Templates are a very effective tool that you can use to make your book look professionally designed. We spent part of our development season working on templates, so now they look more professional, and are easier to use than ever. Coupled with our cropping tool, you can now crop each image to fit perfectly into your template on its way in. Alternately, use the auto flow template wizard to flow templates to multiple pages, and automatically populate them with your favorite candid images.
Yes! We’ve drastically lowered prices for stand alone registrations this season ($75 per license is almost unheard of in this industry), but did you know that you can get even more of a discount when you sign up as a publisher?
Our publisher signup/renewal fee is still $250.00 per season, and as of this year you get a lot more out of it:
License Discount:
All of our publishers get a 25% discount on every license purchased. Are you doing 14 books or more? If you are, then signing up as a publisher pays for itself in license discounts alone.
Private Label Branding:
We used to charge over and above our publisher renewal fee to include your company’s logo and contact information in the software. Now, we offer this to everyone who signs up as a publisher.
Electronic Submission:
This is a feature that’s available to all of our registered publishers. Once your customer is finished designing their book, they can submit the PDF to you electronically.
PDF Security:
Lock your end user’s high resolution PDFs with the password of your choice. Ensure that your schools print their books through you.
Call or email us to sign up as a publisher today!
It’s September! As usual, we like to celebrate the back to school season with a new release of our Yearbook authoring software. This development season we’ve primarily been working to keep the program up to date with the most recent operating systems, on both Windows and Mac. We’ve also been working on updating our program’s interface, making it more intuitive to use, and with fewer errors.
New Price Point:
It’s no secret that we’re competing against a growing online market. Even though the online solutions available today aren’t as reliable as our desktop solution, the convenience and marketability of them can make for a tough sale. We’re pleased to announce that we substantially lowered the license costs for our desktop software. As of this season, we’re selling individual licenses for $75 each. Folks who are signed up as our publishers receive a discount on all licenses. We hope that this makes it easier for you to market our solution to your schools.
Branding is Now Included in Publisher Renewal Fee:
We’ve always offered branding in our software, but until now we’ve been charging $500.00 for this service, on top of our standard publisher signup or renewal fee. As of this season, we will begin offering branding (Your company’s logo and contact information) to all of our publishers, included in the regular publisher signup/renewal fees. We will still be charging a premium if you need custom artwork, panels, or page sizes, but the charge for these will be much lower than previous years as well.
Edge Effects are Back:
Our customers spoke, and we listened! Edge effects (The clipping masks that can be used on portraits and candids) have been added back into the page editor, and the panel flow wizard. We still have the same draw problem where the transparent parts show up as white on the page editor, but the transparency is crisp and perfect in every PDF. Enjoy!
Major Bugs Resolved:
Last season we released a new page editor, and as is typical with new technology, we did run into a few annoying bugs. Thankfully we were able to work around these issues last season, but the better news is that we’ve resolved most of them for this season. The PDF errors (Box size, and dropping backgrounds to name a couple of the majors) have been resolved, a few of the buttons have been rearranged to make things feel more natural, and a full round of testing has gone into the major features and functions.
One of the great new features in this year’s edition of Yearbooks is the ability to download new packages of content from this website. Every month we will be releasing new graphics that can be quickly imported into Yearbooks to add new clip-art, backgrounds, templates and cover images. All of these images are provided for free to registered users, and are completely optional. You can pick and choose the packages you wish to download and import, whether it is one package or all of them.
This month’s package contains, you guessed it, Christmas images! This package includes 16 new clipart images, as well as 20 new backgrounds! Here is a brief sample of what is included in this package. You can download the package below.
Download “Christmas Package” Christmas.ybk – Downloaded 1201 times – 13 MB
Watch this site for additional content for your Yearbook! Leave us a comment if you have any questions or suggestions on new graphics for Yearbooks.
One of the great new features in this year’s edition of Yearbooks is the ability to download new packages of content from this website. Every month we will be releasing new graphics that can be quickly imported into Yearbooks to add new clip-art, backgrounds, templates and cover images. All of these images are provided for free to registered users, and are completely optional. You can pick and choose the packages you wish to download and import, whether it is one package or all of them. We are also producing a tutorial video in which Dave will demonstrate how to download, import and use these images in your Yearbook.
Our first download package features new Clip-art images with a Halloween theme! Here is a brief sample of what is included in this package. You can download the package below.
Halloween Clip-art Package #1
Download “Halloween Clipart Package #1” PKG_Halloween.ybk – Downloaded 805 times – 693 KB
Our second package contains some of the classic backgrounds that have been featured in Yearbooks over the past ten years, specifically those with a Nature Theme. Again here is a sample of the contents, you can download the packages below.
Nature Backgrounds Package #1
Download “Nature Themed Backgrounds Package #1” PKG_Nature.ybk – Downloaded 1206 times – 23 MB
Watch this site for additional content for your Yearbook! Leave us a comment if you have any questions or suggestions on new graphics for Yearbooks.
This year we are excited to show off the new edition of Yearbooks, which a fresh look with a brand new logo and website.
Visit Fusion Creative’s Website
Our new logo was designed by the very talented Annika Sibert of Fusion Creative in Victoria, BC. (From their website) Fusion Creative is a cross-platform design and marketing agency, helping local businesses and global corporations reach new clientele and earn brand loyalty through multi-faceted strategies in design and communication. You can see a gallery of their previous work here.
We are extremely pleased with the results! Designing a Yearbook that you are going to enjoy for years to come is a FUN process, and our new logo captures those feelings while showing off a young and professional attitude. The ‘Book’ image even has a ‘soft cover’ look to it, which we know is quite a popular style of publishing your Yearbook.
Our previous logo (the famous Schoolhouse) was a derivative of the original logo from the first version of the software in 2000, and was created in 2007 by another local graphic artist, Andy Clequin. Andy also designed our current corporate website (www.nwsp.ca) as well as many other graphic projects with NWSP.
Visit Harbour City SEO’s Website
Sean Enns of Harbour City SEO is the creative mind behind our new website. We have been working with Sean to improve our internet presence throughout the past two years. Sean is a highly skilled marketing strategist out of Nanaimo, BC, and you can read his marketing blog here. According to Sean, “Winning is everything. If you’re ranked #1, then you’ve already won. Everything else is last place”.
What do you think of our new logo and website? Please leave us a comment below.
We are pleased to announce that our first update to Yearbooks Desktop has been published today, September 24, 2013. This is for both Mac OS and Windows – if you are looking for the Windows OS update click here.
Click the button below to begin your download.
Installation Instructions:Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns with this update.
Release Notes, Yearbooks Desktop v14.02:
-Corrected a minor registration issue, should not affect any existing licences.
-Minor cosmetic corrections to Cover Sheet form.
We are pleased to announce that our first update to Yearbooks Desktop has been published today, September 24, 2013. The update is for both Mac OS and Windows – if you are looking for the Windows OS update click here.
Click the button below to begin your download.
Installation Instructions:If you were not prompted to overwrite a file in Step 4, you may have moved the file to the wrong folder. If you are having difficulties, please feel free to contact us for further assistance.
Release Notes, Yearbooks Desktop v14.02:
-Corrected a minor registration issue, should not affect any existing licences.
-Minor cosmetic corrections to Cover Sheet form.
Here’s some commentary from vlogger Richard Fowler, of The Richard Fowler Show, on a school in Moorhead, MN that has discovered a quite unfortunate spelling mistake on the front cover of their 2013 Yearbook. They have spelled the school name wrong. The cost to reprint the book is over $19,000 dollars, which means that the 2013 edition of the Yearbook will remain the way it is, misspellings and all.
The front cover of Moorhead HS’s 2013 Yearbook.
This is a perfect example of why the proofreading stage must not be rushed, and your yearbook design project should always be proofread by at least one other person. Often times you can make a simple mistake, like this school, and not notice the error until it is too late. A printing error, especially on the cover, can run into the thousands of dollars to correct and as such, most schools would choose to not reprint the book. We have written a large number of articles for our Yearbooks Desktop help guide to help you through the proofing stage, which you can browse here. Unfortunately, no software or article is going to be able to detect when you spell a name incorrectly, so our best practice is once again to take as much time as you can in the proofing stage.
As Mr. Fowler says, “Always proofread. When you’re done proofreading, PROOFREAD AGAIN!”
The new edition of Yearbooks Desktop (v14.00 – Download Here!) has an all-new media library pre-loaded into the software. We have gone to great lengths to find fresh and exciting new images for you to add to your Yearbook designs, including over 150 new backgrounds and clip-art images. Each month we will be adding brand new images to our collection, available through our brand new 2013 website.
If you prefer to use some of our classic backgrounds and clip-art, don’t worry – our old media library will be available online shortly, along with a tutorial video on how to download and import them into Yearbooks Desktop with just a few clicks.
Here is a preview of the bright and beautiful new background images that we have collected over the summer. To add these images to your Yearbook pages, follow these instructions provided in our user guide on our support portal.
Which ones are your favorites? Feel free to leave a comment below.