Frequently Asked Questions

All schools have a yearbook coordinator who is the point of contact for yearbooks that year. Typically you would receive an email or a flyer from them or the school admins with information on the ordering link and a unique school code. If you cannot locate this information or have further questions, please reach out to us with the name of your school and we can provide this information.

During the regular school year, ALL the books will be delivered to the school, we do not need to update the shipping address. It is collected for billing purposes only. (Our ordering site incorrectly labels it as 'Shipping Address' and we are working to fix it). During the summer ordering cycle, ALL yearbooks are delivered directly to home. If your shipping address has changed during summer ordering, please let us know by sending us an email and if the books have not been sent for printing, we can edit that information. If the books have already been sent for printing, you will need to make arrangements to collect it from your previous address entered while placing the order.

All Elementary school yearbooks ordered during the regular school year will be delivered before the last day of school by your yearbook coordinator(s), in the school. All Preschool yearbooks, ordered during the regular school year will be delivered in May or June by your school administrators, in the school. If you have left the school by then, please reach out to the school's front desk to arrange a time for pickup. All school yearbooks ordered during the summer cycle, will be delivered straight to your residence at an extra shipping cost collected at the time of ordering.

If you do not want to order online please reach out to your school’s yearbook coordinator for other options they might have including paying by cash or check.

Gosh!! We are really sorry about this! Generating a school yearbook such as this involves multiple parties and sometimes errors such as this do not get caught in time. The portrait pages are generated using the photos provided and tagged by the official school photography vendor. The school's yearbook coordinator gets the portrait pages proofed by the teachers of each classroom. Looks like this photo was incorrectly tagged in the photos that were uploaded from the photography vendor or there was some other error and it was not caught in the proofing process by the school volunteers/teacher. As a yearbook printing vendor we defer to these other partners and processes for accuracy of the portrait pages. We would have happily reprinted the book for you in case there was a print issue or an issue with incorrect personalization. However portrait pages cannot be changed by us and cannot be changed by anyone after the book is printed since they go through multiple rounds of revisions, approvals and deadlines before it gets to the printing stage. We sincerely apologize for the error and recommend that you reach out to your school's yearbook coordinator if needed.

If you are ordering during the regular school year, all yearbooks will be delivered and distributed at the school. You can contact your school's yearbook adviser or school admins to make arrangements to collect your yearbook. Some schools keep the yearbook ordering site open during the summer. These books are delivered to your residence at an extra fee and if you move after you placed the order, please send us an email with your order information and we can make the change as long as the books have not been sent for printing already.

Unfortunately once the deadline has passed, there is no way for an order to be entered online. However, some schools do order a few extra copies so you can check with your school's yearbook coordinator or school admin. You can also check with your school if they will keep summer ordering open for yearbooks.

All yearbooks ordered during the regular school year should have arrived and distributed by the yearbook coordinators (parent volunteers or school staff) before the last day of school or on a date set by them. If your school year has ended and you haven't received the yearbook please reach out to them to get further assistance. All yearbooks ordered during the summer cycle were sent to printing when the summer window closed (Typically end of June). The books are expected to be delivered by the first week of August straight to your residence. Please reach out to us by email if the book does not arrive by August7.

The best way to reach us is to send an email to support@rethinkyearbooks.com. Please include as many details about your query as available. For example, include the order number and school name for us to help you faster. We typically respond to all emails within 3 working days.

Sometimes children switch classes or are incorrectly coded in a wrong classroom in the roster we obtain from the school. If you notice an issue, please send us an email and we can correct it to make sure the correct information is shown in the dropdown. Making sure the name and grade are accurate will help ensure your yearbook is delivered to the right student upon arrival at the school.

The photos for the myClass pages. comes from the 100s of photos collected for the purposes of creating the yearbook. With the mobile and camera technolgy these days, lots of photos are collected from each class especially for popular and high coverage events like Halloween, Field Trips, Class parties. Not all of these photos from every class end up in the traditional yearbook due to the limited space. We use these leftover photos of your child's classroom in their copy of the yearbook by replacing some photos or adding additional slots or pages. The photos for the Custom pages, comes from you! In your profile you will have the option to design and upload Custom Pages using photos from home, for each child for whom a personalized yearbook was ordered. These Custom pages are included only in your copy of the yearbook and you would design and upload them for each child you have ordered a personalized book for.

Once you place an order for a personalized yearbook, your profile (login into our website) will show a link to create Custom Pages as an option. This will provide you a step by step process to customize a CANVA template with photos of your child. You can find more information at the blogpost here: https://www.rethinkyearbooks.com/post/how-to-create-custom-pages-for-my-child-s-personalized-yearbook

Our personalization upgrade provides 3 features: (1) Cover personalization – a photo and name of your child on the front or back cover of the yearbook chosen by your school (2) myClass pages – Certain pages in the yearbook are enhanced or added to show more relevant photos to the classroom of your child (3) Custom pages – Photos that you upload from home are used to generate extra pages added at the end of your yearbook The cover and myClass pages are personalized AUTOMATICALLY at no effort from you. The bulk of our personalization is classroom specific and happens directly using the photos collected for that classroom. Depending on the photos availability on an average we see between 35-85 'relevant' photos of that classroom utilized in the personalized upgrade (in addition to the photo, name and class on the back cover). If you want to include the Custom pages in your yearbook, you have a link in your profile (login into our website) to upload the pdf for "Custom Pages". You start with a template we created for you, insert photos of your child and download the pdf of those designs. Then you upload the pdf to our site for printing in your child's yearbook.

Some pages within the yearbook will be enriched with photographs contributed by the recipient's class, commonly referred to as 'myClass pages.' Each class typically collects tens of photos, often taken by the yearbook coordinator or gathered from room parents and teachers. However, due to limited space in the traditional yearbook, not all of these photos can be included. By incorporating them into the myClass pages, we can ensure that more of these cherished class memories are shared and preserved.

Yes. The book, its composition and content is exactly the same for ALL pages except for the 4-8 myClass pages, 2-6 Custom Pages (designed and uploaded by the parents/families from home) and Cover.

Personalization is when our technology does the heavy lifting of designing the pages with relevant content (photos/memories/text) to the customer. Customization is when you manually design the pages for your child's copy of the yearbook. This introduces extra work for families since they have to learn a design software and get familiar with the terminology. Both these terms are used interchangeably by the general public, so that makes it harder to understand. Our upgraded yearbooks are PERSONALIZED which means that the cover and the myClass pages are automatically generated by our patent pending technology. This gives us the ability to showcase more relevant memories to each receipient without someone having to do lots of manual work to achieve similar results. In addition to personalization, we offer the ability to design and upload custom pages using photos from home to the families.

You can view the uploaded pdf by clicking on the Custom Pages link after logging into our website. Select the child name from the dropdown and you should see a button called "View PDF" appear. If you want to re-upload the custom page for your child, you can select the upload button and choose a new pdf. Every time you upload the pdf for the same child, it overwrites the previous pdf.

Yes, everytime you upload a pdf for the same child, it over-writes the previous pdf and saves the latest copy only. So feel free to re-upload as needed.

Both the pages need to be uploaded together as a high-resolution 8.5 by 11 pdf as configured in the template provided to you.

Currently our ordering platform does not have this option. We are tentatively planning to add it for next school year.

Please send us an email at support@rethinkyearbooks.com and we can provide an alternate way to upload photos for your custom pages where a person from our team will insert them in the template and design-upload these pages for your child's book.

The last date to upload custom pages is the last date to order for your school. Since all schools have different last dates and some of them sometimes get an extension and summer ordering, please follow the date mentioned in their messaging. As a rule of thumb, if you can order a yearbook, you can create custom pages!!

Rethink Yearbooks is on a mission to make school yearbooks be more relevant and inclusive by offering a personalized yearbook for each child or classroom. This is done automatically using our proprietary technology that utilizes the hundreds of photos collected for the yearbook but that do not make it to the one-size-fits-all yearbook due to limited space. In addition to the inside page personalization that no other yearbook vendor provides, our offering includes a representative assigned to your school who will design/creating the yearbook based on your input and criteria. Here is a bulleted list of the value we provide: MyOwn or MyClass personalization Extra pages per class/child All or select event/Activity inside pages personalized for each child/class We design/create it for you saving atleast 30-40 hours of work to shortlist photos and design a yearbook (optional) Families get a better value for their money Fundraising Margins Printed, Digital, Video Yearbooks (optionally) Custom pages/photos that families want to design/upload themselves Online ordering link or cash payments Print-on-demand – No minimums, deadlines, late fees We don't lock you into multi-year contracts but have a discount for return customers and multi-year commitment You would be supporting a minority owned small business and made in the USA

You can choose to offer one or more of the following products to your families. Contact us today to discuss our very competitive pricing for these. Non personalized Traditional Yearbook – The one-size-fits-all yearbook with portrait pages for each class in the school followed by event/activity pages. MyClassYearbook – The traditional yearbook is automatically converted to a personalized yearbook for the classroom, showing more pictures for ALL or SELECTED event/activities from the class of the recipient. Typically events like Halloween. Field trips and Daily life have a lot of photos unique to each classroom and families are very excited to see more relevant memories to their child. In addition to the inside pages personalization, the name, photo and classroom of the recipient is shown as a title on front, back or inside cover. MyOwnYearbook – This includes everything that the MyClass Yearbook offers plus further personalization to include photos of the student uploaded by their families. This can include a letter or message to their child, artwork, handwriting sample, birthday celebrations, photos with grand-parents, first day of school etc.

Our goal is to make it really easy to offer yearbooks to your community. With this in mind, we include the services of a representative assigned to your school who will design/create the yearbook using a template selected by you. The base book is then personalized using our proprietary technology and our team of quality control specialists manually check each yearbook before it is sent for printing. Other than taking, collecting and uploading photos and sending reminders to your families to purchase the yearbook, no extra effort is needed from your side. This includes NO NEED to tag photos, learn a design software, select photos, understand layouts or print specifications such as bleed etc. We take care of it all for you, so that you can use your time to make it easier to collect and preserve the valuable school memories and showcase the wonderful activities that happen in the course of the school year! Alternatively, if you want to design the BASE yearbook yourself, you can do so. We provide access to a design platform that has all the bells and whistles of the yearbook design software from any other vendor.

We meet via in-person or video conferencing to show you some samples, discuss our offering and explain what makes us different from other yearbook vendors. Based on the configuration of yearbook desired – #pages, softcover/hardcover, bundles (+ digital or video) – we discuss pricing and fundraising margins. You make the decision to signup with Rethink Yearbooks as the yearbook vendor. 0$ agreement is signed with the school point of contact (POC) and a representative (RY_Rep) from Rethink Yearbooks is assigned to your school. We provide access to our dashboard that obtains your inputs: Photos from the school Folder with profile photos along with txt/csv/pspa files mapping the jpegs with name and grade of child and school staff Create a ladder or calendar of events Share any additional preferences for theme/designs, cover art contests etc. POC sends ordering information to the school community and takes care of all reminders and marketing events (you can download marketing material and sample flyers in English and Spanish from the dashboard) (Optional) POC conducts yearbook cover art contest and uploads high resolution cover image and other artwork as needed in the photos location You can design the BASE book or ask us to design it using one of our templates. If we are designing the book for you, you have the option in our tool to mark photos as 'favorites' to guide the selection of photos for each event. Once the book is ready, we send it as a link to further edit and revise as needed. Once the base book is approved our proprietary technology personalizes the yearbooks to generate one for each classroom or student. Each book is manually quality checked by our team and available for your quick review before they are sent for printing. The books are printed and delivered to the school at a mutually agreed upon date, before school ends. We provide a 15 day delivery time. The online ordering site can be kept open during the summer for fulfilling any late orders by shipping directly to home by paying an extra fulfillment and shipping fee.

School is responsible for taking photo approval from parents for taking photos and using them in yearbooks. No special approval is needed by the yearbook company (We can provide a sample privacy approval form if needed) We will get access to the school photos ONLY after signing a 0$ agreement. At this point we are a vendor that the school is working with for yearbooks. We will match the ‘privacy of photos’ concerns with what your school promises to their community. This means, For the families who want their children to be excluded from photos that are taken or shared with the community, there would be no extra concern introduced by us since photos are not taken hence not utilized in any digital process by Rethink Yearbooks. For the families who are okay with their children being photographed but do not want them to be used in yearbooks, we can exclude them from the portrait pages of all created yearbooks. If you will like them to be excluded from all group pictures as well, it is best if you remove them from the photos shared with us. The photos will NOT be used for our marketing purposes. (We might use a printed yearbook sample to show in meetings or videos to prospective customers). If you do not want your school’s printed yearbook to be shown, please let us know. The photos are kept on a password protected secure server for the duration of the yearbook creation lifecycle. The photos are used in our proprietary personalization technology for the duration of the yearbook creation lifecycle. This personalization is NOT USED for any other school OR ANY OTHER purpose other than creating these yearbooks. Once the pdf is created, if you choose the PREVIEW option, it can be shown to the parents/families of your school, in a password protected manner, watermarked to review and order the book only. NOT DOWNLOADABLE. A non-watermarked, downloadable version might be made available to the parents IF the school decides to go with the option of offering digital yearbooks. The privacy concerns with this will be no different from people clicking and uploading photos from their camera on social media OR schools sharing photos with their communities via Whatsapp, Shutterfly, Padlet or Google Photos etc. But we completely understand that parents have concerns when they hear ‘digital’, so we should not go with this option if there are parents who are not okay with photos of their children being shared. We feel that printed hard cover books are a better experience and better keepsake, anyways. More details can be found in our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions

No, there is no extra cost for these. We will provide a license to the design software at no extra cost. Same for cloud storage as needed.

We understand this concern! If you look deeper into the photo collection, you might notice that for some events such as Halloween, Field Trips, Winter Parties, Daily Classroom life, etc, a LOT of photos are taken. Typically we see 800-1000 photos for some popular events, across the whole school. For the traditional yearbook, only 20-30 photos of these events make it to the yearbook. Even if many images are of poor quality, we can still extract 5-10 photos per classroom from the 800-1000 photos taken for such events. This allows us to show more relevant memories to the students and their families. So please keep in mind that not all event/activity pages need to be personalized if you do not have photos. Our technology is able to utilize personalization based on the photos available for that classroom and for each event. OR you can pre-select the events which will be offered as personalized for your school and we will configure the tech to run on only those pages.

Rethink Yearbooks operates in all 50 states and U.S. territories. Accordingly, it is legally required to collect sales tax in all states that impose a sales tax. Sales tax is calculated during Secure Checkout, based on the state where your order is shipped. For yearbook and yearbook accessories distributed by the yearbook staff at school, Rethink Yearbooks is acting as agent for the school in its order placement and cash collection procedures. Sales tax may or may not apply depending on whether the school is required to collect and remit tax in your state. Typically, if you’re registered with your state as a tax exempt entity, you get 2 tax-free days. You can use one of yours for yearbook distribution/sales, in which case you can use our online ordering system to collect the payments WITHOUT tax from your families and distribute the books on the tax-free date. Otherwise, if you are not a tax exempt entity OR have not obtained the paperwork for becoming a tax exempt entity OR are not certain you can distribute the books on one of your tax-free days, then it is best to let the online ordering system collect the sales tax during order checkout and we pay the sales tax on your behalf. If you do not collect tax during cash or online sales, it is your responsibility to distribute the books on the tax free date. If you are unable to do that, then you are responsible for the sales tax amount.