We all want to get a bang for our bucks, whether we are buying a car or a washing machine… or a yearbook.
Why Are Yearbook Prices Rising?
First, let’s investigate why yearbook costs have been getting out of hand. Prices have been rising faster than inflation. Things like paper and ink have been a part of the problem. As digital has been displacing print products, there are fewer companies making those staples—hence, fewer companies in that space. Supply and demand cause prices to spike.
Gen Z Isn’t Buying Print
Another consideration is that print yearbook sales have been declining over the past decade. The current demographic buying yearbooks—Gen Z, the first generation to grow up digitally native—are not finding print products relevant to the way they digest information. Year-over-year sales have been declining 4 to 8 percent. Print yearbook companies need to compensate for those losses by raising prices. Given that rising costs are one of the reasons for the print yearbook decline, raising prices seems to be going in the wrong direction.
What Do Yearbooks Cost?
This question doesn’t have a simple answer because each school will order a different number of copies and have a different number of pages. However, we can take a look at some reliable estimates.
Be aware—the more pages a school wants, the higher the cost. The more copies a school needs, the higher the total cost. However… the more copies a school orders, the lower the per-copy price. This is because the initial expense for a yearbook is the setup cost.
Most print yearbook companies will require a school to order a minimum of 50 to 100 copies. At those numbers, the per-copy price will be at its highest. The more copies ordered, the lower the per-copy price.
A 72-page, 50-copy print book would cost around $3,200, or $64 each. Order 500 copies and the total cost jumps to $14,952, or $29.91 per copy—less than half the cost of only ordering 50 copies. Unfortunately, ordering more copies just to get a lower per-copy cost makes no sense!
Typical Yearbook Costs Based on Averages
- Small Yearbook: 56 pages for a class of 200 students. Total cost: $6,610, or $33 per copy
- Medium Yearbook: 120 pages, 300 copies. Total cost: $20,384, or $68 per copy
- Large Yearbook: 280 pages, 500 copies. Total cost: $80,776, or $162 per copy
Holy cow—no wonder some schools are simply not doing a yearbook anymore. Read on—there’s an amazing solution available.
- Digital Yearbook: $6.99 per student for as many pages, pictures, or videos you want! More on this below!
How to Negotiate With Legacy Yearbook Companies
A quick word about print yearbook pricing and yearbook companies: these prices are for the bigger legacy companies—Herff-Jones, Jostens, Balfour, and Walsworth. They collectively have the highest prices in the industry.
If you’re with one of them and are not negotiating a lower price, you are being financially abused.
Simply tell your yearbook representative that you’re talking to one of her competitors—you will instantly get a 10% discount. Let her know that your principal is pushing you to work with another company because the costs have been getting too high—expect a 25% discount.
If you have been dealing with the same rep for years and have never discussed prices in earnest, you are being overcharged.
Salesmen get paid commissions. The more you pay, the more they make. This doesn’t make them bad people, but it does give them an incentive not to cut your price.
Smaller Yearbook Companies Are Disrupting the Market
In the past decade, there has been an influx of new print yearbook companies in the market. Technology costs have dropped significantly. A Kamori print press costs $2MM. A digital press costs as little as $50,000—and it’s very difficult to tell the difference in quality between the two.
These smaller companies usually have prices that are 30% lower. Legacy salespeople will tell you these smaller companies can’t produce a book as good as theirs—but I’ve found that this is no longer true.
Ten years ago, it was true. But in the past few years, I’ve been shocked at how good their books have looked.
Oh… and a little inside secret: if you’re doing a book of 120 pages or less, the legacy companies are now using digital presses too!
Personal Insight From a 40-Year Industry Vet
A little more transparency here—I had worked with one of the legacy companies for over 40 years.
The only downside to working with one of the ‘smaller’ companies is that they don’t have dedicated sales reps. I always serviced my schools—tiny to huge—very well, visiting them every three weeks. I loved visiting my schools. I felt like I was a very important part of the process.
What I’ve learned in the past five years? I’m not needed as much as I thought. Yes, that makes me sad.
Take a look at a few of the smaller print yearbook companies like Entourage, Simply Yearbooks, or YearbookLife.
So… Are You Getting a Bang for Your Buck?
To answer the title question: are you getting a bang for your yearbook bucks?
Yes. Maybe. No. And a second no. The first three depend on which company you’re using. The last answer depends on what kind of yearbook you’re creating.
Until now, it’s been hard to even ask that question—because there’s only been one option.
The reason yearbooks exist is to preserve the memories of a very important year. The only way that could be done was with a print yearbook.
But that’s no longer the case.
Enter YearBoxx: A Better Way to Preserve Memories
YearBoxx is the first true digital yearbook to hit the market.
Yes, there are several digital yearbooks available—but they’re all just PDFs of a print yearbook. You must have a print yearbook first, then it’s digitized and uploaded to a cellphone. The terminal issue with that model? Trying to scroll an 8½ x 11 page on a 6-inch screen. The user interface is unbearable.
YearBoxx was designed from the very beginning to be viewed on digital devices—cellphones, tablets, laptops, desktops. The UI is intuitive and easy to navigate, just like any social media platform.
Digital Has No Limits
What else makes YearBoxx a real bang for your buck?
Let’s go back to the “why” of a yearbook—to preserve memories.
A print yearbook does this with photos, which is still great. But you’re limited by the number of pages a school can afford. Small schools might have 32–80 pages, medium schools 80–150, and large schools 150–400+.
What if your small (or medium or large) school could have a 400+ page yearbook?
What if you could include all the photos taken by your staff without having to cut anything?
That alone shifts the value of what a yearbook can be.
Add Video, Update Anytime, and Keep It Forever
But there’s more.
- What if you could add video to those memories?
- What if your classmates could be seen animated, moving and talking?
- What if there were no limits to the number of videos you could add?
How much more value would a yearbook have if it included the entire year’s worth of memories—including prom and graduation?
Print yearbooks can’t include these events because publishers need six weeks to produce and ship. YearBoxx takes about seven seconds. That’s not a joke.
You can finalize the YearBoxx yearbook on June 1, distribute it, and then add prom and graduation photos after the fact.
That completely changes the game.
YearBoxx is Updatable—Forever
Once a print yearbook is created, that’s it. The memories are frozen.
With YearBoxx, you can keep adding memories forever.
Each senior (and faculty member) gets a personal page—My Page—their own mini yearbook. They can upload photos, share milestones, and tell their story. There’s even a Future Events section where they can post updates like college, career, marriage, baby announcements, and reunions.
YearBoxx makes the bang for your buck even louder.
Stay Connected with Your Class
Classmates can stay connected using in-app tools. On their My Pages, seniors and faculty can leave contact info—social media, phone, email, and more.
Most students only save close friends’ numbers. But what about everyone else you’ll want to reconnect with later?
This is about more than nostalgia. It’s about community.
The Price? Just $6.99.
Hold on—this might be the biggest bang for your buck moment.
YearBoxx costs just $6.99 per student.
Yes, really.
It does everything a print yearbook does—and far more—for a fraction of the price.
Digital doesn’t require printing, binding, or shipping. Plus, the team behind YearBoxx has decades of yearbook experience.
Other Bonus Perks
- Always accessible—right on your phone
- Can’t be lost—stored in the cloud
- Mistakes? Fix them instantly
- Signatures? Use text or video
- Easy to build—drag-and-drop in hours, not months
Final Thoughts: Evolution Is Inevitable
Holy cow—what was that sound? Oh… just the bang for your buck going off.
Print yearbooks are great. I’ve helped schools make them for 48 years. I love them. But times have changed.
Just like music went from vinyl to CDs to streaming—yearbooks are evolving too.
YearBoxx is the future. It adds more, costs less, and gives students what they actually want.
Can you honestly say print yearbooks still give you the best bang for your buck?
Tom Kehoe, Founder, YearBoxx
📧 tkehoe@idiomyb.com
