27 Surprising Things You Don't Know About the Elf on the Shelf, Straight From the Creator

In 2005, Chanda got an agent who took this now hugely successful brand to a number of publishing houses, but they all turned the Elf on the Shelf down. "Nobody wanted it; nobody wanted anything to do with it. It was one of those moments in your life where you just know you had to do something with it, or it was nothing more than a good idea you had," Chanda said. "So that’s when we decided to self-publish. We had, and I do mean zero money, and then we started the company on some personal credit cards. My sister had sold her house in Philadelphia and put a little bit of the profits from that into the company, and that was kind of our first foray into the experience."