Dena--

Just like your bookshelf, it depends on the book.  I've gotten some I never thought I'd get my turn for, while others  have been on my list since I joined last July.  It helps if you can be flexible in terms of binding, etc (willing to take a hardcover or paperback), and you can put multiple versions on your wishlist.

Cheers,

Catt

I just finished The Kite Runner , so I thought I'd at least get in line for 1,000 Splendid Suns, assuming it would be a heavily WL'd book--I am ---drum roll, please---#877!

It depends...I've been here for 2+ years and am still waiting on some wl books, and some others I have waited as little as one week on.

Having been here over a year, like others, I'll say it depends.  I once got a heavily wishlisted book (300+ people when I got in line) very quickly actually.  I think it's because the book was a popular one across the country (one of the Shopaholic books in case you were wondering) and so it sold many copies in store, which then got posted here.  However, I have been in the #1 spot for several books since the day I joined and am still patiently waiting for them to be posted.  These of course are more unusual books, so probably no one wants to read them but me.  :(  Once you are here awhile, you'll probably build up such a pile of unread books that the wishlist books will have less and less meaning to you in terms of urgency.  Right now, I almost HOPE that my wishlist books don't become available since I feel so guilty about my pile at home. 

I have been her 2.5 years and I have some books that have been listed that long.  Some books I eventuallt get a the library, or I buy them, but with some book..when I get them, I get them.  No rush.

Funny you should ask.  I just noticed that the very first book I ever put on my wishlist is still on my wishlist!!!  That was back in July of 2006.  Good thing is, I am now finally #1.

So if anyone is ready to give up Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and my Long Trek Home  I'm ready to accept it.

The oldest  book on my WL is from May 2006, which is around the time I joined. 

If I have a WL book where I'm 100+, I try find a good deal on eBay. I figure it'll help move the list along for others as well. I haven't been here long enough to have a long wait though, but a couple of my WL books I'm 650+.

Interesting that you bring that you bring this up.... I've been tracking my "movement" over the last couple of weeks.  I found that I move up about 7-10 spots per week for MMP romances (once they've been released).  With my trade paperback erotica,  I've been stuck at the same spot for eons.  SO much so that I went out and bought about $150 worth since I got tired of waiting. 

I've got two weeks worth of notes in front of me and I have moved from 25 to 15 for Kathryn Caskie's How to Propose to a Prince and from 27 to 15 for Roxanne St. Clair's First You Run.  Conversly,   I've been at number 1 for Pleasure Control by Cathyrn Fox. 

I guess it just depends on the types of books you're looking for.  The more mainstream, the faster they come.

Happy Reading (and waiting!)

Mary

I have 8 books that have been on my wishlist for more than a year. 2 of them are cookbooks with very long lists, but cookbooks tend to be keepers. If I had to have them I'd buy them, but I don't really "need" them so I just wait. The others have very short wishlists (at least one I've been #1 since I put it there), but aren't very popular books and for various reasons they just haven't made it onto my 'give up and buy it" list yet....  If it's a bestseller you are likely to get it fairly quickly even if the wishlist is long...

When I first joined, I didn't know about the "short" (usually 3- to 6-digit) ISBN's, which  are the PBS-assigned numbers that track books entered into the database without an ISBN.

You could be #1 forever for one of those.  As the help doc says, "...putting a "short ISBN" on your Wish List means that you will be alerted ONLY about that specific copy of the book, posted by that original member.  It is possible to have a match on your Wish List for a non-ISBN item if someone has gotten it and then reposts it from their TBR Pile or Repost Books area, but it is unlikely, just by the odds."

I found the following very interesting and informative, which was also posted to this forum.  If you scroll to the bottom of the topic, you'll find some helpful behind-the-scenes info on heavily wishlisted books from the PBS team.

http://www.paperbackswap.com/forum/topic.php?t=112345

In my experiences, I've waited between 2 and 8 weeks for a fiction book on my WL. That's very good considering I have tons of books to read in the meantime.

Unfortunately, I noticed that non fiction books move at a snail's pace. I've been here about 5 months and I haven't moved up any spots on the majority of my non fiction requests. Fiction seems to be more widely read

I just checked my wishlist, and I have 3 books still there from 2005, shortly after I joined PBS. But none of them are highly-sought books. I've never had problems getting a book where I'm 50+  or 100+ on the wishlist--those come eventually--because lots of folks want them, thus lots of folks also buy/post them, too. The ones that are there for a year and more (and some I finally deleted in frustration after 2 years and just went and got it from the library to read) are those where I'm 1/1 or maybe 2/5 on the WL. The more obscure ones.

Edited to add: if you have the space on your WL and aren't impatient to get a given book, don't give up! I've recently gotten two books that were on my WL for 2+ years and really had almost given up hope of ever getting them--the only reason I hadn't deleted them was that my library system didn't have them. So you just never know!

Cheryl

I joined in 2005, but I didn't start using the wishlist until last year when I had a lot of spare credits (although my reminder list is a mile long). My oldest WL books are from 5/07 and I've moved up a lot on two of them, but the other three are out of print Sheri S. Tepper books that I've never even seen before.

As others have said, it all depends.  Some of the books on my WL have been there since right after I joined in March of last year and seem to be barely moving--or even not moving at all.  Others are creeping downward.  OTOH, I've gotten a few books within weeks of listing them and a couple within days.  In the last two weeks I've had six WLed books become available, three of them within a two-day period .  That's a third as many as I got the whole first year.  The most recent ones have been a combination of fiction and non-fiction.  The two best-sellers among them were both non-fiction.  This recent spate of WLed books was a big surprise to me.