I looked at Usbourne, and love their books, but they are just too expensive

WOW! Your Scholastic book fairs must be WAY different than ours. The books that we get at our Scholastic book fair are AT LEAST $4, and many of them are $8+. One of the biggest complaints is that the books that our children can get for $1.95 through the monthly order form are charged $4.95 at the book fair.

I can't speak for your school, but as far as our school is concerned, Usborne's prices are very comparable to Scholastic.

Hopefully, None of us have tried to talk anyone into using Scholastic. Only ideas and suggestions to maybe rectifiy a problem.

I have found this thread very informative on the pros and cons of using one or another (eventhough one seems to have a hold on the market) for a book fair

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I don't want to try to talk anyone into staying with Scholastic if they'd rather go with another company (particularly if it's a local one; I'm big on supporting locally owned bookstores as an endangered species!), but I did notice something in reading over this thread. If you use Scholastic and they are not providing you with titles you want or with hardcover books, by all means request them. Every year before our bookfair our librarian gives us a list of the Virginia Young Readers titles for that year and we pass them along as requested titles, and we ALWAYS get them in stock. We also always get a good assortment of hardcover editions, many of which are the ones teachers and the librarian include on their "Wish Lists."

I have learned through this website that Scholastic's treatment of its customers varies wildly from location to location, but it might be helpful to some people to know what's possible in other locales, just to know it's perfectly reasonable to jump on your rep and others at the company if you aren't getting that level of service. Don't let them get away with telling you that filling those requests just isn't workable.

Also, our PTO gives "vouchers" for the bookfair to all the free & reduced lunch students at our school (through a ridiculously convoluted process intended to protect their privacy). They are printed by our chairperson to look like $5 gift certificates and can be used only for BOOKS, not merchandise. This allows each of those kids to choose a book for themselves, while the PTO picks up the tab. We keep track of the amount spent through the vouchers and claim that on our "take profit in books" portion of the contract, which lets us pay half the cover price (if I remember correctly). I see this as one of the more valuable things our PTO does each year.

Scholastic did buy Troll a few years ago. However, you should talk to your rep about the type of fair they send you. We explained to Scholastic that if we were upgraded to their "premium" fair, sales would improve. After a few phone calls back and forth, they agreed. The selection was so much better than previous years. We had more hardcover books but the teachers and librarian purchased most of them for their classroom libraries. Kids also commented on the expanded paperback selection.

You should start talking to you rep now about next year and see if they agree to upgrade your book fair.

From what I can tell, Scholastic bought out Troll. Thus, taking away that choice and helping control the market.

Our school uses Scholastic and I am so disappointed every time we have a bookfair. Their choice of books is incredibly limited, I resent being given books to sell rather than being allowed to choose on some level and I feel they are very overpriced. At the risk of dating myself, whatever happened to the likes of the Ruth Chew "witch books" and "Summer Pony?" Scholastic used to offer such great books, fiction and non, at a reasonable price--that was the point--to make the books affordable enough so that kids would want to spend their money on them rather than candy.

We use one as a fundraiser (the other is a buy one get one free), but from what I see it's not worth the bother as a fundraiser. I looked at Usbourne, and love their books, but they are just too expensive. Troll used to have a book club but I found they went out of the business. A PTA pres I know and I actually contemplated going to Price Club or something to see if we couldn't get something together, but the logistics were just to complicated. I wonder if the Childrens Book of the Month Club has anything. If they don't, they should look into it!