Composition Analysis

Emotion Expression

Color Strategy

Text Strategy

The Nostalgia Hook

The 3-Pillar Structure

The Proof Stack

The 'Company Man' Format

Scholastic is a word defined by Cambridge as relating to school and education. Scholastic Corporation is a public company that has been closely involved with school and education for over a century. Well, I'm guessing that the company behind those book fairs is bigger and more significant than you may realize. So in this video, my goal is to provide a fuller understanding of this company by detailing their business in three major categories.

Personally, I have always associated them with the Scholastic Book Fair, easily one of my fondest memories of elementary school. They would take us out of the classroom to browse through all of these cool books that we could choose to buy. It was an exciting experience, and believe it or not, I can still remember the smell of all those new books that hit me when I walked into that area. And for anyone watching this that has not thought about that stuff for a while, you might be pleased to learn that the book fairs are still happening in a big way. Around 100,000 of them in every US state continue to sell books to millions of children each year.

For example, back in 1923, they started the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards that is promoted as the longest running and most prestigious recognition program for creative teens. Each year over 100,000 teenagers from the US and Canada submit original works to be considered in 28 creative categories because winning that award can mean big time exposure and scholarship opportunities. Previous winners include Truman Capote in 1936, Andy Warhol in 1945, Stephen King in 1965, Ken Burns in 1971, and Lena Dunham in 1999, among many other notable names.

Scholastic is a global company with operations in over a dozen countries and products sold in almost every country throughout the world. All of it combines for well over a billion dollars in sales each year.

Starting out with education, which accounts for about 19% of their revenue. I'll admit, this is kind of a broad category, but Scholastic works with over 90% of schools in the United States, to provide all sorts of resources, including books for the libraries, instructional products and programs, teaching resources, literacy initiatives, to a point where most teachers likely utilize Scholastic in one way or another. Please, for any teachers watching this, I would be curious to hear how Scholastic has impacted you and your students.

But the main thing I want to talk about here is the classroom magazines, because that has been the most consistent part of the company over the years, going all the way back to the beginning. On October 22nd, 1920, Maurice Robinson put together a four-page general interest magazine, really more of a newsletter, in his mother's sewing room. It was called Western Pennsylvania Scholastic and would be sold in high schools around the Pittsburgh area for five cents each. It was a slow start, but circulation quickly grew to about 33,000 within the first five years. By the middle of the 1930s, the company was turning a profit and publishing a separate magazine for a younger audience called Junior Scholastic. Over the years, they continued to add new publications with different focuses until they became the leading company to do it. Today, they put out more than 30 separate classroom magazines that they say are read by over 11 million people in the United States each month, mostly students from pre-K to sixth grade. So these magazines not only established the company and served as its main business for decades, they also set the stage for the next category on my list, distribution.

Scholastic is currently the largest distributor of children's books. They had built a relationship with school teachers around the country and Maurice Robinson saw this as an opportunity to start their famous book clubs. The company called Pocket Books had recently played a big part in making paperbacks popular in the United States. So Scholastic teamed up with them to start Teenage Book Club intended to be a way for teenagers to conveniently purchase affordable books. The whole idea behind Scholastic Book Clubs is that the company distributes a flyer or a catalog filled with books that can be ordered to typically at a pretty reasonable price, as low as $1. Teachers give the catalog to their students, they bring it home to work with their parents to select which books they want, the student then returns it to their teachers with their selections, who place the orders and then give the books to the students once they arrive. Originally, it was a physical order form that was torn out of those classroom magazines, but in 2001, Scholastic invested $22 million into website improvements, where they started offering book club purchases online for the first time. That, by the way, was shortly after spending $400 million to acquire one of the top competing book club providers, so Scholastic has been aggressive in building up this unique distribution system and is currently, by far, the number one company in the country to utilize it.

In 1981, they logically started supplementing their book club sales with book fair sales. Initially, they acquired California school book fairs, but expanded nationally with a bigger acquisition two years later. Meaning, for over 40 years now, Scholastic has been working with school librarians or parent volunteers to set up those mobile cases filled with books where students could make their selections. When surveyed, 93% of students between 6 and 17 years old said that they were more likely to finish books that they personally select, and I think that freedom of selection is part of the genius behind this distribution system. Schools receive rewards from the book clubs and a portion of the sales from the book fairs, so overall I would say it has been a beneficial system that is typically praised by all the parties involved.

Going back to my list, the third and final part of their business that I want to talk about is publishing. Arguably the most significant part of their business, Scholastic has been publishing books since 1926, and today, exactly 100 years later, they're responsible for publishing more than 600 titles each year. Really what I want to do here is start up a second list that briefly highlights some of the more notable franchises that Scholastic has been responsible for. Now I want to make it clear that the author of a book should receive a lot of credit for creating a successful franchise. Well, for obvious reasons, right? I don't think I have to explain that one. But keep in mind that the publisher is the one responsible for discovering it, printing it, promoting it, and everything else that allows the public to actually find and read the story.

Actually, maybe one of the most impressive things about Scholastic is the fact that the company existed for over eight years. century with only two different leaders. I know that almost sounds like it can't be true but the founder Maurice Robinson was CEO of Scholastic for the first 55 years until his son Richard took over in 1975. Richard Robinson was a Harvard graduate and former high school teacher before joining the company and he held that position until he died 46 years later. I mean this has to be the most consistent leadership at least for any company that I have covered on this channel and please let me know if you are aware of a more impressive example. Every other franchise on my list originated under Richard Robinson's leadership, with 1986 being the year that they really started building up the catalog.

In 1963, Scholastic published the first book in the series, Clifford the Big Red Dog, created by Norman Bridwell. In fact, Clifford has effectively become Scholastic's mascot, being the same shade of red that the company uses in its logo. There are more than 130 million Clifford books in print, not to mention two different television series and a live-action movie released in 2021 that was dedicated to Richard Robinson, longtime CEO of Scholastic, who passed away earlier that year.

That year marked the debut of The Babysitter's Club, written by Anne M. Martin, and The Magic School Bus, one of my personal favorites, written by Joanna Cole. See, that is quite the year, considering both series went on to become children's classics, selling millions of books and leading to popular TV shows and movies.

1992 was another big year, because they published the first installment of the I Spy series, where you have to solve the riddles and find the hidden objects, and maybe more notably, the Goosebumps series, written by R. L. Stine. I don't think I have to tell you that is yet another children's classic that has led to multiple movies and television shows. I guess in the mid-1990s, they were selling 4 million copies per month, with over 400 million English language books currently in print. There were some legal disputes involving the series, but Schelet Scholastic purchased the full rights to it in 2003.

In 1996, four years later, Scholastic published the first of many Animorphs books, which I will admit, I don't think I've ever read any of them, nor do I remember watching the Nickelodeon series, but I have spent a fair amount of time sitting in a beanbag chair in my classroom's reading area just staring at the covers.

The following year, they published the first Captain Underpants book, written by Dave Pilkey, who later went on to author the Dogman series, also published by Scholastic. Personally, As someone who was a kid in the 1990s, this right here is like an all-star lineup so far, that was followed by the most successful book series ever, Harry Potter, written by J. K. Rowling.

Scholastic won the U. S. publishing rights to the original book for $105,000 and went on to publish the rest of the series, typically breaking records with each new release. Specifically, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold 8. 3 million copies in the U. S. within the first 24.

As you could imagine, publishing Harry Potter helped bring Scholastic up to that next level. They actually reinvested a lot of the profits to expand their book clubs, including that $400 million acquisition that I mentioned earlier.

In 2008, Scholastic started publishing The Hunger Games series, written by Suzanne Collins, that collectively went on to sell over 100 million copies. And then, finally, in 2016, they started publishing The Bad Guys series, written by Aaron Blabey.

I didn't want to keep saying it over and over because everything on this list except I Spy has been adapted into multiple movies or television shows, most of which have been extremely successful. I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say that Scholastic is at least partially responsible for the popularity of everything on this list.

And I also want to point out that in 2024, Scholastic paid over $180 million to acquire a nine-story media group that included the animation studio Brown Bag Films that is behind popular children's television shows like Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood and Doc McStuffins. I know, it just keeps going; there is so much more that could be explored here.

Scholastic has been behind so much stuff when it comes to young readers and education, so I recommend you look further into it if you want to build a fuller picture. For this video, my intention was simply to help you understand the size and the growth of the company by highlighting some of the bigger, more impactful parts of it, along with the parts that I felt would be more recognizable and relatable to my audience.

And I have to say that the cover to their 10-K annual report might just be the coolest one that I have ever seen. Let me know in the comments what are your thoughts about Scholastic. Is it bigger than you realized? And if so, what parts were you most surprised to learn about?

Like many of you watching, I'm sure, Scholastic was a meaningful part of my childhood, so this was a great opportunity for me to talk about all this stuff and maybe help put it into context as far as the company behind it and how it evolved. I'm curious to hear about your favorite Scholastic series, and feel free to share any memories that you might have about those book fairs, and any other thoughts you have about Scholastic; leave them in the comments. I'd like to hear what you have to say.