It is time for Paperback Book Swap and I to say goodbye.
Sniff....sort of.
I don't remember who it was who first told me about Paperback Book Swap. Barb? Larissa? Someone else? That conversation has been lost to the annals of time. At the time that I first learned about Paperback Book Swap, from now on to be referred to as PBS, I had a lot of books that I needed to find a good home for. A. LOT. OF. BOOKS. That cannot come as a surprise to you, the fact that I might have had like a bazillion books. But sometimes you just have to clean out some books, keeping the ones that make your heart sing and sending the rest off to a good home. I have given books away to Goodwill and to Half Price Books and other places. But books are like children, you just don't want to give them away to someone who will not love them as much as you do. It just seemed to me that Paperback Book Swap insured that they were going to someone who wanted them.
Besides, what was not to love about Paperback Book Swap. You listed the books that you had. If someone wanted that book PBS let you know that someone had requested it. You wrapped it up and sent it to the requester and when the book arrived at it's new home you got a nice credit dropped into your PBS account that you could use to request a book that you wanted. Easy Peasy. I quickly had a lot of credits to spend because it seemed that I had a lot of books that people wanted. I also leaned how to work the system, not in an illegal way mind you, but it quickly became clear to me that if I was lising a book that 10 or 20 or more people were also listing......I might still be holding onto that book for awhile. That sort of defeated the purpose of getting rid of books. So I learned to go onto PBS and look for the book that I was thinking about listing. If there were others also listing the book, I put it in the box to go to Goodwill. If the book wasn't in the system, I listed it and most of the time it immediately left my house. The only money it cost me was the money to send the book. WHen I requested a book it cost me nothing.
This was fine for a while, listing books and requesting books. My heart gave that little skip of joy when I saw that somethign had arrived from PBS. Not as big a skip if it came from someplace where smoking had been occuring but I could live with it. But then I realized that often times the book that I wanted wasn't available, I had to put it on my Wish List (along with everyone else waiting for that book) and just watch as I inched closer and closer to acquiring the book. Sometimes you wait A LONG TIME for a book. I had one book that I put on the wish list in 2008......and it finally became available to me late last year. After a time I stopped putting books on my Wish List because I often had to wait so long that it was just easier to buy it used on Amazon or find it at Half Price Books.
Last year and the year before that I barely had time to read (more than the 65-80 books a year I average) and my PBS credits just sat there. I would go on PBS to look for a book that I wanted and more often than not it wasn't available, so I just went off and did something else and left my credits there because they don't expire.
Then last week I got an email from PBS. As of the 15th of February they are changing their structure. I can either 1. Pay them $20/year for the ability to swap at will (best value) or pay .49/swap for their "A la Carte" pricing. I can hear you saying that that price doesn't seem like much, and it isn't. I also understand that after a certain point a company does have to make money. I am married to an entrepreneur after all.
But as far as PBS is concerned......I choose to do neither. I use PBS so seldom that $20/year would be wasted. I also had 60 credits still hanging around which equaled $29.40 worth of swaps at the .49/swap price. I am choosing to try like the dickens to spend down that credit pile as best I can before February 15th. In the last 48 hours I have requested 15 books and it has taken a boat load of work to find 15 that I really wanted. I am working at it every day, it is one of my vacation tasks. If I don't have them all spent by the time the 15th rolls around then Larissa can have the ones that are left....but I am going to give it a real try.
I earned those credits after all.
Paperback Book Swap it has been a good ride but it is time we parted.
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I could have written this post almost exactly. Except I only had about a dozen credits, and so it has been easier to use them up. I don't begrudge them the new fees, but I don't use it often enough to make it worth it for me. Also, I'm pretty sure I learned about PBS from YOU! :-)
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