One thing that initially looked interesting about the Science Fiction Book Club that I'd seen in a few reviews was that you could find popular books by using the search box that weren't viewable on the SFBC site if you simply browsed around by clicking. I'd read a little of The Night Swimmer on my Android's Kindle app, and liked it enough to see how expensive it'd be to grab from the SFBC.

1.) Pretty expensive. $17.50. Kindle is $12 and the hardback (cheapest is new) is $12.25 shipped, so close to the usual SFBC markup.

2.) It won't count towards my required purchases.

That second discovery is what got me. I'm not sure why I'd pay the extra $5-6 to order from the Book Club if there's no benefit for doing so. The "learn more" link about the Book Search Plus "feature" even goes so far as to say...

These books may ship separately from other books in your order. Since Book Search Plus orders are shipped by third party businesses, we are unable to control or track the shipment of your order.


... so my guess is that you're simply using the SFBC as the middle man. There's also a buy 2, get 1 free (of course, since I just bought two to get one for $1.99 last month) deal going now as well, and Book Search Plus books (here called BooksearchPLUS) don't count there either.

DVDs, merchandise, audio, BooksearchPLUS, and Clearance titles are not eligible for this offer. For additional books excluded from this offer, please see list below.


So the review that said Book Search Plus was a neat feature doesn't click with me. Seems easier to hunt those down on Amazon than to use the SFBC as a buyer.

That said, I'm quite enjoying REAMDE. Not sure how many times it can be read before the glue binding gives out, but n > 1, so I'm happy enough. I think if you like to buy books the moment they're released (or like to preorder them) to read, not keep in crazy pristine condition and sell later, the club is actually a relatively decent deal -- iff you limit your buying to new releases and a few omnibuses. I've had three books come with slight damage, obviously from the mailing (two damaged by the off-spec sized Steve Jobs bio, which ground into two books while in the mail, and some damage to the top left corner of the front cover of REAMDE with a little damage to the tops of the pages) out of 8, so we're not going great getting books in super condition. But, again, the pages are all there.

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