Your yearbooks are on their way, or they’ve already arrived and they are beautiful! But now the reality of getting them into the hands of your students has set in. Here’s a yearbook distribution checklist to help make sure you’ve got everything covered.

Publicize the List of Buyers

One of the most important tasks to do is to publicize the list of buyers and uncover problems in advance.

Decide Procedures for Selling Extra Books

Determine ahead of time how you will sell extra books. Will you wait until after distribution or will you sell at distribution? Will you sell on a first-come basis, or will you use a lottery?

Decide How to Distribute Personalized Books

Planning ahead for distributing personalized yearbook is important to ensure a student who bought a personalized book gets THAT book and not a non-personalized book.

Check and Sort All Additional Accessories

If you sold other accessories, be sure to have them organized in a manner that will be easy for you to get into the hands of your buyers.

Sort the Yearbooks into Six Groups

1. ADDITIONAL BOOKS SENT BY THE PLANT: Set aside all “extra” books.  Do not sell these until after distribution so you can replace any damaged books with these extras.

2. EMERGENCY BOOKS: Set aside 5 – 10 books until a few days after distribution and sales just for emergencies.

3. CRITIQUES/COMPETITIONS: If applicable, set aside books to mail to NSPA, CSPA and any state competitions.

4. GIVE-AWAY BOOKS: Set aside books you need to give away (to the principal, library, parent groups, etc.)

5. PRE-SOLD BOOKS: Set aside and sort pre-sold books.

If you distribute in classes…

• Label boxes with teachers’ names and sort them in those boxes.
• Prepare a distribution sheet, one for each teacher.
• Carefully highlight the sheet to indicate personalized books/accessories.

If you distribute at lunch, a big event, or a yearbook signing party…

Decide how you want to organize lines and deal with personalization and/or accessory items.
No matter how you distribute your yearbooks, plan well to prevent as many errors and problems as possible. A couple of suggestions to help with planning:

• Have two staffers work each line: one to check names/IDs and one to hand over the book/accessories and keep books “stocked” for the line.
• Require ID to pick up each book
• Have a designated place to send students without ID, no receipt, name not on the purchased list, etc.
• Ask for faculty or administration to help with crowd control.

6. BOOKS TO SELL: Set them aside in a special box. Use caution to ensure you don’t sell the books that have been pre-sold.

Now that you’ve done the prep-work, check out tomorrow’s blog post for our Distribution Day checklist.