Since about mid-February, Barnes & Noble has been rolling out its revised membership offerings. So let’s see what you can get by signing up with Barnes & Noble and how it compares to their old plan.
The Old Membership & Other Programs
For years, Barnes & Noble has offered shoppers the ability to sign up for their discount card. Aptly called Membership, the loyalty program offered free shipping with no minimum purchase, 10% off items in-store (minus typical exclusions like gift cards and Nook devices), 40% off bestsellers, and more for $25 a year.
Around 2020, the company began restricting the 10% off with sale items generally being excluded.
Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble also had a Kids’ Club, whereby tying a child (or children’s) name to an account, that account would earn $5 for every $100 spent on kids’ books and toys along with offers like a free treat on the child’s birthday.
Teachers and other educators could sign up for the Educator program for 20% off items for classroom use, with occasional 25% off days (usually around back-to-school time).
Anyone signing up for emails was also eligible to receive special coupons at various intervals, but Members would get them more often and/or with a better discount. However, these coupons started being sent out less and less over the years, and eventually, Membership would not stack with them.
2023 Loyalty Programs
In January 2023, Kids’ Club was retired as part of the shift to the new, as of then unreleased program.
Now, though, changes have and are coming. Online shows the new offerings in Beta, and various stores were (or are) part of a pilot program and have been shifting away from the previous programs.
First, now anyone can rewards with the new Barnes & Noble Rewards.
With this free program, Rewards members earn a stamp with every $10 spent in a transaction. For example, a $19.99 Blu-ray, for instance, would earn one stamp, $55 worth of books would earn 5 stamps, but $5 would earn 0 stamps. By earning 10 stamps, a $5 reward certificate is earned. Barnes & Noble clarifies that on online orders, the stamps are earned as items are shipped.
Enrolling is free, and stamps will expire if the account is inactive for 12 months. Rewards will not, however, expire.
Barnes & Noble Membership is now being phased out for Barnes & Noble Premium Membership.
Like before, paying for the program means free shipping with no minimum requirement and 10% off most in-store items. It also includes the Kids’ Club birthday treat. Now, though, the 10% off also works online (minus third-party and digital items). Other new benefits include free upsizes at the café, one free tote, and exclusive deals and early access. With these additions comes an increase in the annual fee to $39.99.
Current Members can keep their Membership until it expires or choose to pay the upgrade free. If they want to keep Membership until it expires, they will need to add on B&N Rewards to earn stamps.
The Educator program is also being slowly discontinued with it being officially discontinued on April 12th, but current enrollees are eligible for one free year of Premium.
Employees as well must choose between their Membership and employee discount.
Good or Bad? Worth It or Not?
So Premium comes with a significant jump in costs. Which means there are going to be questions about whether it’s worth it or not.
Let’s start with free shipping. Barnes & Noble has free shipping sitewide on $40, and with the rising cost of books and other items, it doesn’t take long to reach that threshold. You would have to buying only single volumes of manga or movie/budget releases on a regular basis to be getting a lot of value from this. As a comparison, Best Buy offers free shipping when you sign up for free or spend $25 for free ship from Amazon — or subscribe to their immensely popular Prime program. I used to take advantage of it a lot thanks to Manga Mondays, but that’s been long discontinued.
With the 10% off also being available online now, Barnes & Noble shoppers also don’t need to use the ship-to-home option unless there is somehow an in-store only deal that still applies. That’s convenient for shoppers, although maybe not so much for a store’s sales numbers. But be aware: there are items not eligible for free shipping, like the first box set of Fairy Tail — despite other box sets like Set 2 being included. So a Premium Member would really only be saving about 5% on this box due to $5.99 needing to go to shipping.
As a comparison, as of this writing, Amazon and many third party sellers will ship this same set for free for as low as $65 (about $72 from Amazon directly).
Yes, the 10% off is nice, but quickly browsing, I see a lot of titles like the above set where Premium Members’ pricing would still be higher than elsewhere. However, with many volumes and sets being sold at MSRP, that 10% discount is certainly better than none. But to ensure the best deal even with factoring stamps, Premium Members will want to comparison shop.
According to the terms and conditions, the 10% can’t be applied to “products featured in certain designated promotions or sales” and items with a coupon. So your mileage may vary on getting the 10% on online items that aren’t at list price or during sales like the recent buy one anime/manga title get a second 50% off. I know from reading forums in previous years when the 10% off store items was starting to get more restrictive some people would buy a title and get the 10%, but someone else in a different area would use their Member card and not get the 10% discount. Plus, going back to the aforementioned BOGO50% sale, some volumes from a series would get a discount but others wouldn’t; and certain titles not due out for months were eligible but one coming in just a week weren’t. So expect some wonkiness with how the 10% works online, although I imagine there will be some great deals that will manage to sneak through.
Meanwhile, offers will also supposedly be tailored to individuals based on their past purchases, but what kind of offers and how often are currently unknown. Same with the other special offer and early access benefits. They could be the same as Membership or have been retooled.
Also, as a reminder, according to the rules, the loyalty cards are for an single individual. There’s no second free card a la Sam’s Club/Costco or allowed for a household like Amazon Prime. Something to keep in mind in case you get a store that is strict.
The tote I imagine is something very few people care about.
Café is probably one of those love-it-or-hate-it benefits depending how often you go there for drinks. I know I’ve seen people wait for the store to open and go in just for a coffee, so I imagine they’d be overjoyed at getting some extra caffeine for the money. For me, it’s something I wouldn’t use even once a year. Once every couple years at best. Plus, the free kids birthday treat is kind of bizarre to have only for paid members, as not everyone has kids, and it’s only good for ages 12 and under anyway. Kids’ Club was free before, so making it only for Premium Members is a significant change.
Now on to the Kids’ Club benefit that was expanded: the Rewards system. I see a lot of people sharing in the disappointment that it’s based on every $10 in a transaction rather than a cumulative total or a point system. For instance, picking up one Shonen Jump/Shojo Beat, for instance, earns you no points in Barnes & Nobles’ program. But if it were based on a running tally, that would earn you about $9 (depending on rounding) out of the $100 needed to be spent. I guess the company is hoping you’ll add a cart filler when you are so close to earning another stamp. I’m surprised though they didn’t make it a point system and so Premium Members could earn more. Say, while Rewards subscribers earn 99 points on a volume of Spy x Family, Premium would earn, say, 108 (1.1x) out of the 1,000 points needed for a reward. Or make it so that Rewards members need to spend $150 to earn $5 while Premium gets one at $100. Still, if you ever plan on spending more than $10 at once at Barnes & Noble, you might as well sign up for Rewards.
While not an important benefit if you are mainly interested in manga, no more 40% off bestsellers is a huge loss. I imagine that will push a lot of people to go hunting at Amazon and elsewhere. Especially if it’s popular enough to be a bestseller, a book is also likely available in-store at places like Walmart and Target. The former will match their online store and Target will pricematch their site and certain competitors’. Members could almost guarantee they’d be getting near or the lowest price on current hits, but now that is no more.
There’s no point in not signing up for Rewards just in case you end up spending money at Barnes & Noble, but the Premium Membership definitely is targeting a specific subset of customers. Unless you know you are going to be shopping there a lot, $40 is a lot to add on to your total at the register. $25 might be easily justified if saving $2-5 up front, meaning it’s easy to associate a single $20 bill as all you have to spend to break even. Now that is bumped up to about $35, which means people either picture at least two bills (2-20s) or the less common — and more valuable — $50 bill. Either way, that’s an image that is likely to cause reluctance to splurge on a Premium Membership.
Final Thoughts
I had Membership years ago, but I stopped renewing after sales items no longer could be combined with my 10% off. I’ve only stopped at Barnes & Noble a couple of times in the past year, and only once do I remember spending more than a few dollars at once. Online, I haven’t placed an order in year since I can shop at Amazon, Best Buy, or other stores. It’s also a matter of convenience for me to stick with Right Stuf as my primary manga store even though they have their own downsides like not-so-easy (or free) returns like at Barnes & Noble.
But for those who are most primarily interested in free shipping on books, Books-A-Million’s Millionaire Club is now more enticing. It also still features an in-store 10% discount, exclusive deals, and up to 40% off bestsellers for those who like to keep up with the latest hits. It still costs $25 like the old Barnes & Noble Membership. Even though Books-A-Million has a smaller store footprint than Barnes & Noble, for those that have both nearby, Books-A-Million might be better if a) you think that the online 10% and café upgrades might not be worth an extra $15 a year or b) that the up to 40% off bestsellers may be more beneficial than occasional $5 rewards. Books-A-Million has both brick-and-mortar and online manga sales, so that is something to take into account.
I’ve also seen social posts from employees and educators upset about their changes. Workers can no longer get their discount and their order shipped for free. Teachers, meanwhile, are going from an ongoing 20% (and sometimes 25%!) discount to just a one-time $40 savings. That’s a huge blow, especially with so many teachers and schools operating on a shoestring budget. Since stores have been slowly rolling out the shift to the new Rewards + Premium Membership, hopefully they can get some last-minute use out of the Educator program. Otherwise, I imagine after their free Premium Membership expires, educators will be migrating elsewhere.
Kids’ Club, though, trades the annual bakery good for children up to 12 for earning money storewide and not just on kids’ stuff for every $100. However, Kids’ Club kept a running tally of your spending versus only getting stamps for every $10. Still, this is for everyone and not just parents/guardians, so that’s a big plus.
But for the general public, whether the new Premium Membership is a good value is going to be even more divided than opinions on Membership. For regular Barnes & Noble shoppers, the added price is easily canceled out by the new 10% off online and other benefits. But for semi-regular shoppers or those who were interested only in certain aspects for $25, Premium Memberships are a horrid value. For me, I’m in the latter category, and I think Barnes & Noble needs a bit more wow to edge others into at least considering paying for their loyalty program.