Yearbooks struggle in Facebook age

Whether yearbook signatures will give way to Facebook wall posts in the future has yet to be seen, but students will still be swapping some kind of books next May.
BU’s undergraduate yearbook, The Bostonian, is facing a slight decline in sales as the popularity of networking websites and technology rises, yearbook faculty advisor Nelia Ponte said.
‘We’ve seen a slight, not dramatic, decrease in the sales of books,’ she said. ‘This generation very much wants to create their own media, they don’t really see the value of a printed yearbook.’
Technology and tradition are at the heart of the matter, because the yearbook being replaced by traditional media and social networks, such as MySpace and Facebook, Ponte said. She said she was optimistic that the yearbook will continue, however.
‘With a yearbook, you have tradition, something that will survive time, something that you can look back at in 20 years,’ she said. ‘Ten years ago, Facebook didn’t exist, and it may not exist in another 10 years.’
Ponte said she is not willing to abandon printed yearbooks for other media like CDs or DVDs.
‘It stops being a yearbook,’ she said. ‘It may not last or have any historical value. You need it to be printed.’
Despite the decline in yearbook sales, the number of seniors who get their senior pictures taken is on the rise, Ponte said.
‘Most students take them because it’s a tradition, but also because their parents want them to take it,’ she said.
Unlike at close-knit high schools, it is quite difficult to make a yearbook for a large university, Bostonian designer Sheryl Sulistiawan, a former Daily Free Press reporter said.
‘We can’t have [all] students represented in the yearbook, and we try to get as many groups as possible,’ Sulistiawan, a College of Fine Arts senior, said. ‘But it’s difficult to represent the whole student body.’
The Bostonian is facing a decrease in sales because few students know it exists until senior year, Sulistiawan said. The Bostonian’s new marketing strategy seeks to target seniors to purchase yearbooks, but also targets underclassmen to inform them as future consumers.
‘They don’t necessarily need to buy yearbooks, but it’s good for them to know that it exists,’ she said.
More important than marketing strategy is the product itself, said Susan Happel, publications representative for Herff Jones, Inc., a national yearbook and graduation memorabilia company.
‘On a national scale, the trend in sales is downward, because sometimes the yearbooks we make just aren’t good enough,’ Happel, who handles the printing of The Bostonian, said. ‘My advice is that you’ve got to find passionate people to make an awesome product.’
Happel said those who think the yearbook is a thing of the past can relax.
‘Books have been around since the existence of the free world,’ she said. ‘Technology almost guarantees that the printed word exists, because the book is a constant, even when technology changes.’