Does anyone know of a way to guage how quickly a heavily posted but popular book might be requested? How could I figure out if such a book were truly a popular (heavily requested) book?

I saw in the help documents that there is currently no way to find out your position in the FIFO for a book you post. On the other hand, (as the help document pointed out) even though I'm posting a book that has 300 copies in the system, if it is heavily requested it may still be worth doing. The help page said that PBS is working on a 'popularity index' but it is not yet in place.

I've gone ahead and put it on my bookshelf as I'm not in a big hurry. However, I'd consider donating books such as these in the future if I knew there were little chance they'd get requested.

I'm not sure this would help you or not but you can go to the Top 50's under Community and see what the top 50 request are and the top  50 wished for books.     You can look by month, week or all time, I believe.   That might give you a clue.

When I joined, I wondered the same thing and if i was worthwhile even posting such a popular book to my bookshelf. 

I decided to post everything I was trying to clear out, even if there were hundreds of other copies in the system.   At some later stage in the year if they're still sitting on my PBS bookshelf and gathering dust at home, then my local library will beneift from them. 

What I have found though is that some of these books have been requested - usually when a member is ordering something else from my bookshelf.    

I find a lot of these get requested when I post a WL book by the wisher hitting the Order More From Member button.  In addition to wanting to save me postage money-I think people do that because they figure if I'm sending them a WL book then their request for the heavily posted book won't time out.  I've noticed that it's mostly the heavily posted books that time out repeatedly when I request them from FIFO.

If storage isn't an issue for you then I would post them and see what happens.  They do get requested but sometimes you hve to wait a few months.

PBS said recently in either a newsletter or their Blog that they are working on a way to show how fast a book is being requested. Not your place in line because there are just too many variables that make that go up and down. But a way to show on your book shelf how many were requested the previous week and that last date it was requested. Then you can kind of watch a book and decide if it's worth keeping posted or not.

That's what I usually do too, post everything, because as others said, a lot of folks do browse your shelf by hitting "order more from member" so even if there are hundreds in the system, if it's a book the person needs or wants, they might order right from you. A couple times a year a few weeks before our local library sale, I will go through and delete some that have been on my PBS shelf for eons and donate them to the sale.

Cheryl

Oh! I wasn't even thinking about the "order more" option. I've actually used that when one of my wish list books came through. That's a great point. Thanks!

I'm also much more likely to order a heavily posted book from someone who posts regularly on the forums - I know that person is around, and again, the transaction will likely not time out.

Also, if you are ever inclined to offer deals on your shelf, the more books you have, the better!

I've found that if I write a review the book might just get picked up too.  I had one on my shelf for almost a year and wrote a review and it was selected the next day.  I don't know if the review did it but....

I'm also with the someone could pick it when they get a WL book from me and the post in the forums and people are more likely to order something from you crowds.