khayo@sonia.cs.ucla.edu (Erazm J. Behr) (10/06/87)
*Please edit the newsgroups when following up* - I probably put
too many up there; sorry.
Those of you who are active on CompuServe and who were
intrigued by their "Small Computer Book Club" introductory
offer, may be interested in this:
The offer looks good; you pick 3 books for $1 + S/H
each (total ca. $8) and you get, as promotion, a copy of
"How to get the most out of CS". I looked closely only at the
Mac-related books & decided I could use "Mac Revealed I & II"
as doorstops, plus the "Directory of on-line services". Their
selection isn't great, but for that price - who would complain.
Those of you who have seen this on CS probably noticed that
(at least in the on-line version) there is *no* information
whatsoever about any terms of membership, which comes with
that generous offer. In the package you get there is still
no mention of how many books you're obligated to buy, only that
"you will have to purchase the # of future selections that is
indicated on a copy of the initial agreement" - but I haven't
signed or seen any such thing! I called them & found out that
I'm required to buy 3 more books (their prices look like 5-20%
off retail, but I haven't seen the monthly catalog yet so can't
say about the selection they actually have.) I also learned that
I can return the whole shebang & cancel the membership - which I
am considering now.
Other than that, the whole affair works just like BOMC or the
various record clubs. If you have some kind of discount at a
local university bookstore, it's probably not worth it - the
initial "gift" probably won't offset the price of the next 3
orders.
Some examples from a few leaflets they enclosed with my books:
"Using Turbo Prolog" (MS DOS vsn.) - 15.95 vs. 19.95 retail;
"Advanced MS-DOS" - 17.95/22.95; "Command Performance: Appleworks -
15.50/18.95; "The C programmer's handbook" (AT&T) - 13.25/14.95;
"The IBM PC from the inside out" - 13.95/16.95 etc. You see that
some of this is rather old stuff, and even though it should be
clear from my selections that I'm a Mac owner, there wasn't a single
thing about the Mac there. That's why I'm posting to the IBM world,
although it's against my nature :-)
Hope this will help you make a decision. BTW, their number
(MacMillan Book Clubs switchboard) is (609) 461 9339 - it's
not printed anywhere on what they send you.
Regards - Eric
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>>>>---------------> khayo@math.ucla.edu