When we first began designing and publishing commemorative books about ten years ago, all costs were invoiced to the institution. As budgets have tightened for privates and publics alike, we reassessed our method of producing the books. We decided to accept the risk for the design, production and marketing of the book and retain the revenues from the prepublication sales effort to cover most of the production costs. Then we sell the remaining inventory to the institution at 50 percent of the list price. Most colleges and universities work with their campus bookstores and make them available at alumni events. All institutions like to have a quantity on the shelf for giving to special guests. We have averaged between six and eight percent return on the alumni and friends list. This method of financing the book reduces the overall cost to the institution to about 60 percent of the total cost. Once you know what your mail list quantity will be, you can roughly estimate the institution’s obligation.