
Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 15 of 16
  1. #1
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    130

    Science Fiction Book Club

    Is anyone else here a member?? I just joined, and waiting for my books to come.

  2. #2
    Seeker of Stuff Moderator Kamakhya's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2002
    Location
    Somewhere to the Left
    Posts
    795
    Sorry, I'm not. I've considered it, and may well go for it one of these days. I just have a thing about book club editions. It is a great way to get hardback books if you don't mind that they are book club editions. I've also heard that it can take a while for the books to come.

    Kamakhya

  3. #3
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    North Carolina
    Posts
    379
    Also, the cost for shipping and handling can eat away at any discount you are getting. I've got a membership at Waldenbooks preferred reader club, and factoring all the S&H plus the wait for the books and the sometimes weird shape/size, I decided that a mail order book club didn't really give me any more savings or satisfaction than the Waldenbooks PR card.

  4. #4
    Who me? SusF's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    Oklahoma, USA
    Posts
    907
    I am a member. The books are SO much cheaper from it, and the shipping is not bad. The key is to order more than one book per shipping.

    I don't order much, but I love the Omnibus editions of classics. The quality of these books has gone up considerably, too.

    Susan

  5. #5
    Next to Arch Stanton ezchaos's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2002
    Location
    Maine, US
    Posts
    870
    I've been a member of the SFBC for about 2 or 3 years. At this point, I have mixed feelings about it:

    Pros-
    1.The club has some hard to find books available. For exapmple, they have all of Vance's 'Dying Earth' series.
    2.They also like to put 2 or three book series into one volume. This is very nice.
    3.Pretty much all they sell are hardcover books. Even with the S&H, the prices are still better than buying most hardcover books from the book store. New hardcover books are going for around $29 in the US.
    4.They sometimes have specials on books. 'Perdido Street Station' is on special now for around $6. With S&H it came to $10. You'd be hard to beat that price anywhere.

    Cons:
    1.They don't have a huge selection of books. It's not like going to Amazon and browsing for something to buy. You sometimes have to really scour SFBC's site.
    2.I've had problems with my last two orders. They seemed to take quite a while to get to my home. 'PSS' was the last book I bought. I ordered it online on March 15th. On April 15th I still hadn't received it. I had to e-mail their customer svc dept and then had the book about a week later.I don't mind waiting 2 or 3 weeks, but 5 weeks is ridiculous. I prefer to be billed, so I don't know if that's the problem or what.
    3.They have one or two 'books of the month' You have to tell them not to send them to you, or else they will. Actually, it's not that bad because you can do this on-line and they give you a pretty long window.

    If you are a 'scifi/fantasy scholar' and have read just about every book out there, then I don't think it would be worth it to joing the SFBC. Otherwise, I think it's a good deal.

  6. #6
    \m/ BEER \m/ Moderator Rob B's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2000
    Location
    Near Cows in the Garden State
    Posts
    10,885
    I've been a member off an on for the past few years, I joined again about a year ago.

    The reason I keep sticking around are their great omnibus volumes such as Orson Scott Cards Alvin Maker books. They've condensed 5 books in to two volumes.

    The also bring out classics like a Conan book, a recent HP Lovecraft Volume, Vance's Compleat Dying Earth.

    And how can you beat the introductory offer of 5 or 6 books for about $5 ($1 plus shipping and handling)

    The last time I joined, I ordered The Encyclopedia of Fantasy as one of my introductory books, normally a $75 book, not bad.

    However, they often only do one or two printings of the omnibus volumes. I remember a few years ago, they had an omnibus of Silverberg's Majipoor series. It must have sold out of the print-run since they don't offer it anymore. Same thing happened when I joined and wanted to get Zelazney's First Chronicles of Amber, they had just run out of the print run and weren't planning on going back for another.

    In my recent club flyer, I was happy to see they brought back Donaldson's First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever.

    ezchaos, perhaps with PSS, they were in between print runs.

  7. #7
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    May 2002
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    28
    What buying requirements does the S.F. Book Club operate (after the initial 5/6 book deal)?

    I viewed their website, but hard information is a bit lacking there.



    [This message has been edited by Raisuli (edited May 08, 2002).]

  8. #8
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    130
    The requirements you first get 5 books for $1 Then another book for $5.99 + tax/ shipping & handling. Then you have to buy 4 books within the next 2 years. This is the Canadian version anyways.

  9. #9
    \m/ BEER \m/ Moderator Rob B's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2000
    Location
    Near Cows in the Garden State
    Posts
    10,885
    Yeah, something like four books over the next year or two.

    This isn't so bad when you consider they occaisionally run sales where you buy 3 and get 1 free.

  10. #10
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    130
    OMG!!!! I finally got those books today. It only took what, 2 1/2 months?? Those little hardcovers are so cute.

  11. #11
    I was a member in the early 80's. They may not be the best editions but the books I got included some of the best written (Foundation, Amber series, PC Hodgell's fist book).

  12. #12
    Next to Arch Stanton ezchaos's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2002
    Location
    Maine, US
    Posts
    870
    CR, the club can be a little slow in sending items you've ordered, unless you want to pay outrageous S/H. I'm wondering if they are quicker to ship if you use a credit card, which I never do.

  13. #13
    \m/ BEER \m/ Moderator Rob B's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2000
    Location
    Near Cows in the Garden State
    Posts
    10,885
    It figures after the nice things I had to say about the Club above, they seem to be giving me a hard time.

    I order 4 books about a month ago. One of which was James Luceno's SW: NEW JEDI ORDER book. However, they sent me CLOAK OF DECEPTION his prequel era book. I emailed them about the problem and said they would fix it.
    About a week and a half later I received another copy of CLOAK OF DECEPTION. Again, I e-mailed the club and they said they would rectify the situation.

    Last Friday I received Stackpoles SW: NEW JEDI ORDER book, which incidentally was part of the original order of 4 books and I did receive. So that is now 3 times I 've tried to recveive the correct book but I've got 2 books I don't want and a duplicate of one I already had.

    Hopefully on the FOURTH try they will get it right.

  14. #14
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Nov 1999
    Location
    Centerville Ga USA
    Posts
    15
    I am and I've gotten alot good book from there.
    I especially like the omnibus books because you get three or four books in one.

  15. #15
    The Doctor... Sammie's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    Surrey
    Posts
    4,949
    I belong to a UK based sf/f bookclub - you guys are being all exclusionist and only talking about US/Canadian stuff, ar'n't you.

    Neway - mine is good, but still worth checking aginst amazon prices before buying.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •  
http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?539-Science-Fiction-Book-Club
www.sffworld.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-10
106589
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:ZNKN6CJR76AVYPA7GCWRJVZYJ4EIVDTX
<urn:uuid:681ba907-506b-4ae8-ae7c-de2b6d9f421a>
2014-03-10T07:36:28Z
209.59.161.60
sha1:L4TFGUM3RPTHUH432NUK22ZZ7P2FDPWX
<urn:uuid:1cb32575-1c61-40be-b593-ab7dad5616c5>
http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?539-Science-Fiction-Book-Club
length
response
<urn:uuid:f32d0591-42f3-4315-947c-b55bba46b48f>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-183-142-35.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-10
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for March 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf