A Note on Book Clubs

You've probably seen their advertisements in the newspaper, in magazines, and online - get 6 books for 99¢ (plus shipping and handling), and the you have to buy so many more in the future.

This month I was kicking myself for having done one of those offers quite a while ago, and now I got a letter from the book club reminding me that I would have to either purchase 4 books to fulfill my obligation, or they would just bill me for the average price of a book (which they said was $18.37 each). I was very tempted to just ignore it. Since this isn't tied to my credit or SSN in any way, there's really nothing they can do if I don't pay (other than the letters and collection calls). But ethically I guess I have to - I did make an agreement with them.

So I logged on to their site and selected 2 books. I saw an ad on their site that if you purchased 2 books, you got a third free and free shipping. So that wouldn't make it too bad, especially with the shipping, as that's where they tend to stick it to you. I selected me 3 books and checked out. It came to $39.39 for 3 books - $13.13 each. This was actually cheaper than Amazon.com for a change (the same 3 books would have cost me $51.21 at Amazon.com). Today I logged on to purchase the remaining 2 books that I needed for to complete my agreement. These two books were cheaper ones. They no longer had the special of buy two get one, or the free shipping (and it had only been 3 days later), but they did do $5 off over $10. So I got two books for $21.02 with tax and shipping ($6.50 for shipping). These would have cost me about $35 on Amazon.com, but if I had selected used copies I could have gotten both of them for under $10.

If you're going to buy several books, one of these book clubs might work out for you, but if it's only 1 book you want, by the time they add on shipping and handling, you'd be better off getting it from Amazon.

I did have a good experience with the History Book Club. Their offer was you got 4 books for $1 each, plus shipping, with nothing else to buy. The total came to about $17 for that. That was a good deal. Columbia House also has a similar deal with music CDs - usually it's you get 7 now, then you buy one at normal prices, and get 4 more free. With shipping and everything it ends up to be about $40 for all the CD's, which isn't a bad price either.

My advice for you - stay away from those membership clubs unless the membership terms don't require you to buy anything else.