulting the students.
Your points are well taken. You are right, students are given the opportunity to purchase yearbooks at the beginning of the year for $60. I stated this in the column.
To offer the extra books as a "courtesy" at the end of the year for $120 isn't really so courteous, from my perspective. I also think it's a little arrogant to claim that some students have "inevitably neglected to place their order."
When you get into the real world, you will find that money doesn't magically appear at exactly the moment it is needed, the way it seems to on TV or in movies. Also...how about those students who moved here after the deadline?
But again, we're quibbling over semantics.
The reality is that, even if it's the standard, the tradition, or the way it's always been done, $120 is just too much money for a high school yearbook.
I have a copy of the yearbook. You did a tremendous job on it. I'm particularly impressed with the way you included everyone's name in the front and back binding, and the great selection of pictures from nearly every activity throughout the school year. And I will say it publicly right here and now, your staff takes much better pictures than I do. You are to be commended and applauded.
But I'm sorry, 'booker, I still maintain that as wonderful as it was, it still wasn't fair to charge $120 to obtain one.
It's funny the things I get accused of when someone dislikes something I've written. Nowhere in my diatribe did I intimate that any teacher or school official profited from the exhorbitant price of the book. If I believed that, the story would not have had a light tone.
I understand that any profits from the yearbook are plowed into the fund for next year's production. Again, I never hinted anything to the contrary.
To this point, I've been quite appreciative of your missive.
However, here we depart.
I'm offended that a student, someone new to the real world and a member of a school that I have been extremely supportive of over the last year, would deign to show disrespect by claiming that I have skewed facts. Every word of the article, except for the tongue-in-cheek claim of requiring only 15 minutes and some paste to make a yearbook, is fact. Which fact do you believe to be in error? The fact that the yearbook costs three times as much as a Stephen King book? The fact that the same yearbook that some students bought for $60 is the exact same yearbook being sold for double the price now? The fact that families who couldn't manage to scrape up the $60 six months ago are getting hosed two weeks before graduation? These aren't opinions, they are fact.
But your most offensive statement is the claim that I misrepresented my intent. It's tiresome to have people repeatedly claim I've done something misleading when my opinion doesn't jibe with theirs. It's insulting to have somebody claim that my facts are in error when the truth is they just don't agree with my findings.
My primary intent is to entertain. Workman Chronicles is an op-ed column, not a news story. If you're not sure of the difference, ask your journalism teacher, Mrs. Bennett. Or, pick up a copy of The Spectrum. At the bottom of the Editorial page is a column by Argus Hamilton. In today's column, Argus mentions that Russell Crowe could become a U.N. Ambassador, that the Bible should reflect that Texas was built in six days, and that Lyndon Johnson was only a theory. He doesn't believe any of those things and doesn't expect you to believe them, any more than I expect you to believe I can put together 114 pages of yearbook captions in 15 minutes. The statements are made to make an entertaining point.
My second intent was to make you laugh. Obviously, I missed the mark with you and some members of the yearbook staff and especially the parents. Even Dave Berry doesn't hit the mark every time.
And my third and most specific intent was to underscore the fact that $120 is too much for a high school yearbook, and to do it in a lighthearted way instead of producing a two-paragraph column (my editor would hate that) which basically said that $120 is too much for a high school yearbook (a real page-turner, eh?).
None of the arguments I've heard from you or others has changed my opinion, and probably not the opinion of most of the kids who will not have a chance to enjoy your hard work this year because they couldn't afford a yearbook.
If my intent wasn't to shine the klieg light on an unreasonable price, what WAS my intent, as you see it? To give the newest Harry Potter book a free plug? To pick on yearbook students? To put the school in a bad light?
I wish we could simply say that we agree to disagree, instead of trying to spatter my professionalism with accusations of lies and misdirection. Like most adults, I see it as the height of arrogance for a teenager to proclaim that they know everything while those of us who have actually been on the planet for more than 15 minutes know nothing. I probably find it more frustrating than anyone because I know I was exactly the same way at your age. (What I wouldn't give to go back to that golden age of 18, back when I was convinced that I knew everything.)
Now, that said, let me tell you this:
I respect the fact that you bothered to go online and write to me with your opinion. It takes courage to stand up and write what you believe. I know, because I get hammered for it on nearly a daily basis. And it's not sucking up to tell you that your post was coherent, well thought out, concise, and extremely well written.
I respect you enough to tell you that your points were factual, not just emotional.
Your spelling and grammar are above average.
I admire and applaud your efforts on the yearbook, and the fact that you care about how it is received. Too often in other newspapers, all we hear about is the bad stuff that kids are doing today. You and your classmates are proof that there are still good, ambitious, hard-working students out there, and the world is going to be in terrific hands after the current crop of adults are finished messing it up.
You were polite enough to say "Thank You" at the end of it, (although you still tried to take a shot after the "Thank You").
And you managed to keep my mother out of this, which I always appreciate.
I respect you as a person. I respect you as a student. And I respect your opinion, even if I don't necessarily agree with it. (I'm not exactly sure...are you saying that you believe that people should be charged $120 for the yearbook?) Some day, I hope to be able to win your respect, which I obviously don't have at this time. But I won't sacrifice my beliefs that people who aren't blessed with lots of money should not be overcharged for things, or that powerless kids at a boxing gym should not be tossed aside because they don't fit in with the visions of a city official, or that it's not okay for school district officials to lie to our community about baseball lights. In other words, I'm not willing to sit down and shut up just because my beliefs aren't popular and writing about them isn't easy.
*Morris Workman
11:04 PM
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