For many years, we published Student Pages for The Story of the World and Writing With Ease in both loose leaf and PDF format. Starting in Summer 2022, we will reprint the Student Pages as a bound paperback with perforated pages (and the PDF will still be available). We'll sell the looseleaf format until it is sold out, but when it's gone, it's gone.
This change affects two series:
- The Story of the World Student Pages
- Writing With Ease Student Pages
Why the change?
To save you some "change." The cost of producing books has risen due to increased paper prices and labor costs. It got to the point that it costs more produce, transport, and store the loose leaf materials than we charge for them.
The price had to go up - we kept that increase to a minimum by going to paperbacks. It costs less to produce workbooks than loose leaf packages. Switching to the workbook format minimized the price increase, which in the end, saves you money.
Tell me more - I love the backstory!
In manufacturing, every step in the process, every time someone touches a product, costs go up. Creating the loose leaf package has a lot of steps and takes a lot of "handling": printing, drilling the holes, adding the cardboard backing, shrink-wrapping the package for stability and protection...each step adds to the cost of production. When the cost of production goes up, so does end-user price.
Creating a bound book is a much simpler process. The cost of production is lower. This is especially true as the Student Pages have grown to be more than a third of a Story of the World Activity Book!
Any suggestions for how I can save a little money?
That depends on the curriculum, on how much you pay to print or copy pages, and on the cost of shipping paperbacks.
- PDFs cost less to start with, and there is no shipping - but paper and toner aren't free...
- If you are using The Story of the World Student Pages, it is unlikely that you will print all of the pages. You choose which activities work best for your children based on ages, interests, and abilities. Purchasing the SOTW Student Pages in PDF format can save you money because PDFs cost less, you pay no shipping costs, and you will most likely print only a subset of the pages.
If you are using Writing With Ease Student Pages, you will likely use all (or almost all) of the pages, so you’ll have to do the math to decide which option works best for you. - And always check to see if the book is available in Scratch and Dent format, which you can now purchase from the website at a 60% discount. These are new and complete in content, but the covers have a few dings on them so we can’t sell them as Brand New Books.
Here are a couple of articles from our Help Center FAQs that might help you make your decision:
How do I know how many pages I'll print from a PDF?
Should I order materials in digital (MP3, PDF) or physical (CD, paper) format?