Science Fiction Book Club and other clubs dead

[Bright-Raven]

Bertelsmann recently acquired Bookspan in a merger, and as a result, 280 employees and several book club groups will be phased out over the next 12-24 months. Although a complete list of the clubs being closed was not available, among those which will be shut are the conservative club, American Compass as well as InsightOut Book Club, which is aimed at the gay community. Other clubs being closed include Behavioral Science Book Service, Early Childhood Teachers's Club, Nurse's Book Society and Equestrian's Edge. The clubs will be phased out over the rest of the year and members will be given the chance to transfer to a different club. Books from some clubs will also be made available through the general interest and other specialized clubs.

This will also be killing the Science Fiction Book Club, despite numerous reports by Bookspan representatives denying it.

SFBC Senior Editor Ellen Asher has been offered an early retirement package, and other editor for the group, Andrew Wheeler - who was the one who procured most of SFBC's comics related and media related properties - has been let go or will be let go entirely (details are sketchy) after 15 years of service with the company.

I'd say that effectively kills the club, don't you? Supposedly while contracts for the SFBC will be fulfilled through the Doubleday system, effectively the SF, Fantasy and Comics industry just lost a valuable distribution source for their products.

Bookspan will now be merged into the BMG Columbia House label.

Sources:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6445139.html

http://www.locusmag.com/

http://sfscope.com/2007/05/ellen-asher-leaving-science-fi.html

http://www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp/2007/05/24/sf-book-club/

[TinMan]

Well that sucks horribly, I just joined the SFBC back in december....

[JeffreyWKramer]

I can't say I'm going to mourn the Behavioral Science Book Club, which is the only one of that batch with which I've had any recent involvement. Their selection of books was exceptionally poor, and when shipping costs are factored in, their prices were higher than what I'd pay at Borders for more popular materials. One could occasionally save a bit of money over Amazon or other online retailers on specialty books, but unfortunately, there were almost no specialty books worth actually purchasing at all.

I cancelled my BSBC membership many years ago, and looks at their repeated "please rejoin again" offers and at the current selections some of my colleagues were offered caused me to never regret that choice a bit.

[Slam_Bradley]

I dropped my SFBC membership after I got Robert E. Howard's Kull collection in hardback (it was the only place to get in hardbound). By the time I factored in the shipping costs and the aggrivation factor (saying "no" I don't want these books) it was easier and just as cheap to get the books I was interested in at Amazon or on E-bay. Also I was really only interested in books that would make up about 5 % of their mailer in any given month (and I already owned a lot of them).

[JeffreyWKramer]

I dropped my SFBC membership after I got Robert E. Howard's Kull collection in hardback (it was the only place to get in hardbound). By the time I factored in the shipping costs and the aggrivation factor (saying "no" I don't want these books) it was easier and just as cheap to get the books I was interested in at Amazon or on E-bay. Also I was really only interested in books that would make up about 5 % of their mailer in any given month (and I already owned a lot of them).

Back in the day, SFBC was a pretty good thing. Back when I was in high school and college - during the late 70s and early 80s - the SFBC editions were the only way one could get hold of a lot of classic SF in hardback, and in some cases, it was they only way one could get those books at all. Things like Miller's A CANTICLE FOR LIEBOWITZ and AE Van Vogt's SLAN and Bester's masterworks and some of Phil Dick's lesser books had fallen out of print, because back in those days when retail outlets were the only method of selling books really available to publishers, it simply wasn't economically feasible for them to keep so much stuff constantly in print. Amazon.com and online shopping models in general have changed all that. It's now economically feasible for publishers to do smaller printings of things (they don't have to cover the entire market to find an audience if the audience goes looking for their stuff), and online marketing can produce profits with fewer units sold. As a result, there's actually more good stuff in bookstores than there was now, and if you can't find it in a bookstore or you simply don't have a good bookstore in your area, there's always online.

These days... well, most of that stuff you could only get via SFBC, you can readily enough get elsewhere. They still do a good job with special collections and collected editions, but, honestly, the last time I looked over a SFBC offering, it appeared that probably 3/4 of the stuff was crappy STAR WARS and STAR TREK novelizations and FORGOTTEN REALMS book and other awful crap like that, and a good chunk of the rest was super-popular stuff like the Harry Potter books or Laura Hamilton's novels, which one can find readily enough just about anywhere.

[Athena Bast]

Does this effect their Canadian branches or just the base American ones?

[Bright-Raven]

Athena:

It would be best to assume it affects the Canadian as well until there is an official news release from multiple sources saying otherwise, as Bertelsmann is in Germany and I am presuming this merger is a worldwide one.

Slam: I just made it clear not to send me anything unless I specifically ordered it so there was no worry about sending in the flyer saying "no, I don't want this month's selection".

*******

The real reason why this sucks:

I've purchased about 200-250 books through the SFBC over the past eight years, including my first Hamilton and Potter books. (And no Jeffrey, I would never have picked them up if not for SFBC. I didn't even know about Anita Blake until the SFBC was offering the first three novels in an omnibus, and the Potter craze had not yet hit when I got the first book.)

Not to mention all the omnibus titles where you get 3-in-1 collections or the short fiction collections that you will never find in any bookstore or online, because SFBC was the one putting them together specifically for their club in special editions. There are going to be a lot of authors whose work I won't be buying because it was more cost effective for me to wait for the omnibus edition and get three books in one edition for $35 hardcover than spend the money buying them as single books in HC.

If it weren't for SFBC, there's a good thirty novelists whom I can honestly say I would not have ever read their works. And now, there will be tons of authors whose works I won't be reading, because they won't be available at the local brick and mortar and I won't be looking for them because I won't know they exist.

And I know what you're going to say next - just online shop and get the discounts there.

The thing is not everyone can order books online. Not everyone has credit and debit cards, nor should they be required to have them, seeing as the supposed only true legal tender in this country is minted and paper money from the U.S. Treasury. Yet that's pretty much a necessity to purchase anything online. (Maybe you can buy through a PayPal type account through your checking also, I don't know.)

[Michael P]

Well, fluffernutters.

[DWEarhart]

That's odd, considering they just got a new editor. Rome Quezada.

From publishersweekly.com
5/31/07


After news of major cuts at Bookspan, three people have been named to new editorial positions. Deborah Sinclaire, most recently editor-in-chief of the History Book Club, has been named editor-in-chief of Book-of-the-Month Club. Sinclaire replaces Victoria Skurnick, who left after the merger to become an agent. Joseph Craig has been named executive editor of the History Book Club, moving over from his role as executive editor of the Scientific American Book Club. And Rome Quezada, arriving from William Morrow, where he was an associate editor, has been named editor of the Science Fiction Book Club, replacing Ellen Asher, who retired after 30 years with the company.

[Athena Bast]

I just came back to SFBC because I love the size of their hardcovers. They're not the standard holy huge size from the stores.

I just hope that all the books will still be available and it's just the name they are doing away with.