One Spirit is a book club committed to personal growth, wellness and spiritual development. Founded in 1995, the club offers books, multimedia and related merchandise to the community of members who are looking to enhance their lives with meaning, balance and spirituality. One Spirit relies on what could be called a standard operational procedure for book clubs: an enticing introductory offer is combined with an obligation to buy a certain amount of books within a certain amount of time at a discounted price, and spiced with an attractive catalog that helps the members wade through the plethora of reading choices.
Let's see how this works in more detail.
The choice of available books is the first thing to be considered before joining any book club. Great introductory offers, special deals and low prices, all that is pointless if the club doesn't have what you're looking for.
Before we get into details, let us mention that One Spirit Book Club actually features two different selections. Initial selection is intended for prospective members: it is available for everyone to search through and browse. This is where you choose your five introductory books from. Member selection expands on this inaugural library significantly, and is accessible to active members only.
Initial Selection
To potential members, One Spirit Book Club offers quite an extensive assortment of books – over 500, mostly hardcover editions – covering a range of topics: afterlife and past lives; confidence and self-esteem; inner peace and meditation; ghosts, spells and witchcraft; astrology and numerology; health and exercise; dreams, nightmares and vision quests; Tai Chi, Reiki, feng shui, Confucianism, Zen Buddhism, and more.
Fiction, of course, is not one of One Spirit's stronger points, but those who are into dragons, vampires, druids, elves, fairies and such mystical creatures will still find a decent collection of titles to choose from.
Member Selection
Members have a much wider selection of books to choose from. They have access to all the books carried by other Booksonline.com clubs (over 70,000 titles), including Doubleday Book Club, The Literary Guild, Book-of-the-Month Club, The Good Cook, Science Fiction Book Club, Rhapsody (romance books), Mystery Guild, Children's Book of the Month, Black Expressions (books by, for and about African-Americans), History Book Club and many others. Note that all the same rules apply to these books (a purchase counts toward member's commitment obligation etc).
In addition to books, members are also offered videos, CDs and cassettes about personal growth, wellness and spirituality, plus other interesting merchandise such as tarot card decks, jewlery, statues, candle holders, Celtic paraphanelia, massaging tools, face/body creams... the list goes on.
Joining
Joining One Spirit Book Club is quite easy: it takes only a few minutes and can be done on the club web site. Not even a credit card is necessary. To each new member OSBC extends a great introductory offer: 5 books of your choice for $2. Simply start shopping and add five books to your cart. When done, you will be taken to a page where you can review the contents of your shopping cart. At this point you can still remove an item if you change your mind and continue shopping for another one. One Spirit also offers an opportunity to buy one or even two more books at 50% off (look in the upper right corner) and thus reduce your commitment right away. It's a fair offer, so you might want to take it.
At the next stage you will need to enter your personal information, which includes your name, shipping address and e-mail address. Phone number is optional. That done, you will be prompted to choose your billing method. You can either pay by credit card, or select the “Bill Me” option in which case you will be sent an invoice to the address you provided on the previous page.
The last step requires you to set up a password which you'll need to access the members only area. Setting up the password will also confirm your membership. And that's it. You're in.
Modus Operandi
As a member you will receive the free One Spirit Book Club Review approximately once every 3 weeks. Each issue of the Review features a Selection, a book chosen by the club's editors as the must-read of the moment. In addition, there is over 150 other books for you to consider.
The Review offers real value. Dozens of books on spirituality, healing, self-help etc are being published each month, so the editors have to wade through many a title to present you the ones to consider. Becoming a Featured Selection, therefore, is no small feat; only the best make it to that status. Moreover, the Selections these days are accommodated to your personal taste, based on your previous purchases and declared interests. It is a fact that many people actually keep memberships in different book clubs mainly for this reason: to receive recommendations on what's worth reading.
The current Featured Selection will be sent to you automatically, unless you tell the club otherwise. You can do so online, via the club web site, or by returning the Member Reply Form (included with the Magazine) through regular mail. This practice is known as “negative option” or “advance consent” marketing and it has been utilized by book clubs such as One Spirit for more than eight decades. Some people consider it a nuisance, a relic of the past, others find it convenient.
While we are inclined to agree with the former group, in all fairness it needs to be said that these days the hassle really is reduced to a minimum: it's just a matter of logging in to your account on the club's official web site, selecting the “Featured Selections” tab and clicking on the “Don't Send” button. And that's it. You're done. It only takes a minute or so of your time once every three weeks. The important thing is not to forget to do it, and One Spirit Book Club will even assist you in the matter by sending you a reminder e-mail before the Selection is shipped.
Finally, if you do happen to forget to cancel the Selection, you can always send it back if you really don't want it. You won't even have to pay for the return postage so long as the package was not open.
Managing Your Account Online
In this respect One Spirit Book Club deserves much plaudit: the web site makes it easy and convenient to manage every aspect of your membership online. View detailed order and payment history; check the account balance, remaining commitment, and the shipping status of all recent orders; respond to the current Featured Selection or view older Selections; change your billing and shipping address and other personal details including payment method; choose shipping method, and, of course, browse or search OS's entire library and place orders.
You might also want to participate in One Spirit's online community, where you can share your own book reviews and recommendations with other club members.
Once your commitment is fulfilled, you are free to cancel your membership at One Spirit. The process, not surprisingly, is a trifle more difficult than joining. You don't have an option to simply close your account online, but instead have to send an e-mail to One Spirit Book Club customer service, or a written cancellation request to the Member Service Center. A bit of a complication, in our opinion not entirely necessary. But then, perhaps we are being too finicky here. It is, after all, just one simple e-mail.
It goes without saying that you will always be welcome back should you decide to rejoin. You can do so simply by visiting the club web site and enrolling again, as described earlier in this review. Also, you are likely to receive periodic invitations from One Spirit to rejoin the club; usually there is a special offer attached to such an invitation, and these offers are often even more advantageous than the standard one available on the web site (lower commitment, for example).
From the great introductory offer, via club discounts to various special offers, savings are undoubtedly one of the best things about One Spirit Book Club and for many probably the #1 reason to join. This being such an important subject, we have put together a separate page with detailed information on it and a real-world example.
Shipping Rates
A word or two on shipping charges as they are somewhat complicated. With the initial order the cost is $5.74 for the first book and $1.99 for each additional book. Somewhat high, but we suspect this goes some way toward recouping the loss the club has to be generating by giving you first 6 books for practically nothing. With subsequent orders the charges are $3.99 for the first book and $2.49 for others. If your total order exceeds $25, One Spirit Book Club will charge you $2.49 flat shipping rate for the whole package.
Free shipping would have been better; it certainly has a nicer ring to it, plus all decent online book shops are offering it. That said, with online retailers not each and every item is usually eligible for free shipping, so you might end up having to pay for it anyway. One Spirit, on the other hand, will ship you everything you put in your basket for $2.49 as long as the total of your order exceeds $25. So, all things considered, this is not a bad deal.
For credit card orders, Express Delivery is available. Express orders incur an additional $5.99 per shipment. State sales tax will be added if shipped to NY, PA, IN, TX, TN, NJ, or SC.
Payment
One Spirit Book Club gives you an option to pay by credit card (Visa, MasterCard, American Express), or be billed later. If you choose to pay by credit card, you will be charged when your order ships. Otherwise, the bill will arrive with the shipment and you can settle it either by using your credit card, or by sending in money order or check.
In order for this to work, the club grants you a certain amount of credit. Each time you pay on time, your credit increases, up to a maximum of $500. Note that you might be charged a late fee (approximately $4), if your bill is not settled on time. However, this fee can usually be removed by giving a call to customer support and explaining why the payment is late.
Billing methods are part of your profile and you can add or change your preferred method as you like. You will also have a chance to change the method during the checkout process. If you don't, the method specified the last time you ordered from the site will be used.
If you are enthusiastic about personal growth and spirituality, joining One Spirit Book Club is worth a serious consideration. You get first five books for next to nothing, up to 30% discount on all subsequent books you purchase, plus a shiny magazine in your mail every three weeks or so with book reviews, author interviews, and book-industry related articles.
Since you are not required to part with any money up front, joining is completely devoid of risk. If for whatever reason you don't like the introductory package, or if you simply change your mind, just return the package to One Spirit Book Club within 20 days and that's that. No strings attached.
The only real downside to the whole deal is the somewhat awkward business model the club employs, which requires you to take action if you don't want to take action – that is, buy the proposed book. In our opinion, however, just getting a free magazine with recommendations on what to read outweighs this inconvenience by a hefty margin.
Good thing is, even if you feel the practice is an absolute deal breaker, you can still take advantage of the incredible introductory offer of 5 books for $2 if it tickles your fancy. How? Join, take care of the commitment at once and cancel. You can walk away with 9 spiritual books for less than $70, and that includes shipping charges. Hardly a deal you will find anywhere else.
