A Really New Catalog, Part 1

If you've ever seen one of our catalogs, then you've sort of seen ALL of our catalogs: They don't change very much.

Every one we've ever published is the same size, with one play per page, two color printing, and featuring line drawings from the shows and lots of teacher comments.

There are two problems: it's kind of hard to find what's new, and we don't do a good job of emphasizing our best selling plays.

The simple truth is that some of our plays are much more popular than others. I honestly don't think a show's popularity (or lack of) has much to do with whether it's good or not. Teachers seem to select shows that connect to the curriculum they teach. And if we put out a show that's not the right grade level for that curriculum, or a piece of rarely-taught curriculum, then it's not likely to sell very well.

Sometimes we get lucky. We put out "Character Matters" in the spring of 2005, thinking that probably we'd be lucky to sell a few copies. Instead it turned into our most popular play ever, and it continues in the number one sales position more than a year later.

So we thought we'd build on the success of the character show and we put out an anti-smoking play this January. In our mind, at least, the shows seemed connected. But I guess it was just in our minds---the anti-smoking show isn't selling well at all, despite the fact that we think it may be the best thing we've ever written.

Anyway, the reason I describe all this is to explain that we're moving to a larger page size in the next catalog, so we can start experimenting with showing plays at different sizes. Perhaps the all-time best-selling character play will get a page to itself, while a few plays that are less interesting to teachers will share a corner of page.

It's all an experiment...kind of like the rest of what we do in life.

Next time I'll tell you more about the adventures of the new catalog.