Yearbook costs will be lowered this year to $35 due to their switch to a new printing company. Editor-in-chief of the yearbook Marlen Torres has some information to share about it.

Torres said, “Well, we used to work with Josten’s last year, but we decided to not do that this year and create our own spread ourselves, like on our files, and then just make our own libraries and do basically the same thing but with a different company.”

Yearbook printing has been moved to switch to Entourage Yearbooks after the expiration of our contract with Josten’s. This change has allowed yearbook prices to go down from $45 to $35 which has made creating the yearbook easier on the yearbook staff.

Torres mentioned, “In a way I feel like we had a bit more freedom of what we wanted to do like our fonts and stuff, but it’s been hard to get it going, but for the most part it’s been pretty easy.”

The switch will also impact the yearbook content. In prior years, the final print deadline was in February, requiring the staff to half-cover winter sports and omit spring sports. Spring sports spreads would be printed in the ‘Extended Edition,’ which printed over the summer and was available as an expansion of the yearbook in August.

Torres stated, “Just the way the layout with the previous company we were working with, I feel like that’s our main change, and we have way more students than we did last year which has been very helpful, and a lot of them are willing to go out of the way and participate, to go take pictures and write our stories. There should be a price change, they should be cheaper this year because we’re going to print our pages and then purchase our covers separately, and that’s all going to be cheaper.”

With Entourage, the final yearbook deadline will be in April, allowing for spring sports, and potentially prom, coverage in the yearbook proper and removing the need for an extended edition. Despite the later deadline, books should still be at West in time for distribution at Senior breakfast.