Workman Chronicles
By Morris Workman
"Book Money"
Published in the Desert Valley Times
June 10, 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
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?
Published online at the Workman Chronicles WebLog June 10, 2005.
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