Budgeting for your projects
17 November 2015
Hey everyone, how are we all feeling this week? I wanted to chat to you some more about budgeting for your projects and how to work out your estimates and get a quote this afternoon. Getting started with your plans early on will give you less to worry about later in the year and you don’t want to miss out on our early deposit discount do you?! Getting people engaged with your yearbook project is important for everyone involved and how you budget and present your yearbook to your year group will play a key role in the success of your project. Nowadays, leaving school can be quite pricey what with prom, yearbooks, hoodies and DVDs etc to factor in. That’s why we keep our prices as low as possible for you so you can rest assured your books are friendly on your wallet!!
- Setting a budget for your book is a good starting point in your initial yearbook meetings so first jot down how many copies you think you’ll need. If you’re unsure, start with the number of people in the yeargroup as a rough idea.
- Now you’ll want to decide on the book style you want to go for. Budget paperbacks are great for smaller groups and keeping the costs down but do have a capped page limit of 40 pages. If your yeargroup has 300 students in it, this would certainly be a tight squeeze so may not be suitable! Standard hardbacks are the most popular book style we offer and are great for mid range budgets. You can go right up to 300 pages in these books so they are perfect for larger groups looking for a relatively beefy book! If you’re opting for a premium book style, do remember these have a minimum page requirement of 50 pages and minimum order quantity of 50 copies.
- So now you’ve set your book style, think about how much space you want to allow for profiles.Do you want each student to have a full page in the book or half a page? Or perhaps you just want to show the names and a photo of each student in the class and go for loads of photo pages? Either way this will help you to determine how many pages you are likely to need. As a general rule, I would say what ever your profile page allowance, add 20 pages for other content to get your final number. You’ll be amazed at the amount of photos that can come out of the woodwork and you’ll probably have bags of ideas and events you want to feature.
Now you should know roughly your book size, how many copies you’ll need and book style so you can refer back to the pricing grid to get your price. There’s no VAT to add as printed books are exempt and delivery is free for UK mainland customers 
Once you have a quote it’s time to let everybody know! Sending out a deposit request letter will help spread the word and when people return a small deposit, say £5 each for now, this will give you a great indication of how many people are seriously interested in buying a book. You’ll also raise your £100 deposit in no time and if you send in your deposit before the end of the year, you secure those all important savings!!!